We're getting the KUDE50FVSS because of the built in food grinder. They are being delivered on Mon so I cannot comment on actually experience - but I sure hope they can do the job.

Before my remodel, I had a Kenmore dishwasher which lasted about 8 years and was still working well. I really liked it, but it was black and I changed all appliances to SS. I bought a KA dishwasher, and now call it my sanitizer. It does not clean dishes!!! It leaves dishes with a food stain on them and sometimes I find that the soap left as a big chunk. I think maybe that came from their being a bit of water in the soap container when I poured the detergent in. I just think this and some of the newer dw's are made to be so energy efficient that they are not powerful. Not even powerful enough to break a chunk of soap apart.
After all the frustrations of the remodel...
and there were many, including issues with the plumber who left a big piece of insulation off when he installed the dw. Then when I had him return to add the insulation, he wanted to know if it was quiet, I am guessing this experienced plumber was planning to leave it off. He then cut it in parts while I was online, printing out the "how to install the insulation" The big sheet of insulation to help with noise, was supposed to be folded on the sides, not cut! I briefly thought about returning the dw, but decided to deal with it. I mean, at least it wasn't leaking! And I would have wanted to find and pay another plumber,etc...
Basically, I have been told that I should not rinse my dishes before putting them in, so the soap will have something to grab onto. Now, how does that make sense if the soap is supposed to grab onto the dirty stuff, wouldn't the dirtiest dishes get the cleanest?
Anyway, I don't like to not rinse, so I practically put them in clean. Secondly, I was told to run the water at the sink to be sure it is really hot, prior to starting the dw. Third, I have to say that I used to run my Kenmore on the short cycle and now use the normal cycle. And my old dw took much less time than this one to work.
I have heard many love their Miele. I have also heard others say that they have been told the same thing about their dw...must put the dishes in unrinsed.
Not sure of my model #, but it does not have any kind of trap that needs emptied. I could look up the number if you need it. I bought mine in July 09. It is quiet.

I have a Kitchen Aid dishwasher. I'm not going to be as helpful, as I don't know the model numbers, but I'll happily tell you my experiences, which are positive.

This is our second KA, our first was in our old home, and I loved it. That one was a middle of the line version, it was great. Our current KA is the lowest of the line version. We were actually going to get the top of the line version, but our appliance guy said the differences between the three were minute and, in reality, more for show. The quality of cleaning was just as good with all three. We went with the cheapest one and, aside from not having the wine glass rack, I'm just as pleased. Our trap does not need to be emptied.

I never rinse my dishes, I'm personally glad of this no rinsing trend because I always felt that if I was rinsing, you might as well wash them and skip the DW altogether. Sometimes there is extra detergent, but I find this is after I put too much in and it never has an effect on the cleanliness of the dishes for me. It's quiet, the cycle does take awhile to finish, but I'm never in a rush to put away dishes, so that doesn't bother me!

Good luck!

I also have a KA DW, not one of the models you're considering, but my experience falls b/w fleur222's & autumngal's.

KUDS03STSS, bought in 2008.

First, it only cleans the dishes well if it's on "Heavy Duty" wash...forget any lighter cycles...you get dirty dishes. Unfortunately, some silverware still comes out dirty in most loads...and we soak silverware ahead of time (it's worse if we don't soak).

As to soap, the only time we are left w/a chunk of soap is when a tall dish blocks the door from opening completely.

We also run the kitchen faucet to get hot water...but we did that w/our old Maytag (that was great, btw!) as well. Whether you have to do that is dependent on two things...whether your DW has a water heater in it and how long it takes hot hot water to make it through the pipes to the DW. KA DWs do not have hot water heaters and, in our case, it takes approx 2 minutes for hot hot water to reach the DW (it takes 3 - 5 minutes in the upstairs showers!!!).

It takes a couple of hours to run (Heavy Duty cycle + Sanitize).

As to rinsing vs not, it's not a DW issue, it's the detergents/soaps. The enzyme-based detergents/soaps need food to activate them. So, if there's little food, there's nothing to activate the enzymes and the detergent/soap doesn't clean well.

