The Nuance Collective
The Nuance Index™
007
Dw
Dishwashers
00
How this works
This week, we asked five questions someone shopping for a dishwasher would ask (twice): Once about dishwashers and then about built-in dishwashers, to see whether changing the product type changes the answer.
What's the best dishwasher? I'm about to buy dishwashers, what should I get? What's the most reliable dishwasher? What are the top brands? If you were buying for me, what would you choose?
Fifty separate conversations. Twenty-five scored. Then we checked the ranking against the register every dishwasher in this country has to be filed in before anyone is allowed to sell it.
What's the best dishwasher? I'm about to buy dishwashers, what should I get? What's the most reliable dishwasher? What are the top brands? If you were buying for me, what would you choose?
Fifty separate conversations. Twenty-five scored. Then we checked the ranking against the register every dishwasher in this country has to be filed in before anyone is allowed to sell it.
01
The Number — Category Clarity
78.0
Clear
The answer is stable and accurate.
60.1
Agreement
does it answer the same way twice
54.3–71.4 at 90%
94.0
Accuracy
is what it says true
no interval — checked claims, not resampled
79.5
Alignment
does the ranking match the real category
79.0–79.7 at 90%
True →
Unsettlednot the same twice · true
Clearthe same twice · true
Confusednot the same twice · false
Miscastthe same twice · false
Clearthe same twice · true
Same answer twice →
Settled at Agreement 50 · true at Truth 50 · this category sits at Agreement 60.1, Truth 86.8 · both boundaries are the midpoint of their own metric
PASS Indexable 20 scoredPASS Capture blind 3 of 3 control runs— Reference set 77 brands, DOE-registered— Baseline no prior run, no arrow
Dishwashers are a category AI describes accurately (94.0). Of 267 checkable claims across the answers, 3 were false, and two of those three were the same claim: that GE Profile builds a water softener into the machine. It doesn’t. The rest of the misses are noise figures and series features shuffled between Bosch lines.
Agreement is the drag, at 60.1: the top five names rarely repeat exactly, because the answers keep re-sorting the middle of the market by budget. Alignment holds at 79.5, which says the brands with the deepest filed lines are broadly the brands the answers name.
Agreement is the drag, at 60.1: the top five names rarely repeat exactly, because the answers keep re-sorting the middle of the market by budget. Alignment holds at 79.5, which says the brands with the deepest filed lines are broadly the brands the answers name.
02
The Read
Every one of the twenty‑five answers picks a dishwasher on reliability. Two hundred and eighty-four mentions of whether the thing will hold up, break, or be cheap to fix. It is the one attribute in this category that nobody files with anybody.
Energy and water are filed for every model before it can be sold, and they come up eleven times in twenty‑five answers, never as a number.
We gave the category 94 on accuracy. None of the 267 claims behind that number is about reliability, because you cannot check it. The answers are careful and mostly right about the parts that can be checked, and the part that decides the recommendation runs on reputation.
Energy and water are filed for every model before it can be sold, and they come up eleven times in twenty‑five answers, never as a number.
We gave the category 94 on accuracy. None of the 267 claims behind that number is about reliability, because you cannot check it. The answers are careful and mostly right about the parts that can be checked, and the part that decides the recommendation runs on reputation.
03
The Standings
Bosch leads, and nothing in the intervals comes near it.
Bosch is named in all twenty-five conversations and named first in 24 of them. It leads in 100% of ten thousand redraws, and it is the only brand in the category backed at the top of the conviction scale every time it appears. Miele sits second, also in all twenty-five, then KitchenAid on its own in third.
Whirlpool, GE and Maytag share one band; their ranges overlap too much to call an order between them. All three are recommended the same way, as the plain, repairable American machine, which is the subject of this week’s Signal.
Kenmore is the largest absence. It has 45 dishwashers on file, the 5th deepest line in the country, and it is named in none of the twenty-five.
Bosch is named in all twenty-five conversations and named first in 24 of them. It leads in 100% of ten thousand redraws, and it is the only brand in the category backed at the top of the conviction scale every time it appears. Miele sits second, also in all twenty-five, then KitchenAid on its own in third.
Whirlpool, GE and Maytag share one band; their ranges overlap too much to call an order between them. All three are recommended the same way, as the plain, repairable American machine, which is the subject of this week’s Signal.
Kenmore is the largest absence. It has 45 dishwashers on file, the 5th deepest line in the country, and it is named in none of the twenty-five.
