My first thought when I saw the headline was "oh cool a start-up that disrupts dishwashing, I wonder what fancy overpowered tech they throw at the problem".
And then it turns out to be a Miele, one of the common go-to brands for household appliances in Germany.
Fun fact: Miele is actually one of the few companies that has technicians that carry a ton of spare parts in their vans, so when you got an issue you just call a number, get an appointment, and then somebody comes by your house and will probably get everything working again in an hour or two. They also carry custom made suitcases with build-in Thinkpads for diagnostics and a tiny desk for writing.
The repair comment is interesting. It seems in the US if you have a warranty claim for an appliance they contract with some generic repairman who has to order parts.
It may be worse that even (e.g. it has been for us). We have a Whirlpool/MayTag washer, and they pick who services it, and they chose for us a 1.8/5 star budget company that is completely awful and incapable of repairing things. But Whirlpool/MayTag refuses to do anything except keep sending them to us, and we have to schedule through them, which is also a huge nightmare. Do not recommend!
Ours is more like the upper-end of non-fancy (it's some Bosch, but not one of the higher-end ones, more mid-range) but damned if the shallow plastic-mesh tray it has at the top isn't something I can't live without now. So perfect for long utensils that're awkward to put anywhere else in the dishwasher (or risk becoming dislodged and blocking one of the spinning water thingies, if you put them elsewhere). It also just barely fits measuring cups, and it's easier to secure them in there than it is to put them on the main trays.
It's also one of the many, many nice things on kitchen appliances that could totally be standard on every model if the ones without were just like $10 more expensive, but there's not even an option like that—you have to go move up way more than that in price to find them. Market segmentation in kitchen appliances is such a pain. Like if you just want some of the QOL-improving (but cheap to add) things without bumping up into another whole price bracket for a bunch of shit (or, often, just also-cheap styling options that they're charging a huge premium for) you don't want—you're shit out of luck, no such option, there's no slightly-more-expensive-than-the-cheapest-but-also-pleasantly-equipped model.
We really don't have competition anymore. The auto industry is another example of of this. There are only a few players and they all kind of meetup like ok leather only costs us an extra $200 but we're going to put it as part of a package with a bunch of other shit no one cares about and sell it as a 6k add on.
Dishwashers are absolutely an appliance to splurge on.
The difference between bottom-tier, adequate-tier and high-end is basically a few hundred bucks.
Bottom-tier are loud, don't actually clean dishes well, are ugly, and fail early.
Top-tier are near-silent, clean dishes without a pre-rinse, have all sorts of intelligent drawers & racks to fit all your needs, and look great.
Some of them even have fancy features like popping the door open when done so the steam vents, etc.
Miele or Bosch seem to be the way to go, by far.
I am firmly a non-believer in luxury appliances and laugh at what people spend on fridges & ranges for vanity, but dishwashers are an absolute utilitarian efficient splurge.
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.
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
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.
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
Yes, I thought it was funny that the author wants to demonstrate their sophistication by telling their readers how it's pronounced properly, and gets it wrong, thus revealing themselves to be ignorant.
Spent the last year searching for a reasonable aged Bosch 300 series or above. Finally found a 3 year old Bosch 500 for less than $200. Good dishwashers are totally worth it, relatively easy to repair, quiet, efficient, and clean well. If I had my pick it would be a mid-high end Bosch, or a Miele.
I once saw a kitchen in Italy which had a cabinet right above the sink. You wouldn’t notice when it was closed, but if you opened it you’d see it didn’t have a flat bottom but dish racks.
So you’d wash your stuff, put them in the cabinet, and they’d dry in there with the excess water falling directly in the sink.
I haven’t used the system myself, but the people living in the house liked it.
Just remodeled my kitchen and I don't have space in my tiny place for a washer.
So, I went with Kingsfors shelves system (similar [0]) instead of cabinets and one of the inserts is this drying rack [1]. Ends up serving kind of as a storage system too.
Really happy with it. I don't understand why people build cabinets around their shelves... you have to open doors to get at things and memorize where everything is at, which is really not optimal.