Would I buy a KA again, no.

IMO, food grinding is what disposals are for. A grinder in a dishwasher is just one more thing to break. And do you really think you will put a half-finished plate of spaghetti in the lower half of your dishwasher, and watch it ooze down onto the door while you finish loading, because "the grinder will take care of it"? And if the answer to that is no, then you are better off just doing a light rinse into your disposal.

We have one of the high-end KA dishwashers, but no grinder. Perfectly happy with it - it is quiet and we find that even on the short cycle, the dishes get clean.

I've got the same model as buehl: KUDS03STSS, but I've had very positive experiences with it. I always rinse my dishes (not clean, but just so all the large chunks are off). We run ours once per day, usually on normal cycle. and this definitely gets our dishes very clean. Our hot water comes pretty instantly to the faucets, though. I use Cascade All-in-1.

fleur222, if you could find out the model number, that'd be great.

seems that KUDS models have mixed experiences, one positive experience with a KUDE model, and mixed experiences on KitchenAids where model numbers are unknown. Are there any unhappy KUDE owners?

This is making me kind of nervous. The d/w before our Kenmore was an ancient KitchenAid that worked very well. When it finally croaked, we followed Consumer Reports and bought the top-rated Kenmore Elite, which often left dishes unclean. I absolutely dread the thought of plunking down a lot of money on another unsatisfactory d/w!

(BTW, before I forget, you can find your model number inside the dishwasher. On mine, it's on the left, on the frame just inside the opening)

I have the KUDS40FVSS and have the same experience as those above (having to rinse the dishes). Once you do, they come out pretty clean, with the exception of anything "baked on".

As an experiment, last night I put messy spaghetti dishes in and ran it on "heavy duty" and "hi-temp". Came out perfectly clean. I'll definitely do more experimenting this week with different cycles and not rinsing.

On the plus side, I'm happy with the layout of the racks and there's lots of room. And it's pretty quiet. A couple more negatives, though:

--having to use Jet-Dry ALL the time. The compartment was empty once and boy those glasses were spotty.

--this one's a puzzler, can't figure out why...I have some nice non-stick frying pans and the dishwasher has destroyed the outside finish (inside is fine). Granted they don't say "dishwasher-safe", but they were fine in the old dishwasher. Also my rice cooker insert and lid (fine in dishwasher for 20 years)...now they're discolored. Anyone else have that happen?

I wouldn't buy it again, but will definitely experiment with running the hot water, using different cycles, using different detergent, etc.

Mine is model number #KUDS40CVSSO. I have to say that I probably did the least investigating on dishwashers of all my appliances. I purchased my other appliances from a local, family owned store, but the dishwasher from Sears.
Just to reiterate, my dissatisfaction comes from the fact that my old one was some midpriced Sears brand that worked like a gem. I rinsed the dishes and they ALWAYS came out clean when I ran the short cycle. I used Cascade powder and still do. I use the detergent in both the closed and open containers. The old dw finished fairly quickly. I also liked how it loaded.
I could deal with longer cycles, using Jet-dry, changing detergent (haven't tried that), but dirty dishes upon removing them after rinsing,and an hour of the washing???? Makes me crazy!

I have the KA KUDS30IVSS and have written an extensive review on it (not sure if it's still around with all the dropped pages though). We love it and it performs extremely well.

However, I can update my review by saying that I recently tried a different gel DW detergent than I usually use, and the performance of the DW dropped noticeably! I've been using Cascade gel, but a couple of months ago picked up one of those 'green' DW gel detergents and started using it.

TERRIBLE performance - this stuff can barely clean dishes and requires me to pre-wash, just like the old days with my lousy Kenmore/GE 1989 DW! I'm switching back to the Cascade as soon as this stuff is finished. Note that I did get good performance from it on a really dirty/greasy load one time though, when I used the 'High-Temp Scrub" option. I found this interesting because our hot water heater is already set at 140-degrees, so the 'green' stuff seems to need that extra boost from the water-heating option on the KA.

