Customer Reviews

Danby DDW497W 23" Countertop Dishwasher - White

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Living in a small apartment in NYC this product is a godsend. However, we wish Danby's design department think things through.
This is our third generation of Danby dishwashers. The first one had problems with the window leaking after a year, and the soap dispenser and door broke.
The second generation Danby improved the soap dispenser problem and created a well for the soap to be placed in, plus, the spray arm was built beefier and worked nicely. But the rack was a disaster. Less material made in the rack produced too many wide spaces for small things to fall through. This dishwasher was sensitive to the amount of soap you used and tend to foam up quite often. This window did eventually come out on us as well and we glued it back in and all was fine until the timer went and our dishwasher was prone to flood from the feed water not stopping.
Alas it was time for the third generation.
1. The delivery was flawless, the packaging perfect.
2. The spray arm is terrific.
3. The rack, still much to be desired. I think Danby should go back to the old one, customers will approve of this one. (We kept the rack from the first one)
4. The mechanical timer has been replaced with an electronic one which is great except the programs are many, P1,P2,P3,P4,P5. Which is complicated enough but the dishwasher does not let us know how much time we have left, what the cycles mean, go to your manual folks and make a copy, take a magnet and viola! With all the digital wonders out there another read out would be nice because the length of time on the programs has been extended and we find ourselves waiting for that final beep. The most annoying thing about this is the space of time between the final wash cycle and the when the water drains out of the basin. This is a concern for us as we like to open the door to air-dry the dishes and shut off the power.
What we like is that the dishes do come out nice and clean.
And on a small note this dishwasher is not the silent type, yet nothing we can't handle.
Danby, this is great product for people with limited space and small sinks, and busy lives.

After my wife and I separated, I moved into a small apartment which did not have a built-in dishwasher. It was fun washing dishes by hand for a few weeks. Being the ultimate procrastinator, that quality time in the kitchen after every meal became a chore real fast.
I did my research, and despite mixed reviews I decided to order the Danby counter-top model dishwasher. It was light, for me anyway, and it fit my counter perfectly. All the components were accounted for and installation was quick and painless.
The first loads were done on the P1 setting, but I have since set it down to the P2 setting. I like that the controls return me to the P2 setting when I power it up. If you have to open it during a cycle, say to put in the detergent you forgot (cut me some slack, I'm a man), the water stays inside.
I don't rinse my dishes off beforehand, but I don't stick chicken skeletons in there either. Just use some common sense. The stainless steel particulate trap does a great job of catching the wayward corn kernel and similar sized food items. Pop it out and rinse it every-once-in-awhile; It's not rocket science.
It has been running, at least twice a week, perfectly now for over four months. Anything small enough to fall through the basket can be arranged to stay put. A cookie sheet, aluminum pizza pan and a large stock pot are the only dishes I own that are too big. I can deal with it, I just don't make pizza, cookies and huge batches of chili anymore. Just kidding.
I am very happy with my purchase. No Joke.

I acquired my Danby dishwasher about a month ago as a replacement for my previous portable dishwasher, an Equator 20" PLS602 model. While I am quite happy with my new machine, there are many things about the old one which I miss. This review will be a compare and contrast of the two models.

My old Equator was a 20 inch cube (20x20x20) which, though still small, provided enough space to put in large plates and frying pans. The interior of the Danby is just as wide and just as deep as the Equator, but it is at least 2 inches SHORTER than the Equator and I now find myself cramming in dishes which used to fit just fine and having to wash many of my frying pans in the sink (which, er, starts to defeat the purpose...).

The Danby has a stainless steel interior. This is a major bonus! My Equator had a plastic interior and though it held out for more than five years of regular use, eventually some of the plastic parts began to crack. I do not see this happening with the Danby.

The Equator has a plastic dial on the front which allows you to set the cycle and to view how far along the cleaning process the machine has gotten at any given moment. The Danby allows you to choose from five different cycles, but it's digital display does not tell you where in any given cycle it is (wash? Rinse? Etc.) Also, the very longest wash cycle on the Equator was approximately 45 minutes; the standard wash cycle on the Danby is nearly 2 hours! It should not take two hours to clean 4 plates, 4 cups, and 4 settings of silverware.

The Danny has a viewing window -- this is kind of fun. The Equator did not.

The silverware caddy in the Danby is much too small, and I have taken the one from my Equator and am using it in the Danby instead. Also, the interior rack of the Danby has such large gaps between its rungs that sometimes items actually fall through. This never happened with my Equator.

