Indesit DSFO3T224ZUK Review

Verdict

The Indesit DSFO3T224ZUK is an excellent slimline dishwasher. Despite its compact size there’s a surprising amount of room inside, and you can even remove the top rack to clean any large kitchen items. The Push & Go feature feels a bit gimmicky, but we can forgive this based on the appliance’s low running costs and the excellent all-round performance. If you’re after a small dishwasher, this is an excellent choice.

Perfect for the smaller kitchen and daily dish duties, the Indesit DSFO3T224ZUK is a sleek-looking slimline dishwasher with a selection of nine programmes and a speedy Push & Go option. It claims a capacity of 10 place settings, a height-adjustable top basket, and A++ energy rating for low running costs and frugal water usage.

Excellent cleaning power left our pots, pans and cutlery with a great shine. It’s tough on the toughest stains, and felt super-spacious despite its compact size. Drying results fell slightly short of perfect, but that isn’t unusual in energy-efficient machines determined to save the last watt of energy. Budget for a tea-towel for those few dips and this is a great slimline dishwasher.

Indesit DSFO3T224ZUK – What you need to know

• General wash performance: It might be small, but it’s mighty powerful at washing your dishes. Excellent wash results on a range of different programmes.
• Tough cleaning job performance:  Scrambled egg dried onto a glass bowl is a serious challenge, but the Indesit DSFO3T224ZUK did a great job with only one tiny piece of egg-residue left behind.
• Drying performance: A few water marks remained on the top of mugs and plates, but overall drying was solid. With no “extra dry” option, a tea towel will be handy for those last drips.
• Running costs: Low, low, low – thanks to excellent energy efficiency and super-low water use. Under £45 a year for 250 full 10-place loads is a bargain.

Related: Best dishwasher

The Indesit DSFO3T224ZUK dishwasher is slim, easy to use, effective and energy-efficient

Sporting a traditional white body in a svelte 45cm width, the Indesit DSFO3T224ZUK could be the perfect addition to the smaller kitchen. It’s nice and easy to use thanks to its clear buttons and control panel with orange display. There’s a clear icon list of the nine available programmes along the top edge of the door, with graphics that actually make a lot of sense.

The clean control panel is easy to understand

On the inside it’s a nicely spacious machine, despite its slimline exterior. The height-adjustable top basket has four foldable cup holders – although, unusually, they didn’t have specific slots for wine glass stems. The base of the rack is angled to help keep the bases of cups pooling with water and there’s a small set of folding plate tines for saucers or small side plates.

On the high setting (for larger pots, pans and plates below) the upper basket starts to become a bit cramped but remains fine for cups, smaller bowls and compact glasses. Drop it down and you can squeeze in a reasonable sized wine glass, too. The rack rolls back and forth easily, and the height adjustment clips operate smoothly.

Although slimline, the dishwasher has a spacious upper basket

The lower rack features eight smooth-rolling wheels that allow it to be pushed in and out with ease, even when fully loaded with heavy crockery. The standard cutlery basket features cut-outs that allow it to be placed anywhere along the rows of folding plate tines. Fold those down and you have a surprisingly vast area for larger pots and pans.

The “eXtra” option is a great touch, allowing you to remove the top basket to wash very tall or bulkier items up to a whopping 53cm tall. We’re still trying to work out what sort of kitchen pot, pan or dish could possibly boast those sorts of dimensions, though. We tried a rather more bijou stir-fry stained wok plus some baking trays, and they all came out pristinely clean in under an hour on the eXtra programme.

The programme roster covers an ECO 50ºC wash for the lowest running costs. That took the best part of four hours to complete but did deliver super-clean results while using less than 0.8kWh of electricity and just 6.5 litres of water! We drunk more tea than that over the four hours. Most people use less water than that for a single bowl full of washing-up, so for the 10 places settings you can cram into this Indesit, it’s extremely water efficient.

Swifter programmes and the Push & Go feature work well for the Indesit DSFO3T224ZUK

If time isn’t on your side, there are much quicker programmes with intensive 65 and normal 50, although you can expect electricity and water use to go up by about 50%. Mind you, this is still only 1.2kWh and 9 litres of water so still far from pricey to run.

There’s a Delicates programme running at 45ºC, which was perfect for fragile ceramics and glasses, and a Rapid 30 that did a reasonable job on lightly soiled loads in under 30 minutes – albeit without drying. On that note, there’s no extra dry option for any programme, so don’t throw away your tea towels just yet.

There are the standard cleaning and rinse aid containers

The Indesit DSFO3T224ZUK aims to make life easy with the single Push & Go button. Simply press the button and hold for a second, and it delivers a basic all-round wash programme in about 1hr 40mins. You still have to load the dishwasher, ensure you add the cleaning powder and so forth, so we do question the requirement to remove one button press from the whole operation – but it’s there if you want it.

There are nine programmes to choose from, including the fast Push & Go for which there’s a dedicated button

Adding some fun and funky colour to proceedings is Indesit’s Baby Zoo. No, not a travelling carnival of junior performers, but a dedicated, colourful child-entertaining and removable rack for baby and children’s items. Use this with the Baby Care programme and it’s perfect for bottles and other small baby items, although Indesit is at pains to point out that it isn’t a sterilising cycle.

The Baby Zoo looked great, but it took us a rather long time to actually get it securely seated in the dishwasher and we did wonder if it’s wasn’t just a bit gimmicky.

The Baby Zoo looks cute but feels gimmicky

What we were all agreed upon is that the is a cracking little slimline dishwasher that holds a bigger wash load than you might expect; it washes well and does so using frugal amounts of water and electricity. We also noted during our testing that the Indesit was nicely quiet, too. If you’ve got a 45cm gap in the kitchen going a-begging, the is a near-perfect filler.

Should I buy the Indesit Push & Go?

Fitting into just a 45cm gap, offering fabulous cleaning results, easy use and contemporary looks, the Indesit DSFO3T224ZUK is a  strong contender in the slimline dishwasher market. The interior is surprisingly capacious, the programme choice well-considered, and it’s so quiet you’ll barely notice it during the wash cycle.

We’re not convinced by the Push & Go feature, and the drying results aren’t quite as stellar as the dishwasher’s superb cleaning performance. However, for a super-efficient slimline dishwasher for the smaller kitchen, the Indesit DSFO3T224ZUK is hard to beat at the price.