So that may be the key for some of you, to check not only the detergent but see if the extra hi-temp boost helps. Using Cascade gel, I got much better everyday results on Regular Cycle, and only rarely used the 'Pro-Scrub' option.

Sorry, almost forget - Bosch does indeed supply some of the Kenmore DWs. LG and Whirlpool are also suppliers. There's a website that lets you enter the serial # of a Kenmore appliance and tells you who actually mfg'ed it for Sears.

Anyone own a higher end KA dishwasher? I'm going with KUED60 or KUDE70. Does the fact that its higher end improve performance or just give more bells & whistles?

Just more bells and whistles, performance is not going to be noticeably different.

Fleur, I read about a month ago in the KitchenAid Converstions forum that filling both containers might be too much detergent. I stopped filling the open one and it does come out cleaner now.

My KitchenAid Dishwasher KUDE70 is so quite and gets the dishes very clean.

I may try not using so much soap. And who knows, maybe having some food for the soap to mix with might help too. I just kind of resigned myself to living with a "sanitizer"
I have been thinking about the hot water aspect of it too. Our hot water is on a high temperature, but in our home, it is not consistent. Our home is older and the system is not so efficient. Maybe as someone else mentioned, some dishwashers heat the water and others do not. I didn't know to look into that before I purchased.
With a newer home or an efficient water-heating system, maybe any dishwasher will work well.
Best of luck with your new one, colickyboy! Hey, cute user name. I could have used that one in reference to my oldest. He is all grown up now! Less dishes to wash, but sure do miss him!

My home is old too.

Does it matter if dishwashers heat the water? I've yet to hear from an unsatisfied KUDE owner, which I presume does not heat the water. Guess I'm leaning towards the KUDE. I must admit I'm a bit surprised that the food grinder isn't making the KUDS a better cleaner in real-world usage.

BTW, jcom51 - thanks for the info on Kenmore/Bosch. I was shocked when I saw that the Bosch interior was exactly like the Kenmore ...thought I was seeing things! Nice to have confirmation that I wasn't looney! (at least this time...haha)

I was out shopping for dishwashers at Sears on Friday, and I thought Kenmore Elite, Kitchenaid and Bosch were all made by the same company. I could be confused - I looked at a lot of dishwashers that night - but the pictures on the web site look a lot alike (it would be easier to tell if the photo wasn't so small on the kitchenaid site. The Sears site allowed you to zoom in, but the kitchenaid site didn't - at least on my browser).

On the bright side, even if that's true, it doesn't mean your old dishwasher was necessarily from the same company. Sears changes manufacturers of Kenmore appliances from time to time. (Right now, their Kenmore Elite washers and dryers are made by LG).

I'm pretty sure that my KitchenAid is made by Whirlpool. Make that 99%. I think I saw Whirlpool on the box. Also, last week I called KitchenAid for a replacement of one of the small retainer parts in the bottom rack and the part they sent was Whirlpool. BTW, they sent it quickly and no charge.

After much research last year I purchased a Kitchaid from AJMadison, the online appliance store (and no I do not work or represent them in any way). It is model KUDT03STSS and I love it. It has so much versatility to the loading process - tines up here or down in another spot, upper drawer moves up and down and so on. I love that it has an upper utensil drawer (over the glasses) so that you don't always have to have a big utensil holder take up space in the regular part of the dishwasher. I rarely prerinse and 99% of the time I use the light cycle without the automatic drying and it works just great. I do make sure that the hot water runs to the sink before I turn it on as they suggest. They are also great for servicing. I did call them about a week after it was installed because I thought it was leaking. They were there within two days but it turned out the water I was seeing was from the dishwasher I replaced. Again, I would highly recommend it.

Mine is running right now so can't find model number - bought it in 2007 and I think it's a mid-top KA. I don't really like it - the soap clumps and the dishes don't get clean. I'm pretty sure there's not a food grinder in it, so it's not that one. I like how it looks, it loads fine, etc., but it just doesn't seem to work very well. I think I'd get a miehle next time.