The Equator hooked up directly to a hot water source (in my case, from my outlet port on my hot water heater) and its exhaust tube had to be clamped onto a sink in order to drain properly. The Danby does not work this way: it's intake and outflow tubes connect directly to the hot water tap of your faucet through a snap-attachment. Mine did not come without the universal steel nipple attachment for the kitchen faucet, but this was only a minor inconvenience to acquire at the hardware store.

I acquired the Danby used. Perhaps this explains its final quirk: at the end of its last rinse cycle on any of its five cycles, it does not drain. In order to make a drain I must turn the machine off, turn it back on again, and tell it to begin a new cycle. This will make the machine conduct a preparatory drain of the interior, and all I need do then is make sure it does not actually begin a new cycle. Easy enough, I suppose, but this is one more complication my Equator did not have.

And so I must give the Danby only 4 of 5 potential stars. My biggest complaints are the small interior compared to my last model, and the incredibly long wash times. But it does get dishes clean, yes, that it does. If you are willing to wait long enough, and if you are willing to wash the big things by hand, the Danby will take care of the rest.

Oh, and it is noisy. No debate on that. I could never sleep in a room where this thing was going.

REVIEW UPDATE, 2/22/12:

I still have and use my Danby for almost all of my dishwashing needs, but some additional updates are in order. First, about a month ago I discovered that the viewing window, which is made of acrylic, had started detaching from the door. The window consists of two panels, an interior panel and an exterior one. In order to re-seal the dishwasher, I had to disassemble the door panel, figure out why it was leaking, drill holes through the PVC exterior, and re-mount the acrylic interior window with stainless steel nuts and bolts (one in each corner). This took me four or five hours, and a trip to the hardware store to get the screws. I said before that the viewing window was kind of neat-- apparently it also makes the dishwasher vulnerable to leaks that, while not impossible to fix, are no walk in the park.

Second, about a week ago I thought the machine had broken since it wouldn't drain properly. My repeated attempts to restart a new wash cycle only led to an "E2" error blinking on the display panel. After much futzing around I discovered that the exhaust hose, made of vinyl, had become kinked in the back. I used a steel pin, electrical tape, and a hose clamp to force it to un-kink, and it now appears to drain correctly. Would have been nice if the exhaust hose had been rather more unkinkable.

This machine is amazing. My husband and I have the slightly older model, with a dial instead of buttons-- but everything else is exactly the same. Bought it for $300+ (Canadian) and we tell people all the time, it was the best $300 we ever spent, totally worth it, and it saved our marriage. We both HATE doing dishes by hand & we don't have room for a larger portable dishwasher in our small Vancouver apartment.

We've had this "Lil' Danby Countertop Dishwasher That Could" since 2006, and we run *at least* 1 load of dishes EVERY DAY-- often we run up to 3 loads per day. It still works just as great at the day we bought it.

We love this machine and would immediately and happily buy another one in a heartbeat if ours was to die a sudden death. It has worked hard for us on a daily basis for 5 years and we're very grateful.

The outer plastic casing has developed a crack in it, but this does not affect the performance of the machine. The most fragile part to be careful of is the faucet hookup mechanism. Be gentle when unhooking the hose from the tap. On our model the spring popped out, and we had to re-order this replacement part (it was a loooong week while waiting for the replacement piece!) but it was an easy $30 fix, and worth every cent. That was 3 years ago.

No problems have occurred since we learned how to treat our Danby's faucet attachment piece with tender loving care. It washes our dishes daily & gives us more time to cuddle up and watch TV, which is much more fun than getting prune hands. We love our Danby!

I have the previous version of Danby dishwasher, 496, but I want to comment on how great a machine it has been for me. I bought the DDW496W almost 4 years ago, while living in small apartment, expecting my 4th child. I knew I would never be able to keep up with the hand-washing any more. I have never regretted the decision. After getting used to the size of the machine and getting into the groove of what I could fit into it, I was very satisfied.

The only trouble I have ever had with the machine is that the hoses have loosened a bit over time, and water has leaked under the machine. Once I realized the problem, and tightened the hoses back up, the leaking stopped. There was also a time when I noticed a black scum building up around the heating element, but it turned out to be a by-product of my natural dishwasher detergent and had nothing to do with the machine itself. Another time, the machine sudsed all over the place, but that was because I had tried out a new detergent and added rinse guard all at once. Too much detergent. Now I use the basic store brand gels, about 1T per load, and never have any trouble with over-sudsing.

