Product review (5 stars): Best dishwasher in this price range
Our last dishwasher purchase was an absolutely wonderful Kitchen Aid 9 years ago. I adored the machine and, when we sold the house, I fully planned on installing a Kitchen Aid in our new home. Well, the quality of dishwashers in the 1K range has really gone down the drain. I looked at many brands - Kitchen Aid, Bosch, Maytag, etc - and all of them seemed to have flimsy racks, unintuitive planning and oddly small tubs. To get anything decent you needed to add quite a bit to your budget.
Or so I thought! The Miele Futura Classic is Miele's entry level dishwasher designed to compete with other dishwashers in this price range. Miele is very strict about controlling the prices of their appliances and I was unable to find a cheaper (or more expensive) deal at any authorized dealer. They all had exactly the same price which certainly makes the bargain hunting process a lot shorter.

I bought the stainless steel with the cutlery drawer about 5 months ago and have never regretted it. This is a wonderfully designed workhorse that gets the dishes sparkling clean. If you use a powerball tab you don't even need to add the rinse aid to get excellent results. The cutlery drawer makes a huge difference in the amount of space you gain without a basket in the bottom rack. The next level up in the Futura series has a telescoping section built into the cutlery drawer that allows larger utensils to fit in but I put those on the upper drawer instead.

The upper drawer (for glasses and such) has different heights and two fold down racks to accommodate smaller cups. You can raise or lower the drawer to accommodate taller items in the lower tub or tall glasses. It did take a while for me to figure out how to get my glasses and mugs in because the tines do not fold down and the drawer is not designed for gargantuan mugs or extra wide drinking glasses. I would recommend taking a couple of your dishes and glasses to try this model out in the store to see how things fit before you take the plunge. You may decide that fold down tines may be worth the little bit more to move on to the next model.

The lower drawer takes a full 12 person set of plates bowl and a few pots and pans.

The Miele does not have a heated dry which means that your plastics can go in the top or bottom drawer. However, this also means that your plastics will come out wet and a bit spotty. If that bothers you, this is not the dishwasher for you.

Performance wise, I have used the light cycle, the turbo wash and the pots and pans cycle. They do take a long time averaging 2 hours but the dishes come out perfectly clean. The machine is quiet enough so that you can run it in the middle of a dinner party and no one is the wiser!