Why You Can Trust CNET Frigidaire FGID2476SF review: Frigidaire dishwasher has fancy looks, so-so cleaning power
The $850 Frigidaire FGID2476SF dishwasher deserves a place on your list, just not at the top.
After running a cycle with the heat dry option turned on, I opened the $850 Frigidaire FGID2476SF and was surprised to find the dishes cool to the touch. I examined the plates and bowls that comprise our set of testing dishes and found very few water spots and only the occasional missed droplet. Frigidaire's new EvenDry feature did its job well. But when you compare it to other dishwashers we've tested, it's not the best. In fact, this $700 LG and this $400 GE both did better on their respective power dry tests.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The Frigidaire FGID2476SF's power dry scores epitomize the rest of the dishwasher's issues. It's competent at cleaning, has a fine mix of cycles and a couple of nice extras like a smudge-proof stainless finish and great wine stem holders. But it's not the best at anything it does. It's not the best value, best cleaner or most feature rich. Head here for our current list of favorites. If those aren't available at your local retailer and the FGID2476SF is on sale, it's competent and worth your consideration.
Stylish design
The FGID2476SF has a lot of niceties I've come to expect from dishwashers in the Frigidaire Gallery series. The smudgeproof stainless finish looks great and does well to resist fingerprints. The stem holders securely kept our wine glasses in place. The upper rack raises and lowers a couple of inches with a simple lift. Plus, the blue wheel of jets at the bottom -- called OrbitClean -- gets water into the nooks of your dishes and avoids missed spots.
Otherwise, this $850 model rounds out its features with six different cycles -- Heavy, Normal, 30 Minute Wash, China Crystal, Energy Saver and Rinse Only. It runs at a reasonably quiet 51 dB and holds as many as 14 place settings. I'll attest that we were comfortably able to load our test set of 10 place settings.
The FGID2476SF has a nice stainless finish and a hidden control panel.
A couple of other extras also stand out. The EvenDry feature is a new addition to Frigidaire models this year. EvenDry uses a fan to circulate heat that's similar to a convection fan in an oven. The FGID2476SF also has a "Stay-in-Place" door. As you'd expect, you can open the door of the FGID2476SF and set it to whatever angle you want, and it'll stay put. I liked this little extra, and it's a nice touch if you want to open your door a certain way at the end of a cycle to let out the steam.
You can buy the $850 Frigidaire FGID2476SF now from Home Depot, Best Buy, Sears and other large appliance retailers. I'm a big fan of the smudge-proof stainless finish, but you can also find it in black or white for $20 less. Head to Frigidaire's site to find retailers in your area. As usual with large appliances , look for a discount off of the list price. Home Depot has it right now for $640.
Comparatively sparse
Several of the specs of the FGID2476SF fall short of the comparable $700 LG LDF5545ST, which has room for 15 place settings, offers nine cycles, and runs even quieter at 48 dB. The LG LDF5545ST also has a few creative options you can add onto your cycle, such as washing only half of the dishwasher at a time or turning the water pressure up for your dishes on the lower rack while gently spraying the upper rack.
The FGID2476SF has lots of options, but nothing exciting.
The FGID2476SF has a few options itself, but they're all pretty basic. The water pressure options are confusingly worded -- you pick between scour, surge and spray, which are essentially high, medium and low. The FGID2476SF has a stainless tub and hidden control panel which are nice for the price, but I wish it had a third rack, specialized water jets, Wi-Fi smarts or something else to help it stand out. The $600 GE GDF610PMJES is much more feature-rich and costs less.
Coming clean
The cleaning power of the FGID2476SF doesn't help it stand out either, but it's not a bad cleaner. To test our dishwashers, we dirty a set of 112 dishes, which include plates, bowls, wine glasses, coffee cups, silverware and serving dishes. Each dish gets smeared with one of 13 different types of foods that range from sticky stuff like eggs, coffee and fruit juice to bulky stuff such as spinach, oatmeal, and mac and cheese.
After we let the dirty dishes sit overnight, we run the dishwasher on a normal cycle with no extra drying time allowed, then put each dish under a light and look for remaining dirt. Head here for more details on our testing procedure, but suffice it to say, we're trying to stress out our dishwashers when we test them.
We found flecks of redeposited spinach on the plates, but the FGID2476SF didn't miss any spots.
The FGID2476SF responded well to all sticky substances and didn't miss any spots, but the filter wasn't able to keep up with all of the noodles and spinach leaves. We found green flecks on lots of dishes after the run -- a sign of redeposited dirt. We mix porcelain and plastic dishes in our load and the plastic dishes were worse. As you can see from the chart above, the FGID2476SF did better on silverware and glasses.
Without extra time for drying, the FGID2476SF left water marks everywhere. Since it's much better with heat dry enabled, the low drying scores aren't too concerning. But I would have preferred if the dishwasher had just left the dishes wet instead of cloudy and covered in splotches.
The FGID2476SF is a good dryer with heat dry turned on, earning a 62.8 percent on our power dry tests. It left a few water marks on glasses, but not many. For the most part, dishes came out sparkling. Even though the FGID2476SF falls a few percentage points short of the LG LDF5545ST -- which earned a 67.7 percent on the same test -- its EvenDry feature works well, and you'd be hard pressed to notice the difference unless you were carefully comparing them side-by-side.
You'll need to help the FGID2476SF by scraping off bulky foods as you load your dishwasher.
Several midrange models outscored the FGID2476SF on our cleaning tests, including the two in the chart above. Functionally, that means the $700 LG LDF5545ST and $800 Bosch SHS63VL5UC can handle any dirt you throw at it. The results of the FGID2476SF mean you need to do a little more work to help it out. If you scrape your dishes before you load them, you'll be happy with the cleaning power of the Frigidaire FGID2476SF since it doesn't miss spots or leave behind sticky substances.
The verdict
I've rattled off numerous flaws of the Frigidaire FGID2476SF throughout this review, but the truth is that it's not that bad. In fact, it's fine. My main criticism is that you can find dishwashers that cost less and do just about everything better. Still, with a large appliance, you might not need a model that's best-in-class, and you might not be able to find a model that's on our best list depending on the selection in the area.
If that's the case, and especially if you're fond of the Frigidaire/Electrolux brand, I'm happy to report that this model is competent and it looks great. If you scrape your dishes, you'll also be very happy with how it cleans, and you likely won't miss the nice extras from other dishwashers. So the Frigidaire FGID2476SF isn't a bad dishwasher, it's just lacking anything to help it elevate above the competition.