Product review (1 stars): Great dishwasher - but horrible design
Two months ago, we bought a gleaming black Bosch dishwasher (Model SHE3AR56UC).

First, the good news -- it does a great job of cleaning dishes and glassware and it's incredibly quiet. Even when I put my ear directly on the front door while it's running, it's hard to hear it. And it's sleek and beautiful in our kitchen. The controls and indicator lights are easy to understand. And installation was a snap.

But...

The 2 baskets are the most frustratingly ridiculous designs imaginable. They don't hold much at all (far less than the 20-year old dishwasher this one replaced). They don't fit any of our dishes (and our dishes are pretty standard). The wire spikes are too many and too close together, wasting lots of space. You can fit basic flat plates and saucers okay in the bottom rack, but forget putting bowls or pots and pans or odd-shaped items there. The fold-down top for the utensil compartments was so much in the way that we simply removed it. Ditto for the fold-down plastic piece that's supposed to hold stemware in the top basket -- it wouldn't accommodate any of our dozens of different stemware designs (including basic white and red wine glasses).

The top basket performs only a wee bit better -- the bottom of that basket is a series of hills and valleys that are just awkward to use, and the divider spikes seem to always be in the way (only one row of them folds down out of the way). Although the unit is energy efficient in other ways, we wind up having to run the dishwasher 2 or 3 times as often simply because we can't fit enough dishes into it, and that can't be very efficient.

I was frankly stunned at how badly designed these baskets are, especially on a unit that is otherwise just about perfect. After 2 months of struggling with it, we've seriously considered demanding a refund, since the design is clearly not suitable for the purpose for which this unit is advertised and sold.

I contacted Bosch but their only suggestion was to swap out the baskets for some supposedly better baskets (at a cost of more than $200 additional dollars). But then I checked reviews of the model number that contains those other baskets and learned quickly that consumers had as many complaints about them.

Avoid this one. I wish we had.