We have a lot of dirty dishes, and I run my machine at least 3 times a day. When a load is done, I either leave it in the Danby with the door all the way open to air dry, or unload it into a dish-drying rack and put in the next load (depending on how quickly I need to wash the next dishes). It's worth it to me to run it 3 times a day, and only wash pots, pans, and other big items at the end of the day ... as opposed to washing every thing by hand every day.

I also love the water-heating element. It gets the water super-hot and cleans/sanitizes my dishes very well.

With very little TLC, and running the machine so often, I am surprised at long it has lasted. I still use it every day, now with six kids in a 3-bedroom apartment.

I love this machine and I recommend it to anyone who is looking for an alternative to hand-washing all those dishes.

We had a Danby portable (rolling) dishwasher for 5 years. We liked the job it did, but it was a pain to roll around the kitchen, and when it needed repair after 5 years, we couldn't find anyone in the area who serviced Danby products. After 2 years of hand washing, we recently bought a used Danby countertop dishwasher - which was a life saver until it died two weeks later. So when we finally decided to buy a new Danby countertop model, we went in knowing that 1) these things don't last forever and 2) there is no one in our area who will service them when they fail. We purchased a 4-year service warranty (through a third party) so that when it does fail, there will be some support.

All that said, we have so far been happy with this new one. The wash cycles are long, but we have been using the rapid cycle (70 minutes) for everything, and the dishes have come out clean.

The manual gives a hilariously long list of things that you can supposedly fit in the dishwasher in a single load. Realistically, for my family of 3, we can fit one meal's worth of dishes plus a few extras in each load (excluding pans, which we hand wash separately). You will need to measure your space before buying, but for us, it takes up about the same amount of counter space as the dish rack, which we now put on top of the dishwasher, so we don't really have any less counter space than we had before.

With all of the Danby dishwasher models we have now been through, rinse aid is essential. With traditional set-in dishwashers, rinse aid may be optional, but with the portable ones, the dishes just don't come out clean without plenty of rise aid. It's not that expensive, and if you forget to fill up the pan, you'll see right away that it's not cleaning as well.

Finally, the dishwasher is packaged by Danby in a way that I'm sure is fine for sitting on the shelf of a store - but then I don't know of any stores that sell these off the shelf. The packaging is really not padded enough for this kind of retail shipping. The first one shipped was badly dented, and the replacement was also (less severely) dented. We kept the second one with a price adjustment from the seller, and it's not so bad. I hope that the packaging folks at Danby will consider this; otherwise, the vendors could add some extra padding and save themselves some damage returns.

All in all, we are happy with our purchase, and would recommend it - especially with the assurance of the extended warranty. Check to see if there is anyone who will service Danby products in your area before you buy.

I find most non-paid reviews either come from those who, for their own reasons, choose to identify themselves as reviewers and, as such review many products - or the frustrated populace who feels screwed by the vendor/product that is in their crosshairs. On occasion, maybe you'll get somebody like me...I don't generally review because most purchased items fall within a median of the superb thing the manufacturer and PR agency says they are, and the devil's joke the poor souls who feel gypped and powerless believe them to be.

I'm only inclined to review this because it fell entirely out of that median. I have abodes on both the east and west coasts. West is my house, new built-in dishwasher always ready to perform. East is a loft in Brooklyn that I've had to furnish on the fly. It came with stove/oven, fridge, sink, counters, cabinets and that's about it. In time an automatic dishwasher seemed like a good idea...nothing permanent, nothing built in. Years ago I bought a vintage hose-to-sink dishwasher from the 1950s at a yard sale. It had a great look but it was worthless in terms of utility.

It was with this in mind when I began to seek out a new hose-to-sink dishwasher for the loft. All the PR trumpeting technological advances in these units got me even more interested, but seriously....I expected an appliance that was marginally better than the '50s model. When I encountered the Danby DDW497W, I liked the approach....green by way of using less electricity, water, and soap than the real built-ins. Its size seemed like a good fit for the loft too, so I bought it.

