We bought this machine after deciding that the equivalent Miele was too expensive. What a mistake! The machine we received was noisy, with lots of banging heard from the machine during use. Water intake also seemed excessively noisy. Drying performance was also very poor, certainly nowhere near as good as machines I have had before. The baskets were so wet at the end of the programme it's impossible to remove items without them getting wet. So...it got sent back, and we ordered the Miele after all. The Miele had the same 44db rating, but is definately quieter all round. The same A rating for drying, but no soaking wet baskets. I suppose you get what you pay for. Maybe the one we got was just a bad example, but from Bosch we expected better.