Choose the Right Dishwasher for Your Kitchen

Dishwashers have a pretty simple task: getting dishes clean. But you should expect a little more from the best dishwashers. Here are some of the most important qualities:

Powerful cleaning
A good dishwasher should thoroughly clean your dishes and leave them decently dry. Many dishwashers have a hard time getting things fully dry—especially plastic items, which are tougher to dry than glass or ceramic—but your appliance shouldn’t leave them dripping wet.

Quiet operation
The quietest dishwashers we recommend keep the noise level to a minimum. You won’t find a totally silent dishwasher, but the ones that score the best for noise in our tests keep the clanging and whooshing to a minimum.

Eco-friendliness
A good dishwasher is energy-efficient and uses minimal water to get things clean and dry. Dishwashers identified with our Green Choice leaf are energy- and water-efficient, and judged by CR to have less overall impact on the environment.

The right features
The best dishwasher features for you will depend on your needs and preferences, but a few things are desirable for just about anyone. A stainless steel interior tub is preferable to plastic because it’s more durable and stain-resistant; it also helps dishes dry more effectively. And some level of adjustability in a dishwasher’s upper rack ensures that all your dishes will fit.

Along with testing dishwashers in our labs, we survey CR members about their appliances to find out how different brands perform over time. In our latest survey, we gathered responses from more than 66,000 members about more than 77,000 dishwashers across 27 brands, all purchased new between 2015 and 2025. 

From the responses, we identified performance problems and breakages in these dishwashers and used those findings to predict the likelihood that a dishwasher from a given brand will develop problems or break in its first five years of service.

The survey results show that no brand is free of problems—and it’s worth noting that a brand’s quality can vary over time with changes in design and production. But some of the brands that rose to the top for predicted reliability were Bosch, Miele, Thermador, Beko, and Midea. Just behind these in reliability scores were Maytag, Whirlpool, LG, and Hotpoint. The most common problems members had with dishwashers were machines that failed to clean, followed by those that failed to dry well or drain away water, and dish racks that broke or stopped working properly.

To read more about the results from our latest survey, see our guide to the most and least reliable dishwasher brands. And if your dishwasher has broken down or needs repairs, you can use our interactive tool to help you figure out whether it’s worth paying for repairs as opposed to replacing the machine altogether.

If you’re looking for top performance and a reasonable price along with reliability, consider CR’s list of the best dishwasher brands overall. This list identifies dishwasher brands that come out on top when we combine our reliability scores with our testing results and price data. Shopping from our best brands list enables you to make an informed purchase, even if we don’t test the specific dishwasher model you’re interested in.

CR’s Green Choice program identifies products we have judged to have a less negative impact on the environment than others in the same category. Dishwashers that earn a Green Choice designation (indicated by a green leaf icon in our ratings) stand out in terms of their design, resource use (including water and energy consumption), and performance in cleaning and drying dishes. 

Here are some specifics on each of these criteria:

Product Design
We examine the weight, dimensions, and materials used in manufacturing the product to assess the amount of resources utilized, and in some cases, the durability and recyclability of the product. 

Resource Usage
We measure how much water a dishwasher uses to assess resource (water) consumption as well as the energy needed to heat that water. (Energy required to heat water is one of the largest contributors to a dishwasher’s overall environmental footprint.)

Performance
A dishwasher that fails to clean dishes effectively can lead to the need for rewashing, resulting in increased water and energy consumption.

Reliability
A reliable dishwasher provides years of service and is less likely to end up in a landfill prematurely. We base our reliability scores on annual surveys of dishwasher owners.

You can view CR Green Choice dishwashers in our ratings and read about the most eco-friendly dishwashers in our tests.