Nothing in the literature or review prepared me for what I got: the VERY BEST dishwasher of ANY variety I've ever encountered. It's better than any of the many built-ins I've used, including the Whirlpool unit in my West Coast house. I don't believe even Danby expected this....the manual was full of caveats to offset the obvious extrapolations of disappointment. What's so great about this unit? First, all the green stuff is true. It costs a pittance to run. The internal heating element used to up the the hot water temp from the faucet also struck me as a great idea.

When I first hooked it up I was quite nervous about leaks...there were none. The quick-fit faucet adapter worked perfectly as did the basic functionality of the appliance in general. Still, initially I selected the heavy duty wash mode to give the Danby every chance to do the best it could. In that mode, the thing ran for quite a while but when it was finally done, I opened the door, turned the power off, detached it from from the sink, and unplugged it. I'd done the normal dish pre-rinse I always did before running my plates, bowls, implements, etc. through the cycle. I was, nevertheless, surprised to encounter squeaky-clean dishes, silverware, and glassware minus even the hint of a streak. Leap forward to 6 months later: I've stopped cleaning off my dishes at all. I've downgraded the cycle to the lowest (P3) the machine offered - which was considerably faster. I've used the unit once or twice a week since I got it. And no matter what I did, everything I've ever put in this dishwasher came out pristine squeaky clean for a tenth of the cost used to run my dishwasher out west. That would be the end of it but for one thing: because the water pressure was lower than that of the big units, I found I could be very 'creative' with my loading. I was able to nestle things together which in a built-in would surely foretell eventual breakage. Items could touch, lie atop one another...basically break every rule of dishwasher loading and still come out - no hyperbole - SQUEAKY clean. I want the Danby folks to know just HOW satisfied I am because these days underperformance is the norm.

So we had a danby countertop dishwasher for about 2 years then it died and we decided to get this one to replace it becasue we were so happy with the last one. However, this model one has a major design flaw. I goes through a whole cycle then at the end of washing your dishes it does a "cleaning out" of the water left in the bottom and this makes any food particles left in the bottom of the washer spray onto you newly clean dishes... making them not clean anymore then once it goes through the drying cycle all of that food i now CAKED onto all your dishes so you have to wash them by hand.

So that was the first problem we had. The second was that after 6 months it totally broke. We called danby and they said we could get it fixed under warranty. So they referred me to 3 different repair places in my area and low and behold only 1 of them serviced danby products. Both of the others literally saying "Good luck getting danby to fix anything" Well this became totally true as right now it's been 3 months and nearly all of the parts replaced on my dish washer and it still doesn't work and they flat out told me they don't do refunds even though this product is a total lemon.

I won't even get into how bad it is to deal with Danby Customer service except to say they are THE WORST i have seen ever.

I would ignore all the other favorable reviews of this product on amazon as i can truthfully tell you this thing is terrible, it doesn't clean when it's working and then it breaks totally. My goal is now to warn others about Danby products in hope that no one ever buys anything by them and loses hard earned money.

Positives:
- This unit is really stingy with water
- The dishes come out very clean.

Negatives:
- Made in China. You just can't escape it, anymore.
- The pipe fittings on this are hard plastic.
- Unit is large, noisy, and very slow. A typical wash takes roughly two hours.
- The shipping was abysmal. Item arrived dented, with a hole in the side of the box.
- Even with the gaskets installed according to the manual, there is a slight leak where the pipes interface with the sink.

Overall:
The negatives not surprising, and the quality of the overall wash has been excellent. It will take up a lot of countertop space, but that can't be helped. If you're single, it's a worthy investment. I am deducting a star because of the shipping. I don't know how much flexibility Air & Water Inc. has in their shippers, but it would be good to offer a warning about their present shipper, and use better padding on their packages.

I live in a small studio apartment and the Danby Countertop Dishwasher is one of the best purchases I've made. I hate doing dishes and was thrilled the day my dishwasher arrived. So far, I've found much to like. First, setup was quick and within a few minutes I was ready to run my first batch of dishes. I use Finish Powerball tabs and I recommend this detergent. I also recommend rinsing the dishes before use and they will come out spotless, even on the P3 Rapid Wash, which takes about an hour. Despite its small size, the dishwasher holds quite a bit, provided you get creative with loading. Even though there is no heating element for drying, just open the door at the end of the cycle and plates and glasses will dry shortly. Plastic and silverware will take a hand drying. There are a couple of flaws: the cycles are long: over 2 hours for a couple of them. The silverware basket is small and flimsy. And there are long pauses during the cycle. A readout with time remaining would be nice. But overall I am pleased with this appliance.