Akai AK-DW12P

Recommending against! – We just rented in a place renovated only about a year ago. The dishwasher is near-new. It’s noisy, it takes *forever* (90min is the shortest setting), and a prong on the rack has snapped off already. The internal layout was bizarre- probably the worst I’ve seen in any dishwasher. The wash quality was really bad until we started putting the… Read more

dishwasher tab into the cutlery basket (we always scraped the dishes clean first because this thing’s performance seemed so precarious we kept worrying it was going to die on us). The filter was flimsy as hell but seemed to do a okay job. The whole machine has a cheap, flimsy feel to it, to be honest. The door latch then stopped working and it wouldn’t shut, meaning we had no dishwasher for the last ten days or so. I was so grateful to get back home to our Siemens dishwasher and its near-silent 30-min wash cycle! From what I could see, it cost about $400-500 before the retailer stopped selling it (I had to look, because it was such a shocker of an appliance I was curious about the cost!).

Mixed feelings about this – So bought this from bunnings per link - https://www.bunnings.com.au/akai-60cm-12-place-setting-black-dishwasher_p0369858 as part of their black friday special for $347. Its on par the pricing with previous posts although this is a black version. We wanted a black dishwasher to match our kitchen so when this came out, we thought to give it a try.… Read more

I guess there was no reviews on bunnings website itself so had to rely on PR which as you can see is mixed so i guess with the pricing being low we took the risk. Managed to fit it on the boot of my Maxda CD-5.

From the look wise, its not a bad colour of black and fitted with our kitchen. So installed it with a friend since we were replacing it with an existing fisher&paykel. The first thing i noticed was inside of the dishwasher, the back wall part kinda moved when you touched against it which i thought was weird. I looked into my old fisher&paykel and noticed that the walls were all formed together so the back wouldn't bend where as the akai one the walls are seperated between left, back, right and theres like a silicone rubber between them. my worry is that maybe over time there would be leakages but hopefully not.

2nd - for some reason i thought this was a quiet unit but its i guess standard noise level like my old fisher&paykel. Anyhow you are mostly running this during the night time when everyone is asleep i guess.

3rd - no child lock so if you have any toddlers/kids then they can easily turn it on

4th - the first 2 times i tried to use it, i wanted to use the "rapid" option as that was the only one close to just rinse as theres no specific rinse option. I had 2 warning beeps which indicated there was no pressure to the water but luckily after the 3rd go it was alright so that was a Phew moment.

5th - after using it 1 time to do a clean, in the morning it was still alot of water drops in the dishwasher so whilst all dishes/cutlery were clean, there were still some water streaks. Doing 2nd wash now but i added rinse aid even though the tablet i use has this just to see the result. Update: so it was a bit more dry this time but there was still some water which I had to transfer the bowls and some plates to drying rack grrr

Lastly per the manual and i had to call tempo (as someone said, Akai just sold the support over to these guys which just routes you to the call centre in philippines) but it states "After every wash, turn off the water supply to the appliance and leave the door slightly ajar so moisture and odours are not trapped inside." Now with our old dishwasher we never had to do that but apparently its suggested to do this which is odd, can you imagine the amount of times you have to do this, i mean yeah you turn it off in the morning after doing a wash then god help you that you have to remember to put this back on before you turn the dishwasher on the next time you use it. Is this a standard procedure with all dishwashers ? not sure but yeah.

Would I recommend this dishwasher? If you are after a black and cheap dishwasher then yes else i would say save a bit more $$ to get a better durable dishwasher.

anyhow hope this review helps.

EDIT: So finally Bunnings allowed reviews for this machine and I saw one guy that had made a review. Gave it 0/5 and had a lengthy review and I could understand his issues with this machine. I feel like the same with mine so i'm changing this review and not recommending this dishwasher. At the same time, bunnings took it off from their website so you can't search this product at all.. surprise surprise lol

Surprisingly good – Was very surprised this dishwasher was so good. I did read these reviews prior to buying but bought it because it was so cheap - bought it for a rental property and ended using it for two months. It has cleaned baking dishes with potato bake caked on, stainless steel fry pan after cooking sausages - with no rinsing. I do believe you have to be… Read more

aware of how you stack it and also aware that the top rack is a little flimsy so you have to be careful to make sure it clicks in properly to ensure a proper spray of the top rack. I would definitely buy again for another property.

The worst appliance I ever bought!!!! – Bought at Bunnings for $375 You definitely get what you paid for : when using the extensive program the powder doesn't come out, you have to wash (rinsing is not enough)all the stuff before putting it in otherwise it doesn't clean (water consumption literally down the drain)Also you can only put large dinner plates (only 2) on the outer space's of… Read more

the bottom drawer otherwise the water swirl hits the crockery. drawers are not stable and secured hard to get back in after loading

its now just filling a hole in the kitchen.