I love my Bosch 500 series but the best feature on it, by FAR, is the simplest.

Bosch calls it AquaStop, it's a plastic tray underneath the entire mechanical assembly. If there is a leak in the system water will accumulate here first, saving your floors. A simple float switch puts the system into always-drain mode to try and purge the rest of the water as fast as it can.

That little thing alone saved my wood floors from being ruined on an overnight inlet valve leak. And the valve was a $25 part from Amazon, a 30 minute DIY fix. That's some great engineering.

I have a cheap (in every sense) dishwasher with no fancy features that's nearly silent. Whether I put in relatively clean plates or filthy messy pots, it cleans them perfectly.

Prior to that I owned a very expensive dishwasher and it was awful. Within the 90 day return window it broke twice. A week before that window closed I returned it and bought the one I have now for a third of the price.

Someone I work with has a huge family. Something like eight or more kids. If I need recommendations on appliances I go to him because he's basically running dishwashers and laundry machines 12 hours a day. His advice to me for dishwashers: buy the cheapest one you can find. When it breaks, fixing it yourself usually costs under $100, and if it doesn't, get the same model and keep the functional parts of the old one (motors, pumps, control boards, inner rack parts, etc) as spares.

It's been 5 years and I've yet to have any issues with the cheap no-frills one.

Brand name & Model?

The cheap one is a Frigidaire. Not sure of the exact model since I'm not currently near it, but I'm pretty certain it's equivalent to their FDPC4221AS model, if not that exact model. The price was under $400.

The expensive one that broke twice within 90 days was a KitchenAid that cost a bit less than $2000. I don't recall the model number. It had a stainless steel tub, three racks, interior LED lighting, fans to blow heated air to dry dishes, and all sorts of other fancy features, that, in hindsight, don't help clean dishes in the slightest.

The first break: half way through a wash cycle I smelled burning plastic in the kitchen. It seemed like it was strongest near the dishwasher, so I opened it up. As I did, the sound of the water and pumps stopped, allowing me to hear the sound of what would ultimately be the source of the smell: the fan that was meant to blow heated air during the drying cycle was grinding away at full speed and rubbing against its housing causing it to melt. I could only guess as to why it malfunctioned that way - it shouldn't have even been running until all of the wash cycles had completed. It got replaced a few days later with the same model.

The second break: I loaded it up, started the machine, and went to bed. When I woke up in the morning my entire kitchen was flooded with dirty dish water. This time, the plastic housing for the main pump had literally split in half. Not only did that allow water to just flow right onto my floor, but caused it to continue flooding my floor as it tried to fill the tub to the correct level. Since most of it was going on the floor, the float switch that signals when the tub is full never cut off the pump. Eventually I think the control board decided that was a problem and stopped the pump.

In hindsight, there was really no justification for buying the fancy one in the first place. Aside from all "amazing" features, the design and parts used to accomplish the actual cleaning are almost identical in every way. I felt like a real idiot for falling for the marketing.

Never again.

To be fair, I've little experience with Miele or Bosch dishwashers. I lived in England for about a year over 15 years ago and had a Miele there. I had to be diligent about keeping it clean, otherwise I'd end up with dishes that were even more disgusting than when I put them in, as it would very effectively deposit the contents of an uncleaned filter onto every surface before baking it to an enamel-like finish. Given how much people seem to love their Miele dishwashers I suspect my experience with them wasn't typical.

Which one is it? :-)

I wouldn't splurge on a luxury fridge either but I wish I understood why there aren't any good ones. I should be able to install the compressor and the rest of it outside. Coils on the bottom of a refrigerator is undoubtedly the stupidest architecture. And having to listen to the compressor isn't great either.

there are no "good ones" because "luxury" appliances are basically the same as the cheap ones with a nicer finish or luxury brand name

ask ANY appliance repair person...they would howl at the comments here

they've told me that people who think Bosch or Miele are "good" are just remembering what they were like twenty years ago and today they are just as likely to fail as Kenmore

ask ANY appliance repair person, don't listen to HN on topics like this

Depending on which specific appliance, the Kenmore is probably a Whirlpool.

That's why variable-speed scroll compressors are great.

We recently bought a high-end "duel fuel" range. It isn't for vanity, it's for utility and reliability.

6 gas burners including two special-function power-boilers (useful!), and two separate electric ovens. That means we can bake both the protein and the vegetable dish at the same time, while finishing other parts of the meal on the range (like rice or sauce) and cut down on the overall cooking time.

Instead of my wife or I spending an hour to 90 minutes of serial cooking, we can parallelize the cook time and spend 30 to 45 minutes. Worth it, especially since we're eating out less than we ever have, one of the positive changes to come out of the pandemic.

