How about this? It is one of the highest rated by consumer reports, and is a bosch. and is only $539 at sears.

http://www.sears.com/bosch-24inch-built-in-dishwasher-stainless-steel/p-02216323000P?prdNo=7&blockNo=7&blockType=G7

thanks for the input! I will look at that one.

Dishwashers in that price range are not great. Cheaply built in general. However they will do the job, last a reasonable amount of time, and usually be easier/cheaper to repair than more expensive models. I'm not convinced that there are any real quality/performance differences between brands at that price point.

That's an acenta not a real Bosch. Consumer distorts gives out convoluted information.

Too bad you weren't near me. SHE53TL5UC $650 installed out the door no tax.

This post was edited by jdoenumber2 on Thu, Nov 27, 14 at 21:37

Agreed, I have no idea why CR rated the Ascenta better than other Bosch, one look at it compared to the 300 and up will tell you it's an inferior dishwasher.

not a real bosch?
You are all thinking about this the wrong way. The comparison is not with a high end bosch.

Name a better dishwasher for about $500?

We ended up with a Blomberg from our favorite local appliance store. Got it for about $625. Deciding factor was availability to pick it up today so DH could install it and get us up and running again. Everywhere in town, delivery and install is running several weeks out.

It's connected to the plumbing and we ran a short cycle to test for leaks. I'll report back in a new thread after we've run a few full cycles, especially since there does not seem to be a lot of info on these on the forum. One of the sales guys has one and says it performs similarly to Bosch, not as good as Miele. We'll see.

Thank you for help!

Hi rima wa, yes please do report back soon with your impressions and model number, at $625. maybe this is not the top of the line with cutlery tray 3rd rack but these certainly do look like very nicely built machines in my opinion and appealing pricing as well.

IIRC Blomberg makes the Viking DWs.
I think they are a solid performer at their price point.

We had a Blomberg. It lasted about a month before the panel buttons broke. We lived without being able to change the cycle, but then the start cycle broke. Because they are made in Turkey, the repair was going to take several months for the part to come in. It was pretty and cleaned well, but broke easily.

We inherited a blomberg in a home we recently purchased. It is about 2 yrs old. Half the time it doesnt clean. It is noisy. The wash cycle is long. We have already had to take the front off twice to fiddle with the controls. The bottom rack tines are bent after what is typical home by the PO use I would assume. It doesn't seem to be an easy dw to fill economically. (maybe why the PO bent the tines?) If a large bowl is on the bottom rack, the top rack glasses need to be rewashed. In 30 years of having a dishwasher, I have never had to rewash and/or analyze how the dishes are to be placed so often. I had wash a lot more than I ever have because I don't want to risk having to run it again.

Well, Miele it ain't. We have now run 3 loads in it and each time there has been something that has to be rewashed. One time we had residual grease on plastics from a load that had a sautee pan in it with a bit of cooking residue (not rinsed - in the Miele we didn't have to.) This was not a pan that had bacon fried in it with lots of grease, just a regular sautee with some olive oil and butter, and not a lot of it. This morning we had dishes with steak juices baked onto them, rather than washed off. No overcrowding, plates just lined up nicely in their tines. Each has close to an inch between it. Steak juice is not exactly hard to wash off...(that said the Miele sometimes struggled with residual "char" from grilled food. But this was juice, not char.)

I guess we now go back to the old way where everything has to be rinsed before it goes in. Blah.

That said, glassware looks good. It does a nice job on that.

At this point, I do not recommend these solely on cleaning, but my comparison is to Miele so keep that in mind. DH wants us to run pots and pans cycle all the time hoping that will do a better job, but I don't want my dishes to get damaged from the extreme conditions.

The model we have is DWT25500SS. My other comments on it are that it is hard to load, as mentioned above by another poster. It does not hold as much as the Miele. In that, I could get in the whole day's dishes (with all 4 of us home) as well as pots and pans from dinner. This one I can get the dishes in, maybe one pot.

This model has the cutlery tray and it is very small and does not hold the flatware straight. The little grooves are kind of shallow. The manual says the tray is small so you can put it directly into your silverware drawer, but then you'd need two of the trays to manage loading up again. It really does not hold much so I've started using it for small lids, the pizza cutter, etc that don't fit in the flatware basket.

As for our pricing, they got a lot of them in for Black Friday or whatever event. So the price was reduced (list is $1049 or similar). We then got $50 knocked off for picking it up ourselves. They also let us drop off our Miele there for disposal. Funny that we spent about 1200 for our awesome Miele nearly 13 years ago and that felt like A LOT of money.

We will stick with this now as long as it doesn't break. We are on a countdown to listing our house in the spring, so a $2K+ dishwasher to replace our Incognito is not in the cards. Next kitchen, we'll get a Miele again after we recover from moving LOL.

And if it's of interest to anyone, we live in an area with soft water (snowmelt is the primary source) and we use Cascade Complete powder and Finish rinse aid. This has been our "combo" for years.