Well, It's a Dishwasher

The Frigidaire Stainless Steel Built-in Dishwasher is primarily remarkable for its stainless steel finish. Otherwise, it is a basic modern dishwasher. It isn't particularly loud. It isn't particularly quiet. Its features are limited to a time delay on starting, length of wash, and pushbuttons to select a high temperature rinse, wash, or dry. Its performance is likewise average, with a definite preference for liquid soaps and very limited ability to deal with hard water. In a field where a well designed dishwasher stands out for its silence and its ease of use and a poorly designed one stands out for its distracting loud operation and quirky operation, this one doesn't actually stand out at all.

Background

The Frigidaire stainless steel dishwasher came to us with the new house a couple of years ago. Given our previous experience with a wonderfully quiet and effective Amana, we expected this well finished dishwasher to also work well.

The exterior has a large magnetic stainless panel with the controls in a black plastic section on top. The controls consist of an old fashioned sequence knob combined with rocker switches for the heated functions in the door. These are covered with a transparent plastic membrane which protects them, and gives the illusion they are single pushbuttons. Pressing one causes an orange tab to appear in that function's window, and the switch audibly clicks and disengages the other side of the switch, where the orange tab will disappear from its window. None of the mode indicators or switches is illuminated, so full illumination is needed in the room to see what the machine is set on. The panel does have three lights: one for pre-wash, one for wash, and one for "Clean" at the end of the wash, which are orange neon lamps lit as it goes through its cycle.

The rotary control dial has a first section with a delay up to 6 hours before start. This has become a feature we simply do not use, since the washer needs immediate checking up on, so letting it run in the middle of the day is out (besides, that's the worst time to run it since it is an extra load on the power grid at peak demand). Given how loud the grinding roar this machine emits is, setting it to start in the middle of the night is a recipe for crying babies and being rousted from your sleep thinking a tornado is coming.

The next stop is for heavy duty wash- which simply means going through all three wash modes. The second is the medium wash, which goes through two time cycles, and the third is a light wash, which I simply can't believe would be able to do anything other than attempt to rinse a wash you had already done and wanted to re-heat for some reason (a chance to have a little more smog, perhaps). The tail end of the wash cycle is the rinse, which is the same for all wash modes, and is insufficient for all of them, as well. With moderately hard water, we have found we consistently get waxy white soap and hard water residues sticking to pots, pans, glasses, and cups. The only solution to this appears to be a heated rinse, but this actually does more to moderate how much residue you find, rather than eliminate it. To the washer's credit, we have never found food residue left behind, but we rinse items before putting them in since it seems any dishwasher which is going to have a problem leaving things behind will become hopelessly contaminated and never stop, after you have found the problem. Given the fact this machine keeps leaving detergent particles even if you run it with none in the dispenser, we are pretty sure it would leave food particles if un-rinsed dishes were put in it.

Inside, the washer has two wire racks and a utensil basket along the right side of the bottom rack. This long and narrow basket is removable, but thanks to its narrow base, it is easy to have it imbalanced by longer spoons or other silverware. The door interior has a flip-open soap door, which is at risk to being held shut if you have frying pans going in for a wash (it's impossible to tell this has happened until you open the door). Given the alignment of the soap door in the machine, it is actually very easy to do this, and it has happened on ours more than once as the load shifts when the baskets slide in. Better designs have a swing which causes the door to slide open so it doesn't need an open area swing through. Another solution is to place it where one of the basket sides acts as a spacer to make sure there is room.

There is an open soap tub for a prewash load of detergent, and a closed cup for an anti-spotting rinse aid. The technology of building dishwashing machines is fairly mature, so in my mind, it is somewhat surprising to see some of these interior features haven't evolved in Frigidaire's product line since the 1970s.

The one thing this washer does do reliably is continue running. To that end, it shows no obvious signs of wear, and the expectation right now is the detergent/ hard water particle problem will gradually become worse until we decide it is unusable and replace it. Well, more to the point, replace it with something from another brand.

Conclusion

A dishwasher is supposed to be a modern convenience. One which requires you to spend about half as much time as it would take to wash a set of dishes to rinse them isn't helping too much. One which leaves a significant portion of every load unusable because of detergent stuck to is is a bit less useful. And one that is loud enough to prevent conversation in the room has limited livability. The Frigidaire Stainless Steel Built-in Dishwasher has all of these faults, but it does keep running. Given the availability of alternatives, I can't recommend it.