Voltas Beko 8 Place Settings Table Top Dishwasher (DT8S, Silver, Inbuilt Heater)

This is a very nice and helpful machine to have in a modern kitchen. Though a bit smaller than what you really need in an average size kitchen, it seems to serve its purpose for me. I bought the smaller variant primarily because of its manageable size in comparison to the full size ones. For not having any experience with a dishwasher I did some research to get a feel for what to expect out of a dishwasher in general and specifically this model, in terms of effectiveness in cleaning, running costs etc. What i learned from all the research that i did and the limited usage experience on my Beko 8 place machine is given below, 1. Dishwashers are damn effective, even for our way and style of cooking and type of utensils. You also need not pre-clean your dishes before loading them into the machine. However, you need to know how to load the dishes properly in the machine, know how much detergent one needs to use and use appropriate wash cycle settings. For this there is a plethora of information out there over the web which you can put to good use. You might also want to consider learning how a dishwasher does what it does (working principle) which would help in getting your utensils cleaned properly and not unnecessarily complain when dishes come out soiled. As an example, you shall avoid putting large utensils that block the sprayer jet from hitting the detergent tray or block detergent tray door from opening properly. This seems to be a common yet overlooked mistake. Blocking the detergent tray would obviously lead to unclean utensils which people wrongly attribute to the design of the machine or the quality of the detergent itself. 2. Dishwashers don't use a lot of water or at least not as much as when hand washing. Dish washers are designed to use the same water again and again in a given cycle at the end of which, a rinse cycle cleans everything. As per the manual, in Normal mode, my Beko uses 12.5 litres of water. All these cleaning cycles are carried out using hot water. Of course, the temperatures, the number of cleaning and rinsing cycles depend on the wash settings chosen on the machine. 3. Electricity consumption is a factor that one might want look into. Voltas Beko 8 place device uses 0.72kWh or about 0.72 units of electricity per wash when in its default (Eco) wash cycle. I’m yet to try this mode and have been using Normal mode (which as per the manual uses 1.05kWh) until now. But to my surprise, the Normal mode is only pulling about 0.7kWh! Probably this has to do with the higher inlet water temperature here or the inlet supply water hardness settings that I have chosen (or probably my energy meter is wrong! i will have to confirm this). About 90% of the energy goes to heating water. In my model 1400W of the max 1620W goes to heating! 4. Dishwasher detergents are in many ways different in its constituents in comparison to hand wash liquids and soaps. The dishwasher detergents are much more aggressive and form less soapy suds; attributes that a dish washer detergent shall have in comparison to the familiar hand wash liquids. So, you might want to refrain yourselves from the urge to use your Vim hand dish wash liquid in the machine. I’m using IFB Autodish detergent powder. Dishwashers, in addition to the detergent, also need dishwasher salt for water softening as well as another liquid called ‘rinse aid’. In Mumbai where I live the water hardness is very low (TDS of around 50ppm! I know this because I have a TDS meter lying around). You can check this yourselves using a TDS meter (about 200 rupee device on Amazon) and a unit conversion chart for TDS to hardness conversion. My machine did not come with (at least I did not find one inside the box) a hardness test strip that would help me know the water hardness though (I think some manufacturers do send it bundled). I have kept the salt usage and rinse aid consumptions to the minimum settings because of low hardness water that I get at my place. My dishes and utensils come out clean and dry every time and with these settings (I use about 20-25gms of detergent also) I expect salt and rinse aids to last at least a month or two. I wouldn’t mind using an all in one dishwasher tablet that contains all the three ingredients (detergent + rinse agent+ salt) in a single tablet as these tablets are expensive for one, but more importantly give little control over detergent consumption. No matter how soiled your utensils are, lightly or badly messed up and charred, you only have one detergent dosage option and that doesn’t sit very well with my requirements. One thing that I dislike about my Beko 8 place machine is the way the dish support pins on the trays are arranged. These are particularly not suitable for Indian thali type dishes with tall side walls. They just won’t fit. Moreover, because of the machine’s shorter stance (in comparison to the 12 place machines), the upper tray can only accommodate smaller utensils or dishes which can be a little bit of an issue. One word of advice though, these machines are designed to work best when sufficient time is given for the washing process. So, in me Beko, Normal wash setting takes a cool and lethargic 2 hours and 35 to complete and the Eco mode takes about 3 hours! All said and done, if not for its slightly smaller size and the tray dish-support-pins, the machine is wonderful and works like a charm (at least for the time being).

So, is this dishwasher any good? Simply put, yes. I see a number of negative reviews of this machine but in my opinion and 2½ months of experience, I can say this machine is almost as good as a full size machine. So what's the biggest problem with this dishwasher? The awkward design of the baskets. The baskets are designed for Western dishes and cookware and some Indian dishes, such as stainless steel plates with high sides don't fit easily in the baskets. Also difficult to load: pressure cookers. But why is that important? Because of the way the hot water hits the dishes from the bottom. If the dish isn't sufficiently exposed from the bottom, then it won't get clean. So it's very important to learn how to load the dishes correctly. It took me about 10 days before I learnt how to do that properly. This, importantly, is the same for all dishwashers. Once the loading has been figured out, it's important to learn the limitations of any dishwasher, big or small, high tech or low tech. They can't fully clean dishes that have dried and stuck food (milk, curds, dal, rice, etc). Those can be difficult to clean even by hand. So help the machine by using a brush or a scrubbing pad. Once the loading and preparation are done correctly, I have found that the dishes come out just as clean as from bigger machines such as Bosch that people in my extended family have. That too on the eco mode that requires less water and energy. As for the long cycle times, I get around it by planning - I load the dishwasher and use the delay function so that the cycle starts late and ends at a convenient time. On the whole, I find that this little dishwasher perfectly suits small families of 2 or 3 people. At the price that's about half of a full size machine, is actually very good value for money. Edit - July 2020 The machine is working very well and I'm very happy to have bought it. It was a real boon during the lockdown. We faced difficulty in finding good dishwasher detergent or tablets during the lockdown so now we have stocked up. Tip for good dishwasher performance: Avoid using old detergent or tablets. The expiry date is usually about 2 years after manufacture. Expired or badly stored detergent/tablets don't wash the vessels very well and you might end up having to rewash some vessels.