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  • Introduction

  • Design & Usability

  • Features

  • Performance

  • Conclusion

  • Introduction

  • Performance

  • Efficiency

  • Capacity

  • Introduction
  • Design & Usability
  • Features
  • Performance
  • Conclusion
  • Introduction
  • Performance
  • Efficiency
  • Capacity

Introduction

Design & Usability

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It blends into the background, waiting for the perfect moment...

The Frigidaire Gallery FGHD2472PF does little to give itself away. With a blank, stainless steel face, devoid of any markings or even a brand logo, it is virtually indistinguishable from many other dishwashers. The controls are on the top of the door, hidden away under your counter when the door is closed. It is quiet in appearance and also quiet to run, thanks to its stainless steel tub.

Quiet in appearance and quiet to run.

The control panel reveals where the FGHD2472PF’s true beauty lies. While not the prettiest thing to look at, this dishwasher has very easy and simple controls to select its wide array of cycle and wash options. A digital display lets you know how long the cycle you’ve chosen is going to take. A small light in the center warns you if you need to add more rinse aid. The machine also gives an audible signal when a cycle is finished. There's even a third wash arm. It’s little things like these that add up to make running a dishwasher more convenient.

For all that convenience, the FGHD2472PF did have a minor design issue: The top rack is initially hard to pull out, and there’s a good reason why. Along the back of the tub is a spout that feeds water to the middle wash arm, which is located under the top rack. That spout is designed to snap on to the wash arm. This means you will need a little bit of extra force to pull the top rack out in order to disconnect that hose. After that, though, the rack slides dutifully on its track.

The rest of the design offers quite a bit of flexibility. The top rack features two rows of bowl tines that can be folded away if not needed, as well as two cup shelves. The bottom rack has two collapsible rows of tines in case you need to fit something massive or oddly-shaped down there. Finally, the cutlery basket is pretty big, filled with a large array of slots for fitting your silverware or serving utensils.

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Features

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Five wash cycles, but no quick wash; this dishwasher likes to takes its time.

The FGHD2472PF has a wide array of wash cycles. In addition to the usual Light, Normal, and Heavy cycles, there are three cycles called China Crystal, Energy Saver, and Rinse Only. While the China Crystal sounds like something Indiana Jones would “liberate” from a group of Nazis, it’s only about half as exciting on the FGHD2472PF: it’s a cycle for cleaning delicate items such as china and crystal. Frigidaire says the Energy Saver is an efficient cycle for lightly-soiled items, and finally, the Rinse Only gets the dust off clean dishes.

Despite the choices in cycles, a Quick Wash option is not among them. The closest equivalent is the Light cycle, which the FGHD2472PF’s manual calls, “A fast wash for lightly soiled dishes and silverware.” Unfortunately, Frigidaire may have been using the term "fast" rather loosely, as the Light cycle takes a little over two hours to run. If you do feel the need for a one-hour cycle, the FGHD2472PF will leave you disappointed.

There are three additional wash options you can enable after selecting your cycle. Sanitize raises the final rinse water temperature to kill off bacteria, Hi-Temp Wash raises the main wash temperature to help clean off baked-on food, and the Air Dry option tells the FGHD2472PF not to use the heating element for drying. Heated dry is the default option for all cycles, which is convenient, but can raise electricity consumption. If you prefer to save the electricity and let the dishes dry on their own, you have to manually engage Air Dry.

Rounding out the list are some nice, non-wash features. A control lock helps prevent stray button presses turning into surprise showers, a Delay Start setting lets you hold off on a wash from 1-24 hours, and a signal will chime when a cycle is done. The FGHD2472PF also has a detachable filter and screen. Removing them requires you to detach the bottom wash arm, and while that may sound daunting, the wash arm actually pulls right off without any fuss.

Performance

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Am I overcompensating?

Rather than the ruthless efficiency of Ryu Hayabusa, or even Leonardo the Ninja Turtle, the FGHD2472PF performs more like Chris Farley in Beverly Hills Ninja. For all its neat features and ease of use, the FGHD2472PF suffers very badly from redeposit. This is when a dishwasher cleans the soil off of one item and sprays it to another one, essentially making a cleaned dish dirty again. The performance scores on all of our tests took a heavy hit as a result, and even in instances where the original milk, tea, or oatmeal stains were removed, we were finding flecks of spinach or burnt sugar redeposited onto these once-clean items. We found this to be a consistent problem in all cycles, including the Heavy.

This ultimately translates to two-hour-long cycles.

