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Indesit IDF125K
by pebbles6
We are are a family of 4 and are all out at work so a dishwasher is an essential item for our household.
This dish washer has been efficent in its workings and is energy saving too. Used everyday and never a problem, quite quiet too when in operation. Have had to replace the front fascia as the handle is not too sturdy, however ... this was ordered direct from indesit parts department and only cost £13 with free postage. My other half fit the part in 10 minutes and no further problems to report, not exactly a fault with the design, possibly more to do with the heavy hands of my family! Full cycle takes about 90 minutes but I would advise waiting another 10 to 15 minutes before emptying as the plates, cups, etc are often still very hot - we tend to put the dishwasher on last thing at night as we go to bed and then they are all clean and cooled for the morning, the only problem then being who is going to empty it!
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Indesit IDL 530
by MagdaDH
I always feel that writing a review of a type of appliance that you have not much experience with (i.e. you used just one or two models ever) is a bit problematic. What if I consider something a major fault without realising that they are ALL like that, and my gripe should be with a type of a device rather than a particular model? ...
And it's thus with this caveat that I am going to review the dishwasher I have been using since we rented a fully furnished house we are staying in now.
It's an Indesit machine which supposedly makes it a budget brand, but I am a bit dubious about what it actually means. Sometimes ''budget'' means no-frills, and sometimes it means low built quality and low reliability.
I can't quite judge the reliability or built quality of this dishwasher as it comes with the house. It does have a crack on the top and a cracked corner of the door, so the plastic seems a bit flimsy, but I don't know what actually inflicted that damage - maybe it was dropped in transport or something?
To the functioning, though.
It has five wash cycles that are selected using a circular dial. There is also a wash progress indicator, a rest button and a on-off button. That is good. I like simple devices with even simpler interfaces, and by simple I don't mean streamlined beauty that keeps you guessing what's what, I mean clear functionality with obvious mappings of each control to a function. This dishwasher has that, although the cycle description on the door is a bit vague and I had to dig for a manual to know what ''time for you'' or ''eco'' means - and they meant different things to what I suspected.
This brings me to cycles, which this dishwasher has five of: intensive, the aforementioned time 4 you and eco, rapid 25' and soak. I used all of them and for my purposes the choice is between intensive, which uses a 40C pre-wash, 65C wash and 70C rinse (as well as two cold ones) and eco, which uses two cold pre-washes, 50C wash and a 65C rinse. The Time4You cycle is supposed to be the 'normal' cycle but frankly it washes only once at the same temperature as eco while rinsing at 70C, so from the point of view of energy use the eco cycle is much preferable as as it gives more washing and rinsing at lower temperatures. I can't see an advantage of using this, unless somebody wants the cycle completed quickly (but then they may as well hand-wash) as the Time4You takes less than 90 minutes and the eco cycle - almost two and half hours.
I tested all the cycles with my normal type of dishes - cooking pans, oven dishes, plates, bowls and tea and coffee cups and the results on the intensive and eco cycles were similar, while the Time4You was little poorer. Overall though, I am not that impressed with the washing results of this machine: unless I clean the filter roughly every two washes, and/or heavily rinse/scrape all the dishes, there is residue on the top-rack items.
The Rapid 25' cycle is utterly useless in normal life, though I can imagine using it for example after a party when you used a lot of glassware or cups but nothing is actually dirty.
My main gripe is that there is no way on any of the cycle to switch off the drying. The Rapid 25' has no drying, but as it's otherwise useless for washing normal dishes (ie not just cups and glasses and cleanish plates), it doesn't help. The only way to avoid the (completely unnecessary) expense of having your dishes bake after they get washed is to catch the machine after it pumped the water out, switch it off and open the door. I really wish there was a way to switch it off for every cycle - just like you can hold spin for any cycle in most washing machines.
The other think I would welcome is ability to adjust the temperature of the rinse, or have a cycle with cold rinses only. Maybe the harsh detergents use in dishwashers necessitate hot rinsing?
The manual had no indication of the water use for each cycle, our property has a private and unmetered supply - and we live in Scotland which certainly doesn't lack water - so water usage is of no concern, but I assume that Time4You cycle would be the best if you wanted to save water. I wish there was information on energy use as my musings above are just guesswork based on temperatures.
In all cases I always use two tablets of the Finish stuff for the main wash, as one doesn't seem enough at all. The drawer for pre-wash detergent is small and gets clogged up easily, so I just put an extra half tab in the body of the machine instead.
All in all, I think this dishwasher does what it says on the tin, but isn't particularly impressive: quite possibly in this case you get what you pay for.
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