One thing to note about Miele's (but not unique about them): It's not trivial to repair them yourself. You need a specialized inductive cable to read error codes and if you don't want to lose warranty, only a certified repair technician is allowed to fix it.
Also, the brand itself is getting more 'blurry'. Miele refrigerators are actually made by Liebherr.
I think it depends on the failure. I’ve repaired a Miele washing machine recently, and found the insides of it wonderfully overbuilt and modular, with every bit of metal bent over to remove sharp corners.
It was a real pleasure to work inside of. Far better than the AEG I repaired just before, that was all tightly integrated parts, and sharp edges just waiting to slice you up.
In the US, the Magnuson-Moss Act provides significantly more consumer protection than most people think. If you work on a warrantied item and break it, the warranty doesn’t protect you from your own breakage. If you service an item and it has a defect unrelated to your service, the warranty still applies.
Unlike cost saving/outsourcing combinations like Renault cars or Grundig TVs being made in Turkey. Or other PR releases mentioning keywords like "synergy" (say Microchip/Atmel comes to mind).
Well I don't know about Liebherr excavators and such machinery. But Liebherr refrigerators and freezers are amongst the best there are.
Readit News
My first thought when I saw the headline was "oh cool a start-up that disrupts dishwashing, I wonder what fancy overpowered tech they throw at the problem".
And then it turns out to be a Miele, one of the common go-to brands for household appliances in Germany.
Fun fact: Miele is actually one of the few companies that has technicians that carry a ton of spare parts in their vans, so when you got an issue you just call a number, get an appointment, and then somebody comes by your house and will probably get everything working again in an hour or two. They also carry custom made suitcases with build-in Thinkpads for diagnostics and a tiny desk for writing.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/dishcraft-robotics-takes-over-dish...
[0]: https://www.sysgo.com/press-releases/miele-relies-on-elinos-...
It's also one of the many, many nice things on kitchen appliances that could totally be standard on every model if the ones without were just like $10 more expensive, but there's not even an option like that—you have to go move up way more than that in price to find them. Market segmentation in kitchen appliances is such a pain. Like if you just want some of the QOL-improving (but cheap to add) things without bumping up into another whole price bracket for a bunch of shit (or, often, just also-cheap styling options that they're charging a huge premium for) you don't want—you're shit out of luck, no such option, there's no slightly-more-expensive-than-the-cheapest-but-also-pleasantly-equipped model.
Bottom-tier are loud, don't actually clean dishes well, are ugly, and fail early. Top-tier are near-silent, clean dishes without a pre-rinse, have all sorts of intelligent drawers & racks to fit all your needs, and look great.
Some of them even have fancy features like popping the door open when done so the steam vents, etc.
Miele or Bosch seem to be the way to go, by far.
I am firmly a non-believer in luxury appliances and laugh at what people spend on fridges & ranges for vanity, but dishwashers are an absolute utilitarian efficient splurge.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
You don't take your appliances with you when you move?
> 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...
Not quite...closer to Mee-le. There is no prominent A at the end. Never heard anyone German pronounce it that way. See also Miele Germany youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGTCxBwHHMI
So you’d wash your stuff, put them in the cabinet, and they’d dry in there with the excess water falling directly in the sink.
I haven’t used the system myself, but the people living in the house liked it.
So, I went with Kingsfors shelves system (similar [0]) instead of cabinets and one of the inserts is this drying rack [1]. Ends up serving kind of as a storage system too.
Really happy with it. I don't understand why people build cabinets around their shelves... you have to open doors to get at things and memorize where everything is at, which is really not optimal.
[0] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/kungsfors-wall-grid-with-storag...
[1] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/kungsfors-dish-drainer-40371225...
Also, the brand itself is getting more 'blurry'. Miele refrigerators are actually made by Liebherr.
It was a real pleasure to work inside of. Far better than the AEG I repaired just before, that was all tightly integrated parts, and sharp edges just waiting to slice you up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson–Moss_Warranty_Act
Well I don't know about Liebherr excavators and such machinery. But Liebherr refrigerators and freezers are amongst the best there are.