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I’ve owned this Danby countertop dishwasher for over a year and I can honesty say it was a GREAT purchase.
Danby has two countertop dishwashers. Mine’s the newer, silver-coloured one with an LCD display (DDW631SDB), while the older one is white in colour and doesn’t have an LCD.
I bought this after getting promoted. I told myself, now that I got a better job, I should reward myself by getting rid of menial, tedious tasks.
Of course, thanks to COVID, I got laid off a month after getting promoted. But I digress…
Who is this for?
I’ve owned this dishwasher for a year and I can honestly say that it’s perfect for me, a guy who lives alone.
On average, I run a load through the Danby dishwasher every night after having breakfast, lunch and dinner at home.
I bought it because I was attracted to how it could be plugged into your kitchen faucet by just changing the adaptor.
That made things really easy because I rent an apartment and wouldn’t need to ask for permission from my landlord and then get a plumber in to set up the pipes.
And a full-size dishwasher might be too much. I might have to buy more dishes in order to justify running a load through a two-level dishwasher.
So, as a single guy who rents and eats at home two to three times a day on average, this is perfect.
It’s a pretty imposing machine that sits large on your countertop!
Installation
The biggest problem you’ll have when installing this is just how large it is.
It came in a huge box that was really cumbersome to lug around.
It was also a lot larger than I expected. The pictures I have seen made it look like it was really compact.
It isn’t.
It measures 21.6 inches x 20 x 17 inches.
In order to imagine how large it is, I’d say, you could use the length of your fingertips to your elbow as a gauge for its width and depth and its height is about two plates.
So, first of all, you need to ensure you have such a space in your apartment.
Once you find a place on your countertop, installation was quite easy. You just had to change the faucet adaptor to the one provided and then install the hoses to the stylish counter top dishwasher.
If you have cabinets that are large enough, you could also install it in there, but you might need to cut a hole for the hoses to pass through.
Setting it up requires you to plug it into a regular household socket, and then attaching the hose onto the faucet through its adaptor.
Attaching the hose with the quick connect feature is honestly very easy. It’s just a bit harder than attaching a cap onto a pen because of the size of the hose.
Once you attach the hose to the faucet it’s a lot harder to get water out of the faucet. You’d have to press a red button in order to get water , but in practice, I have found it difficult to be washing dishes simultaneously or get tap water when the Danby dishwasher is running.
Wash quantity
Most of the time, I find the quantity that this dishwasher’s capacity to be adequate.
However, when I am doing large meals or meal prepping, I do wish I had a larger dishwasher.
The photo in the manual really shows you how you can pack it fully with plates, stemware, bowls and a silverware basket full of utensils.
However, I have not really been able to do that. It really starts from having plates that don’t fit well into the stainless steel interior.
I have some 11 inch plates that just don’t fit well because they are too big. You can make them fit by bending the legs on the dishwasher rack, which I had to.
With 10 inch plates, they fit perfectly.
In all honesty, with my mixture of plates, I can only comfortably fit three plates sequentially before they start leaning on each other. Having stuff that stack on each other would diminish the efficiency of the dishwasher.
So what about the other areas of the dishwashing rack?
I have been able to fit about two five-inch meal prep containers, three plates (described above), three cups of varying sizes and then the lids for the meal prep containers and a smaller plate.
When I am lazy, I can fit a cutting board and a frying pan with a few smaller items, but there’s a reason why I don’t do this often… which I will explore in the next section.
Wash quality
Let me just start it off by saying that this thing isn’t a miracle maker.
You’re going to have to do some manual scrubbing. Particularly if you are going to let your dirty dishes and glass stemware sit (and hence drying out the food remnants).
If your rice/vegetables/curry/seared meat/eggs dries up on a surface, you can put it through many wash cycles but it’ll still remain after it’s done. You can add a rinse cycle if you want.
But what you can expect is that the Danby dishwasher can remove all food remnants that only require light scrubbing if done by hand.
There are two receptacles for your dishwashing powder, which is recommended by Danby over any other form of soap. There’s also a container for rinsing agent.
While the Danby dishwasher has a heater, it’s used to heat the washing liquid and not used for drying. In other words, your dishes will always come out wet.
Time
The main difference between this chic dishwashing unit and the older version is that it has a digital display that tells you the amount of time left in the cycle.
Don’t get your hopes up. On normal cycle, it takes one hour and 50 minutes. On the fastest cycle, the Danby dishwasher says it takes 20 minutes. It never takes 20 minutes. I know because I have been late to an event because I was late to an event thanks to the dishwasher pushing the timelines.
Noise
If you live in a small apartment with little separation between the kitchen and bedroom, do note that every time the dishwasher expels water from its wash cycles, it’ll make an extremely loud noise. The dishwasher expels the liquid at high pressure, similar to spraying with a hose with your thumb covering half the outlet. Now, imagine that fast-flowing liquid hitting a hard surface like a sink.
Don’t go to bed right after you send it off on a cycle unless you have some white noise to hide the Danby dishwasher’s sudden bursts of noise.
And as stated above… if you run this during regular business hours (working from home, that’s 9 am to 9pm), you’ll find it inconvenient that you can’t use your faucet.
Leak?
One complaint I have heard from scanning the internet is that these dishwashers leak.
I’m happy to say that I have never needed to invoke its 12 month warranty. In fact, there have been no leaks or problems in the 16 months I have owned this.
Verdict
When I bought this machine, it cost me $400.
It was my first time buying an “optional” product for the kitchen and it honestly worth it.
I estimate that its running cost per day is about $1.
Dude, if I could pay someone $1 to wash my dishes, I would absolutely pay that.
Furthermore, I am talking about Canadian dollars here. If you’re in America, you probably pay less since our dollar is currently worth about 80 cents. It’s like having final discounts of 20% on all parts and products.
While not perfect in tougher situations, this Danby appliance gets you out of most sticky situations. Pun intended.
It’s also a good place to store your dirty dishes so you don’t let them pile up in the sink.
Buy it. Just make sure to check if your faucet’s adaptor can be removed, though. You don’t want to return this. It’s massive, heavy and painful.
