I love my Bosch (SHU66something - discontinued floor sample 2 yrs ago). I don't always have hot water in the lines when I run it - I run it a lot at night. I use Palmolive paste on the pasta "ring" at the waterline of my pots every once in a while just b/c I like my pans shiny inside and out. And you have to really get stuck-on hamburger off the frying pan before putting it in the DW b/c while the meat comes off in the cycle, the marks remain even on Potscrubber. Other than those 2 hard-to-remove residues, my Bosch cleans everything perfectly!

I believe it has an internal hot water heater - check the manual. They just don't have the heating coils for drying, but other than some water sitting in the bottoms of coffee cups (placed in upside down) or any kind of container with a rim (if you place it flat, they come out pretty dry if you put them on angle) everything comes out dry. I even put my Tupperware and plastic sippy cups in the top rack, which I would never do with my old DWs that had heated drying.

I love our Bosch DW. I will never buy another brand.
Had a kenmore but disappointed, a kitchenaid that
died too young and a maytag.

A warning first. Before you think about a Bosch dishwasher
you need to understand European appliances and how they
work. Otherwise you will find yourself really frustrated.
They are not like the typical American Appliances.
The Bosch does not have a food grinder. Some people hate
this. Bosch has a trap to catch the food pieces.
However the Bosch gets so hot that it burns up the food.
You can put chicken bones into the bosch and nothing
winds up in the trap. Amazing to me. I have had my Bosch
for 3 months and I have never had to empty the trap.
The heat just melts the food. That is HOT.

(not sure about ccoombs1 needing to heat up the tap
water first, never heard of this. She should contact
Bosch because this is not normal)

The heat is so powerful it destroys any food particles.
Bosch dishwashers are more energy efficient than others
so this means that they never fully dry in the inside. The
tub will remain wet or with moisture. Your dishes will
sparkle and look great but the steel tub will have some
wetness on it.

There is also a steel tub that has a auto shut off so
the water will never overflow. Years ago we had a magtag
that overflowed and was a nightmare until DH reached
under the sink to stop the water.

Bosch takes a long time to wash dishes but the higher
the number (300, 500, 800) the more silent the machine.
I mean silent. Although the 800 has a party wash.

You need to use Jet-dry or some product like this. Some
people do not want this kind of chemical on their plates.
Jet-dry helps the washing process and makes the dishes
look great.

If the above issues do not bother you , you will love the
Bosch. My DH loves German cars and German engineering so
for him he calls this the BMW of dishwashers.

You might check out a site called Epinions.com
You have to really pick through the information
but their are reviews on most products. Check out
the Miele and Kenmore to get some personal opinons.

Good luck
~boxerpups

Here is a link that might be useful: Difference in Bosch

I have the Bosch 800 and love it. It is really quiet, cleans beautifully, and I do like and use the extra cycles. The glass care and party wash cycles are wonderful after and during a party. The cutlerly loading tray on the Miele is controversial-- people either love it or hate it, it seems. I don't regret forking over the extra $ for this appliance.

I got the display and am glad I did. It would drive me nuts not to know how much longer until the cycle is complete-- but I run my DW at least a couple of times a day. If you run the DW at night this would probably not be an issue. The display is burnt orange color.

Bosch dishwashers have always had an in-line water heater. As mentioned, they get the water very hot. We never worry about the tap water temperature when we start the dishwasher. It simply doesn't matter.

We have had our Bosch for several years. We have never had to empty the food trap. There is nothing in it. We do scrape excess food off of our dishes before putting them in the DW.

Bosch has been introducing some DW models at a lower price point. I'm not sure what they are changing to get to the lower prices, but I don't think it is just the sound deadening insulation.

When we go to buy the DW for our new house, we will be careful to make sure that the Bosch model we end up selecting has ALL the features that we want and have become used to. They are cheapening something on the new models. We don't want to find out what it is the hard way.

I don't know what ccombs1 is talking about either - I had had my Bosch DW connected to the cold water line. It was NEVER going to get hot water. That said, as others have mentioned, it has an internal inline water heater and heats the water to the setpoint required for the wash mode selected ... it is not looking to be supplied the hot water at the inlet - it takes care of the temperature regulation itself.

BTW, the DW washes up *everything*!

We have 2 of the 500 series and are very happy with them. We would never use all the cycles on the 800...In fact, we pretty much only use 'Auto Wash' and every once in awhile, 'Quick Wash' on what we have, and they're very quiet. We run ours about 3 times a day, and don't have complaints about drying and certainly don't run the tap to hot before starting the dishwashers. (I've never heard of that before)

We had a top of the line Maytag in the dining buffet in our last house, with a Bosch in the kitchen. The dining room one was added a few years after the Bosch, and I thought it'd be nice to have one with a food grinder and heated dry. I was wrong. The Maytag, although their quietest, was loud enough to bother us in the next room, while the Bosch was so quiet that we often made the mistake of opening it while it was running. The dishes weren't as clean or as dry in the Maytag as in the Bosch. I was certainly cured of any wish for a food grinder and heated dry. That's why in this house, we have 2 Bosch.

leslie, where are the unhappy posts about Bosch dishwashers?

I've mentioned previously once or twice that was (it seemed to me) a single person with one specific writing style posting multiple times under numerous aliases -- at another site not here. One reason why GW is great is the community's ability to spot phonies fakes and shills. At many other sites the filtering ability is not as high, even though there are many publicly designated moderators. In spite of the moderators.

Leslie, where are the unhappy posts about Bosch dishwashers?

David, I'm a long-time poster with nothing to shill -- mine might be one of the less-satisfied posts you've seen about the Bosch 500.

