Mini (portable) dishwashers - any experience with them? Are they worth it?

In My Humble Opinion
1

The rental house I moved into was built decades ago & has no dishwasher. I’m contemplating one of those little portable dishwashers, the kind that hook up to your faucet and wash a few plates and a few cups at a time. It would be enough to keep shit from stacking up; it’s just me. But days when I get home from work late, standing in front of the sink ain’t happenin’ and I’d love a little robot to handle this task.

Has anyone used one of these doohickies before? Do they absolutely suck? I have no illusions that dishes would need to be soaked before loading, but would glasses and forks come out clean?

Any comparison to how much hot water they use vs. hand washing?

2

I had a very excellent portable dishwasher years ago.

3

Are you talking about a countertop model or a floor model that rolls up to the sink?

We had the latter for the past 7 years or so and it gave up the ghost about 3 weeks ago. Like you, we needed it when we moved into a rental that had no dishwasher. We found it used on Craigslist. The dishwasher worked great. It was a Maytag and the same size as a regular built-in one. It had a butcher-block top which gave us a few extra square feet of counter space which was handy. The machine worked great, no different than any other dishwasher. Everything came out clean, even pots and pans. We rinsed our plates before putting them in and maybe gave extra dirty stuff like lasagna pans a once-over with a brush to knock the big stuff off before putting them in, but that was it.The only downside was the faucet was occupied by the dishwasher hookup during the ~2 hours it took to run a cycle. We tried to plan ahead and fill the Brita pitcher and the tea kettle before hooking up the dishwasher so we wouldn’t have to unhook it mid-cycle if we wanted water. Even so sometimes we did, which wasn’t a big deal.

I immediately ordered another similar dishwasher from Lowe’s. It hasn’t arrived at the store yet, and hand washing everything has been a pain – even with the “freedom” quarantine has brought. Coming home after an exhausting day at work and then to cook dinner and handwash all the dishes?? Fuck that. We considered a countertop model, but with 4 people in the house we knew we would benefit from a full-sized machine.

This is the one I ordered:

I see it’s actually on sale at HD for $2 less than what I paid Lowe’s for it.

4

I did not have one, but a friend had a counter top one about 10 years ago. She said the dang thing was more work than washing her dishes would have been. That was 10 years ago, they probably have improved over the years.

I have known several folks who have the floor models, and for the most part, they liked them.

I will tell you that I have personally had a counter top clothes washing machine and it rocked for small loads. I had to take my sheets to the laundromat, but I could wash the rest of my stuff at home, then line dry it. It would have sucked if I was trying to wash clothes for more than one person or needed clean towels every day.

5

About 30 years ago I lived in a house with no dishwasher, and we bought a full-size standalone washer (the kind that you wheel over to the sink and hook up to the faucet). It was great, and worked just as well as a regular dishwasher.

6

Had small and full size portables on wheels over the years. They worked well enough, but it was a pain to move them around and having to connect/disconnect to use them. A friend had a minimal countertop unit that worked ok, but seemed to be no saving in time or effort over hand washing. It’s not the same as some higher end countertop dishwashers I’ve seen for sale, those are a smaller regular dishwasher like the built in or drawer units. I assume they can even have a fixed water supply and drain connection instead of running hoses from the sink.

7

I’ll add to the group that has full size roll up to the sink type. Yes, they work very well. My one complaint with the one I’ve got now is that the fitting that goes on the faucet kind of sucks as an aerator. The water just glugs out of it, so I have to switch back to a regular aerator every time.

8

I have had two of the mini countertop kind – my kitchen’s too small for a full sized one.

The first one was a Danby. It worked ok at first, but proved to be poorly built only lasted around two years. First the plastic around the door cracked, causing the rinse aid to leak out onto the counter. Then it started stopping after the first part of the cycle and flashed an error code. Of course it was just barely out of warranty by then, and getting it fixed would have been more expensive than replacing it. So I replaced it.

Its replacement was an Edgestar, which has been much better than the first one, and I still have it. It works just as well as a regular dishwasher. As a single person, I fill it up every two or three days.

My one complaint is that some of my bigger dishes don’t fit in it, so I still have to hand wash those when I use them.

9

I have a mini dishwasher in my apartment. It’s just two of us, and using a regular-sized dishwasher meant that we had to wait days for it to fill up. With the mini, we run it every day, usually after dinner, and it washes everything the same as a full-sized one. I love it.

10

I have had experience with the countertop, and the roller kind.

The floortop, I guess, that was a little smaller than a built-in, but could still handle a day’s worth or dishes for two people, and rolled up to the sink, was every bit as good as a built-in. We bought it at Goodwill for $18, and it was a superb bargain. It lasted 4 years, and might have lasted longer, but we could afford to install a built-in at that point, and did, because the saved space helped a lot. It did not have its own water heater, but it did handle the water from the hot tap without it damaging the lines, or anything, and since we did not have a child at the time, and also had a small apartment “hook-up-to-sink” clothes wahers, and a small vent-inside dryer (which took twice as long to dry anything, but them’s the trade-offs), we had the water heater turned up pretty high. We were in a rented house,a nd had our own water heater.

It did need to have the filters rinsed out between washes, but that took about 90 seconds. And as long as we did that, we didn’t have to “pre-wash” the dishes, just remove tablespoon-sized chunks of food.

My countertop model sucked. It barely removed food at all. It didn’t heat the water, and it didn’t dry. Eventually, I just soaped up the dishes, stuck them in the countertop to let it rinse, then opened it up to let them air dry. So basically, it didn’t sterilize, like most dishwashers. It only cost $60, but it was a total waste of money.

It’s possible that poor water pressure in the aparrtment where I had the countertop was responsible for the problems with the machine, but I doubt it. It was a mid-range model in regard to pricing.

If people here say they had a good experience with a countertop, please say what range of price you paid. When we looked, the best countertops were as expensive as the floor models, and the only advantages was the compact size. No countertop I saw dried, and even most of the cheap floor models did.

11

The Edgestar one I have was around $300-something, about 10 years ago, and it still works great after 10 years.

The Danby one that broke after two years was cheaper, more like $200. That was why I bought it, it was the cheapest one of its type I could find. I didn’t make that mistake the second time around.

The two above are pretty much just smaller versions of regular dishwashers, and do everything the big ones do. I have seen super cheap countertop “dishwashers” that don’t appear to do much more than spray some warm, soapy water on the dishes. I’m assuming your $60 one was one of those.

12

I had one in the late 80s when dishwashers homer dishwashers didn’t really clean dishes off without rinsing them off and by them, you might as well just finished it …mine had a sealing problem so it overran a lot and the hook up to the sink was cheap so when it broke we didn’t get another one …

13

I had an Equator brand countertop model in the 90s. It was fine, but certainly not amazing. I hate hand washing dishes, so it was worth it for me. At the time I was living alone in a tiny apartment, and it was a nice quality of life boost. In similar circumstance, I’d buy one again.

If I recall, dishes didn’t need crazy soaking, but needed a rinse to get off big chunks and little pieces. More rinsing than a quality modern dishwasher, but none of this stuff where the only way to get out clean dishes was to put in clean dishes. The biggest drawback was that it took a long time to run. Most of that time was spent boosting the hot water temperature from tap-hot to whatever temperature it wanted. It rarely leaked (keep the door seal clean).