Review: Danby “Designer” Portable Dishwasher, Model DDW1805W

A lot of you probably have a dishwasher - if you do, you might take it for granted; I know that I did all of my life, up until the day I moved into a rental house without one.

A lot of you probably don’t have a dishwasher, and you probably hate washing dishes - one of those quintessential things that most people hate, but has to deal with occasionally (or if you don’t have a dishwasher, quite frequently). Washing every dish and piece of silverware by hand is enough to drive some people to use paper and plastic dishes for all of their meals. I didn’t go that far, but it did drive me far enough that I researched and then bought a free standing dishwasher (A.K.A. portable dishwasher), and now that I have it, I don’t think I’ll ever take a dishwasher for granted again (Thanks for the drawing of the extra happy dishwasher, Andy.)

If the term “free standing dishwasher” isn’t familiar to you, it’s basically a dishwasher on wheels, usually with a smaller capacity than one of the under-the-counter models, which can be rolled over and hooked up to your kitchen sink with an adapter anytime a load of dishes needs to be cleaned. It uses the hot water from to tap as a water source, and it drains into the sink through the same adapter.

I purchased the Danby “designer” portable dishwasher, model number DDW1805W from Walmart.com for a little more than $300. It is advertised to hold 8 place settings, and it has 7 wash programs. I was able to fit a good deal of dishes into it for my first load of dishes, but I can’t really measure my dishes in “place settings.” The DDW1805W seems to be setup well for a variety of dishes and dish arrangements, helping to make up for it’s small size. It is 18 inches wide, and fits pretty well anywhere I want to tuck it away in my kitchen. I doubt that I’ll ever use most of the wash settings, but it’s good to have the options. The interior of the dishwasher is stainless steel, and it seems durable. It has a water softener option, and a 3 tiered filter system. Everything about this dishwasher seems stable and well built.

Unfortunately, the faucet adapter did not work with my normal faucet aerator, and I have to use the included faucet nozzle to hook up the hose adapter. The hoses and power cord are plenty long enough, and they reach my sink with slack to spare. I used the “economic” wash cycle for my first run and it seemed to take quite a while to finish (I know it was well over an hour, but I didn’t time it), but that may have been because my kitchen sink was in-use the entire time.

The big question is of course, does it do it’s job? Thankfully, I can say that my dishes were all very clean at the end of the wash cycle, with a pleasant smell of clean dishes pervading the air. The only problem with the entire wash process was, once it was done running and I was ready to unload the dishes, I found that they weren’t quite dry yet. There was quite a bit of condensation still on the dishes and the internal walls of the dishwasher, so I was forced to leave the door open and wait a while before unloading it.

Danby Portable Dishwasher DDW1805W: 4.5/5

Do you have to wash dishes by hand? Anyone own a portable dishwasher? Anyone actually like doing dishes?

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