We got the Miele futura crystal two months ago. It's excellent and cleans superbly. It is very quiet and almost silent for most of the cycle. The normal cycle is long - about 140 minutes, but we're used to it by now. There's an express cycle which we were hoping would clean a regular load of dinner dishes but no luck. The express cycle is meant for glassware, I guess. Our big surprise: we thought we might not like touching our dirty utensils to place them into the cutlery tray, but this tray has ended up being our favorite feature of the machine. Our cutlery gets completely clean, and takes seconds to unload and put away. If I could redo one thing, we would have sprung for the adjustable cutlery tray. If we had the ability to lower that tray an inch, it would accommodate our many cooking and serving utensils. Instead, the non-adjustable version fits one or two cooking utensils and the rest we have to wedge into the second tray which takes up space for cups and bowls. Other features we like: We can time it to start in the wee hours of morning before anybody's up. Why would we do this? Because it beeps four times when it's finished, and if we let it run at night it would wake us up. Last awesome feature: the filter is very easy to remove and clean out. That said, we've removed it twice and haven't found any debris stuck to the filter. So overall we are extremely pleased we went with the Miele. Our old Kitchen Aid ceased getting our dishes clean by the time we replaced it.

Claire134, you can probably disable the beeps (on our Miele Optima we did). :)

I have a Miele DW with a custom panel and the integrated controls. It's 10 now. It has survived multiple power outages -- their appliances are made that way. It's never had an issue.

We do 1 to 2 loads a day. The only things that don't go into the DW are good knives and a few wooden utensils. I bought the model with china/crystal cycle which does a warm wash for anything delicate.

I had an Optima for 2 years in another home -- one like catmom's. It was great. I used Express all the time. It's a fast cycle I don't have on the older machine here -- wish I did.

claire134 made some very good points about features.

Re cycle length, we put ours on when we go to bed. I believe the chimes were disabled long ago. The way to do that is to call Miele support and they can guide you on the deprogramming over the phone. Though how to do that may be detailed in the user guide.

Occasionally there is someone who doesn't like a Miele. In that case there is a 90 day buy-back.

I have a Miele Futura Classic. It replaced a higher end KitchenAid about 9 months ago. The KitchenAid contoller board was fried in a power drop. Haven't had that problem with the Miele. Mine is the simplest model with the cutlery tray. I wish I had gotten the Futura with the crystal cycle, but it wasn't in the budget. Classic works very well for 95% of the dishes. The turbo button on the normal cycle for smaller loads cuts the cycle time by about 60 minutes to 90 minutes. That includes the condensation dry. Be aware that neither the Bosch nor the Miele has the heated drying cycle typical in an American model. The model you're considering has some moveable tines on the adjustable racks that I found intriguing, but didn't have the hidden controls I need for the little people in the house. I appreciated the fact that my Miele salesman asked what kind of water I had in the house. If you have hard water, you might want to consider the on-board water softener option. We have a high iron content in our water so the stainless steel tub eliminates the red ring we get when tubs aren't scrubbed regularly. The sanitize cycle gives us the 155 degree rinse I wanted to sterilize everything. I don't put the pots in the dishwasher like many do, but you definitely can. I do put the filters from my range top vent hood in the dishwasher and it does a beautiful job de-greasing them.

Good luck with your choice.

Woah woah woah, slow down! Before you spend big bucks on replacing such a new dishwasher, see if you can get to the bottom of what happened. Usually the blinks signify and error code which may or may not have to do with the control board. Do the blinks have a pattern to them? Miele's are well made and work well (I have one) but they are over engineered and are MUCH more expensive to fix than other brands should they break (and like any machine ever built, they will break eventually, maybe in the first 5 years, maybe not).

There are dishwashers still made with mechanical timers, but they are cheap apartment grade junk.

We also changed out a KA with a Miele, and we're happy for the most part.
We had to change the inlet water line
twice in 4 years, and we're on city water (parts are not inexspensive either!).

Make sure that you take your dishes to the dw that you are considering purchasing, not all dishes fit in all dws.
Some of our bowls don't fit nicely in our dw for example, and the coffee cups will float around a bit as well.

The utensil tray is a nice feature, but some other manufacturers have this as well.

Good luck.

I had a KA that needed the panel replaced twice in 2 years. I got a Miele after that. All their higher end models have a custom panel option. You need to decide what features you want. For me, I loved the 3D cutlery tray much more than he standard one. I liked the ability to move sections around and fit in larger utensils. Adjustable baskets, removable basket sections, movable tines, and a variety of cycles are things to look at.

I sold my house and will be building a new one. I will be putting in another Miele, either the Dimension which was the equivalent of what I had before or the Diamond, if I want more cycle options.

The Miele is great. I have a Diamond because I wanted the soft close and LED lights. I had another Miele before that for 13 years. I gave it away when I remodeled a couple of years ago. It was perfect. Never had a day. Of trouble with it.

Miele is the best there is out there. But it does come with electronics,which is an unavoidable fact of life these days (except for the Blue Star range--yay). Electronics means there is a risk of circuit board failure., no two ways about it. So just evaluate features, warranty and customer service against price, because the amount of time that a modern dishwasher will last is really a crapshoot

Another thing to note about Miele: You NEED to have service for it where you live. If you don't, but buy one anyway, you'll be in big trouble if something goes wrong.

I have hard water and I don't know if it's the water softener feature on my Dimension or just superior cleaning overall, but the dishes that come out of it are in a different league of clean than anything that came out of my previous Kenmore and Samsung. Every plate/dish feels new. And I have the same experience with the cutlery tray. I thought it would be a pain but it's awesome. Again, every piece looks like new.

We didn't consider any models without the softener, so I'm not familiar with the one you're considering. But I'm super happy with the DW and my other new Miele products.

We installed a high end Kitchenaid dishwasher about three years ago after researching it extensively. We were all set to go with a Miele but changed our minds and bought the Kitchenaid instead.

It has performed flawlessly and it is extremely quiet in operation. I'm sure a Miele would have been great as well.

The reason we chose the Kitchenaid is that it had much more space in the interior and we liked the racks better for our dishes. It has a third rack for cutlery which I really liked but DW didn't, so we don't use it.

What is your Kitchenaid model number? If it is a higher-end model I would look into fixing it -- I'm sure there are lots of other things you need/want to buy after moving into a new house. Also, I think you will appreciate the quiet operation more than you think you will, at least after the kids have gone to bed and the kitchen is finally quiet!

Good luck and enjoy your new home!

Billy

We have a La Perla Miele dishwasher and have been happy with it - it replaced another Miele, I dont remember which model. It is very quiet and cleans and drys the dishes light years better than the GE Profile we had previously. One large advantage of the Miele, as I understand it from a repairman, is that it is one of the only dishwashers with a stainless steel pan that in the event of a leak, keeps the water contained - i.e., that alone could be worth the price of the dishwasher if you have hardwood floors. I love the top cutlery tray. We run the dishwasher 2-3x daily ...