Frigidaire Ultra Quiet II

by Sadie Mae Simms
(Arkansas, USA)

I bought this portable dishwasher 4 years ago from a family owned appliance store in a nearby town. There were no other local stores that offered a portable dishwasher (our house is extremely old and not set up for an in-cabinet model) unless it was specially ordered, so I paid the price (almost $400) and took it home.

I had never owned a dishwasher before and hated doing dishes, so I thought that this would be a wonderful kitchen addition. The price bothered me as I knew I could have had a traditional dishwasher for half the price, but I figured if I didn't have to do dishes by hand, it would be worth it.

I was right, but also wrong. I loved not having to do a sinkful of dishes every night, but this dishwasher does not clean as well as I expected, so I still have to hand wash some of the dishes that aren't clean enough. Particularly, the upper rack dishes (or, rather, glasses and cups) always seem to have food particles inside them.

Most of the time the dishes on the bottom rack get clean, but not always. Ketchup, for some reason, seems to get baked onto the plates if it's not rinsed off before being placed in the dishwasher. Rinsing dishes off before placing them in the dishwasher is redundant, in my opinion. I thought the whole purpose of getting a dishwasher was to wash dishes.

I have family and friends with regular (in cabinet) dishwashers and they don't seem to have the same problem as me. I don't know if I just got a dud, or if this is a portable dishwasher problem, but I would not buy this one again.

I plan on retiring this one and paying my children an allowance to hand wash the dishes from now on.