| Brand | Presence | Rank | Conviction | Fidelity | Composite | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Band 1 · 84–84 · 1 brand, separated from every other band | ||||||
| 1 | BoBosch | 100.0 | 99.6 | 100.0 | 21.8 | 84.2 84–84 |
| Band 2 · 78–78 · 1 brand, separated from every other band | ||||||
| 2 | MiMiele | 100.0 | 89.3 | 80.0 | 23.4 | 78.0 78–78 |
| Band 3 · 70–73 · 1 brand, separated from every other band | ||||||
| 3 | KaKitchenAid | 100.0 | 67.1 | 75.0 | 22.7 | 71.3 70–73 |
| Band 4 · 59–68 · 3 brands, not separated by the data | ||||||
| 4 | WpWhirlpool | 100.0 | 48.9 | 68.0 | 23.8 | 65.6 63–68 |
| 4 | GeGE | 100.0 | 37.8 | 69.0 | 23.2 | 62.9 61–64 |
| 4 | MtMaytag | 96.0 | 39.4 | 67.7 | 25.0 | 62.0 59–65 |
| Band 5 · 38–59 · 5 brands, not separated by the data | ||||||
| 5 | ThThermador | 92.0 | 30.0 | 53.3 | 21.4 | 54.6 50–59 |
| 5 | LgLG | 100.0 | 16.9 | 31.0 | 20.4 | 49.5 48–51 |
| 5 | BkBeko | 88.0 | 9.6 | 54.5 | 18.8 | 47.9 44–52 |
| 5 | AsAsko | 72.0 | 21.6 | 56.9 | 25.0 | 47.0 41–52 |
| 5 | CvCove | 64.0 | 24.3 | 57.8 | 25.0 | 45.0 38–51 |
| Band 6 · 47–50 · 1 brand, separated from every other band | ||||||
| 6 | SmSamsung | 100.0 | 13.8 | 25.0 | 25.0 | 48.4 47–50 |
Composite, with its 90% interval
10,000 resamples of the 25 runs
Band 1one brand, separated from every other band
Bosch
Band 2one brand, separated from every other band
Miele
Band 3one brand, separated from every other band
KitchenAid
Band 43 brands, not separated by the data
Whirlpool
GE
Maytag
55.062.070.077.085.0
Point estimate
90% interval — where this brand sits if the 25 primary-noun runs are redrawn
Bands are cut where the intervals stop overlapping
Table view — composite and interval
Bosch 84.2 (84–84) · Miele 78.0 (78–78) · KitchenAid 71.3 (70–73) · Whirlpool 65.6 (63–68) · GE 62.9 (61–64) · Maytag 62.0 (59–65)
Bosch 84.2 (84–84) · Miele 78.0 (78–78) · KitchenAid 71.3 (70–73) · Whirlpool 65.6 (63–68) · GE 62.9 (61–64) · Maytag 62.0 (59–65)
The table above shows the top 6 bands, 12 of the 20 scored brands. The 8 below them sit in Bands 7 and 8, every one under 40. The interval chart shows Bands 1–4.
Every brand in this week’s standings is on file with DOE, so every one of them carries a counterweight entry. Filing is compulsory, so the register cannot miss a brand that is actually selling dishwashers here.
Every brand in this week’s standings is on file with DOE, so every one of them carries a counterweight entry. Filing is compulsory, so the register cannot miss a brand that is actually selling dishwashers here.
04
The Signal
What It Sorts On · this week's featured finding
Reliability is what the answers run on. Some version of reliable, durable, repairable, parts, lasts, breaks turns up 284 times across the twenty-five conversations, and in every single one of them. Of the 163 sentences that name one brand and give a reason for it, 43 are about whether the machine will hold up. That is the largest single reason in the category.
There is no register for it. Energy, water and capacity are filed with the Department of Energy for every model before it can be sold. Noise is on the spec sheet. Price is on the tag. Whether a dishwasher breaks in year six is measured by surveys, and surveys are the same material the model read.The thing with the most complete record in this category is the thing the answers use least. Energy or efficiency comes up 11 times in twenty-five answers, in 7 of them, and never once as a figure. Not a kilowatt-hour, not a gallon, 0 numbers of any kind. It appears as an adjective: quiet and efficient, good efficiency ratings, efficient for the price.
This edition scores Accuracy 94.0 on 267 checkable claims pulled from those same answers. 0 of the 267 are about reliability, because a claim like very reliable cannot be checked against anything and our own extractor throws it out. So the number that says this category is described accurately is measuring everything except the reason it gives.
The CMO instruction: in this category reputation for durability is the most valuable asset a brand owns and the least defensible, because there is no record to point at when it turns. Ask Samsung and LG, named in all twenty-five answers and warned against in most of them, on reliability, with nothing on file either way.
52 of the 77 DOE-registered brands were named in none of the twenty-five scored conversations. The deep end of that list, brands with ten or more dishwashers on file: Kenmore (45), Summit (34), JennAir (19), Danby (13), IKEA (11), SPT (10).
Kenmore is the one that matters. 45 models on file, more than Miele, more than GE, and it is not named once. It was not probed three ways this pass and it should be before this category is re-run.
Kenmore is the one that matters. 45 models on file, more than Miele, more than GE, and it is not named once. It was not probed three ways this pass and it should be before this category is re-run.
What counts as a dishwasher brand here. A brand is in if it has at least one dishwasher on file with the U.S. Department of Energy. Anyone who makes or imports a dishwasher for sale in this country has to file one certification report per model before it can be sold, which makes the register a complete list of who is actually in the category rather than a list of who markets well. Sub-brands stay separate, the way DOE files them and the way the answers name them: GE Profile, Café and Monogram are scored on their own, not folded into GE. 77 brands are on file, with 782 distinct models between them.
One thing this page does not do. DOE publishes each model's measured energy and water use, so where this page talks about ENERGY STAR it is comparing those filed figures against EPA's published criteria (240 kWh a year and 3.2 gallons a cycle for a standard-size machine, in effect since 19 July 2023). It is not reading a certification list, and those two things do not always agree.
One thing this page does not do. DOE publishes each model's measured energy and water use, so where this page talks about ENERGY STAR it is comparing those filed figures against EPA's published criteria (240 kWh a year and 3.2 gallons a cycle for a standard-size machine, in effect since 19 July 2023). It is not reading a certification list, and those two things do not always agree.
Scores are not comparable across categories, and no edition cites
another's. Every edition is a self-contained verdict on its own category.
Every count on this page comes from the Department of Energy’s own register and can be re-run by anyone. What the answers say about your brand can be checked the same way. The Nuance Collective
Every count on this page comes from the Department of Energy’s own register and can be re-run by anyone. What the answers say about your brand can be checked the same way. The Nuance Collective