Our Bosch, while I still love it for certain aspects (energy star, quietness & the very nice looks, ours is the Integra model with a paneled front), has quite disappointed us with its cleaning ability. It simply doesn't clean our dishes as thoroughly as our old Kenmore did, much as I hate to admit it (I'm totally sold on German engineering otherwise and adore my Liebherr fridge).

We've tried all the detergents recommended & all the various brands of rinse aids, I've sought out the information on exactly how much food to scrape/leave on the plates so the enzymes can work -- but we usually still wind up putting a few items back through for another round. Given how long this DW takes to cycle, this can be rather annoying. We've given up on the "quick wash" entirely, as it really doesn't wash adequately at all. *shrugs*

My guy is additionally bothered by the lack of a drying cycle, although I can take it or leave it, and have had no issues with wet dishes if you allow it the time to dry them via the residual water heat. Someone with lots of children/baby dishes/plastic items might be more sensitive to this.

But this is the Bosch 500. The 800 might well be much better. I WANTED to love my Bosch, I really did. :-(
We may try a Miele next time.

I have 2 -- mine were sold with the Thermador tag, but they are essentially Bosch. Like rhome, I'm very happy with both. I looked at Miele, but I'd rather have my pair. They clean and dry as well as anything I've every had (even with a fair amount of plastic) and are very quiet. The filter vs a grinder is a non-issue except to salesmen who have never used one (and talked us out of buying Bosch years earlier).

I've had Kitchenaid before and was very happy with the one we bought as a replacement in our last house. I thought I would get something like that again, but KA changed the racking and some other features I liked, the KA DW had gotten louder over time and was not as quiet as I wanted and the Bosch/Thermador let us put panels on the pair and make them more flush and less obnoxious than 2 obvious DWs. I have no regrets.

I'm not sure which Bosch I have, but I love it. Have had it about 3 years...the quietest I've had, and cleans my dishes beautifully. I have never had to clean the filter; the dishes are dry when the cycle is over (except for the tops of certain glasses and cups.) I do not have the panel on front, but it really doesn't bother me. Did at first, but not anymore. I didn't get a lot of the extra ... I tend to use just the basic wash and sometimes rinse. On my last DW I loved the delay start, but this one is so quiet, there is no need for that.

We bought a Bosch Evolution 500 series about 3 months ago and I am really happy with the quiet operation and the amazing cleaning power. It is insanely quiet and I was embarassed to see how clean my dishes got after the first run. I then loaded everything from my cabinets to be rewashed!

I'm less thrilled with the strange top rack organization, though. I was warned about it by a few people on here, though so I was prepared. We have small kids, so the plastic cups and sippies often tip and my bowls often fall over. I haven't figured out how to maximize the space on the top rack.

Leslie - We have only 1 month of experience with our new Bosch and I love it. We are only 2 here, so I only run it about twice a week and at night. When I empty it in the morning, everything is dry inside and the dishes sparkle. I do use the Jet Dry product and it makes a difference. It is very quiet, but my old DW was 25 years old. We have the 500 model.

In our last house we had a Bosch DW and it is the one appliance I gave no consideration to another brand. Bosch again. No matter what I put in it comes out clean and was done quietly and efficiently.

Ok, I'm another dissatisfied Bosch owner. We have a Bosch gas oven, microwave and 800 series Evolution dishwasher.

We've had all three appliances for 18 months. The dishwasher had an odd smell inside for just about a year. I thought it would never go away. After we discovered the smell (kind of sweet chemical smell), a quick search for Bosch smell came up with a number of hits.

The other problem we have is the end of cycle beep. Even though I have found instructions online how to turn it off or down, it does not work on my top of the line 800 model.

I wrote to Bosch a while back asking for help. I've received three replies telling me it can be done and then they send me instructions for another model even though I have been very specific about our exact model number. I wrote them once again a couple weeks ago begging for help and still no reply. I'm pretty fed up.

Because of this problem we cannot do dishes before we head to bed or lie down on the sofa to watch TV (read "sleep" :-) because the blasted beep will wake us up and it will keep on beeping every few minute or so until you either open the door or turn the DW off. I wrote to Bosch asking them why they bothered making such a quiet DW if the beep is going to set your nerves on end anyhow.

I also do not like the top rack organization. We can get only about 2/3 of what we used to be able to get in our 20 year old GE.

The microwave beep is just as irritating and though you can turn it off, it also turns your timer beep off at the same time. Discovered that after the kitchen filled with smoke one night.

I love the way the Bosch looks with its clean European lines but that doesn't buy much when there are so many other issues for me.

Jodi-

Another Bosh dishwasher lover here. Ours is about a year old - 500 series. Only complaint is the top rack. Cereal bowls just simply won't stand on edge as the manual pictures and they just fall over. With just two of us the dishwasher is run at night and we never hear it. Ours doesn't have a timer beep at the end of the cycle. The machine just ends and the orange light stays on until morning when we empty the thing.

I love mine too! It's a 500 series, one year old and I replaced a ""top of the line" Kenmore. This cleans much better the our Kenmore did. It's so quiet that often I don't even realize it's on. I do find the dishracks slightly annoying. It seems a little harder to push a full bottom rack back in then on my Kenmore, and I liked my old silverwear set up better. But the machine cleans extremely well and I would buy another Bosch. You HAVE to use jet dry.

I'm not familiar with the 800 series, but I purchased a Bosch dishwasher for my old house in 1994 or 1995. The dishwasher still worked great when we sold the house a few months ago. It was still quiet, and I still occasionally opened it while it was running. The dishwasher in our new house is horribly noisy and we are looking to replace it. We're considering the 800 series. Good luck in your search!

LOVE our Bosch 800 Plus!!! Cleans like a maniac! No issues so far. Also we are able to turn off the beep...