We also learned that the Light, Normal, and Heavy cycles all take just as long to run, which is likely due to the fact that they're sensor-based cycles. There's even a chart in the owner's manual explaining how this dishwasher adjusts its number of washes and rinses in a cycle depending on if it feels the soil level is “heavy” or “light.” For each of our standardized tests, the soil level is always considered fairly high, and the FGHD2472PF is compensating by using the maximum number of washes and rinses allowed in each cycle. This ultimately translates to two-hour-long Normal and Light cycles for us, and according to the manual, the shortest a Light cycle will run is 110 minutes. As mentioned earlier, you will not find a quick cycle here, and that could be a dealbreaker.

Conclusion

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Someone will have to clean this mess up when it's all over.

The Frigidaire Gallery FGHD2472PF’s strongest features are its wide range of cycle options and its inconspicuousness. However, the redeposit issue severely impacts its ability to clean, and cycles take a very long time. While the usual remedy for that is soaking your dishes or scraping them beforehand, we were expecting an $800 machine to not require such a work-around. Even less expensive Frigidaire dishwashers we’ve tested, such as the Frigidaire Gallery FGHD2465NF, have given us better performances. The FGHD2472PF is by no means a bad dishwasher, but for its price, we feel you can do better.

Introduction

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While the Frigidaire Gallery FGHD2472PF is good at keeping a low profile, it could not hide from the omnipresent power of science. After hooking it up and running it through our battery of tests, we found that this sneaky ninja wasn’t very good at its job, and wasn’t exactly quick about it, either. The lack of a quick wash cycle and a definite problem with redeposit make it hard for us to recommend this dishwasher, especially at its high upfront price.

Performance

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Redeposit is the FGHD2472PF's biggest problem.

The FGHD2472PF had redeposit problems across all of the cycles we tested, even on Heavy. Among Light, Normal, and Heavy cycles, the Light cycle had the fewest instances of redeposit. However, the Light cycle did a worse job removing the spinach in the first place, which could be why it wasn’t able to spray it onto the other dishes! Overall, the FGHD2472PF performs well with the other stain types, leaving very few milk, meat, and oatmeal soils behind.

With the large serving dishes that we use for our Heavy tests, we found a different sort of problem. The casserole that we use for baked-on lasagna would be successfully cleaned, but the soil particles that were washed off would be left floating around in the dish, in an unsightly puddle. Even after a drying cycle, the puddle still remains, making the dish un-useable straight out of the dishwasher.

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Efficiency

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Similar cycle durations across Light, Normal, and Heavy cycles, but vast differences in water consumption.

The FGHD2472PF takes around two hours for each of the Light, Normal, and Heavy cycles. The Light cycle is advertised as “fast,” according to the manual, but we think two hours is stretching that definition a bit far. However, two hours for a Heavy cycle is pretty fast, and it's actually one of the fastest Heavy cycles we’ve seen. The FGHD2472PF uses its soil sensors to adjust the number of washes and rinses within each cycle, and since our tests are so consistent, it could explain why the cycle durations are so similar.

The water usage, and their associated utility costs, differs greatly between the cycles. The Light cycle only consumes 3.51 gallons of hot water, but Normal and Heavy cycles take 6.95 and 8.11 gallons each, respectively. Because all cycles use the heating element to dry and have around the same duration, the electricity usage is actually very similar between the three cycles, hovering close to about 0.75 KwH. Unsurprisingly, the Light cycle costs the least per run, at about 12 cents, while Normal is in the middle at 17 cents and Heavy costs the most, at 20 cents. We estimate an average annual cost of $34.34, which is a little above average, but that figure could change drastically between uses due to the FGHD2472PF’s soil sensors and self-adjusting nature.

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Capacity

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Very spacious, able to fit 12 entire place settings.

The FGHD2472PF is actually quite roomy, and we were able to fit 12 place settings inside. We throw in a serving setting for every six place settings, but for the FGHD2472PF, we could only fit one. This results in a capacity score of 11. Seeing as many of the machines of this size we’ve tested have a score of 10, we don’t anticipate anyone being disappointed by this dishwasher’s capacity.

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Meet the tester

Johnny Yu

Johnny Yu

Staff Writer

@ReviewedHome

Johnny Yu writes news, features, and reviews for Reviewed.com. He graduated from U-Mass Boston with a Bachelor's in Social Psychology and spends much of his free time expanding his gaming horizons. Sometimes, he does his laundry at work.

See all of Johnny Yu's reviews

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