Here in the US, luxury appliances are what sell houses. Usually the investment pays handsomly when you go to sell.

no, LOCATION sells homes

appliances are a commodity that represent a minor fraction of the sale price

no one plonks down $2 million dollars on a home to get $30k worth of appliances

no one moves into a poor school district to buy a Viking range

you can swap out all the appliances in a home in a few days

and the idea that these are an "investment"?? how many homes have you owned? no one is making a profit off of installing a dishwasher

and to edit a response...you just flipped properties in a seller's market, you would have made a profit regardless. wait until it is truly a buyer's market...you won't get a premium off easily-done renovations like swapping appliances

I've owned and sold several homes that I've renovated and they always fetch a premium.

Recently I sold an apartment in a complex with 1200 units - so comps are widely available. The sale happened in a matter of hours with 6 way-over-ask offers, half of which were all cash. The closing price continues to be a high water mark for this unit / line in the complex.

There were other units on the market at the same time as us where the sale took weeks if not months and sold for drastically less. Some of them were recently renovated, but had builder grade finishes.

High end kitchen / bathroom renovations (aka appliances) are most certainly a major factor.

> Here in the US, luxury appliances are what sell houses. Usually the investment pays handsomly when you go to sell.

You don't take your appliances with you when you move?

Absolutely not. They're built into the house. Cabinets are literally constructed around them to fit seamlessly.

I know it's common in certain other countries to take your appliances with you, even for rentals. It makes moving so much harder, I've never understood it.

To me, a home not coming with a refrigerator or washing machine makes as much sense as it not coming with a toilet or shower.

those cabinets are all built to standard dimensions though

your "builtin" fridge isn't really builtin, it just has cabinetry (plywood + veneer) on both side and the top in a standard dimension...its not like the home was built around the fridge

in most homes even the "builtin" cabinetry work is cheap garbage that can be replaced trivially, particularly in the case of white-finish just in most homes now

> Absolutely not. They're built into the house. Cabinets are literally constructed around them to fit seamlessly.

Only true in houses with high-end finishes.

> You don't take your appliances with you when you move?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Dishwashers are probably the most-likely to stay with the house, followed by the range. Fridge may be included with the house, or specified as negotiable, but often isn't—probably the most-likely one for the seller to keep. Some higher-end models of various appliances (including refrigerators) may be built-in rather than freestanding, and/or to be styled to match the cabinets, and in those cases they almost always stay. Clothes washer and dryer are usually taken.

IME appliances are more likely to stay the higher the cost of the house (they're more likely to be kinda tied to the house, style-wise or physically; the owner is more likely to consider them not worth moving).

Most of the time, no. Probably because as "standard" as sizes of appliances are- they also are not.

So the last thing you want a potential buyer worrying about is (1) looking at an empty appliance slot or (2) knowing the appliances are going and worrying if they can find something to perfectly fit in the same spot.

I mean also, because appliances usually stay.. it's kind of a problem for no one. Often times someone is selling a house to build a new one, they don't want to bring old appliances in a new build. Or if you are buying a pre-existing house, that will generally have the appliances etc.

Also, appliances have been subject to the same supersizing effect as many other things in the US, especially refrigerators. A kitchen built or last remodeled prior to the mid-2000s or so is likely going to have trouble finding a fridge that will fit properly because they've gotten so much larger.

Appliances wear out and need replaced and lots of property owners don’t regularly remodel, so there is a pretty big market for, and ready supply of, things like refrigerators that fit older houses. In a brick-and-mortar showroom, they won't be in the most prominent locations, but they also will often be fairly well priced for what they are because its a large and price-sensitive market segment.

> You don't take your appliances with you when you move?

Very often, they do take some, but large appliances are expensive to move making it a convenient time to trade up, and many homebuyers are first time homebuyers moving out of places where they don’t own the appliances (whether young people moving out from their parents or ex-renters moving from a place where the landlord owns some or all of the appliances), so appliances can be a big boon to selling a house.

Here in Germany people take their entire kitchen when they move - even from rentals. It's normal to rent an apartment with no kitchen (no cabinets, no appliances, literally an empty room with some pipes). Very strange.

I would not, but I also have never owned any super fancy appliances worth more than $2k.

Also, most appliance sellers include free disposal of old appliances, so the new homeowner does not have to worry about that.

Some do, some don't.

Many appliances are effectively built-in to the kitchen (sometimes ovens, stoves), or may not fit in the new house.

It's agreed upon by the seller and buyer.

We do not. This is always one of those things that blows minds when one side of the pond hears how things work on the other side.

In Texas people usually take their washer, dryer, and fridge.

You can, but why would you want to?

Came here to say the same thing.

> Miele is a German brand of luxury appliances with a long-standing reputation for quality, sleek design, and precision-obsessed German engineering.

Is it? Here in Sweden I'd say it's like any other kitchen appliance brand. Seems like they're well with the marketing overseas...