I have owned this appliance for over a year. it is the best cleaning and quietest dishwasher I have ever used. So quiet in fact that the only way you know its running (average home noise) is by the red dot projected on the floor. There is no need to clean your dishes off before loading, however you must clean the filter more often if you dont. I find the controls cumbersome, for example if you dont start it right away it will lock in the current wash mode and you must fiddle with on/off, reset, on/off reset before you can change the program. Then it goes into a standby mode and wont start until you reset it again. Its very annoying and took my wife months to figure out. In some ways all the safety nannys take away from what could be the greatest experience you could have doing dishes.