Dishwashers are the unsung heroes of the kitchen. Washing up by hand sucks, everyone hates it, and then here is this marvellous machine that just wants to take this one chore off your hands. They’re the best.
The hard part, though, is looking at the sea of dishwashers in the shop and working out which one is the one for you. Luckily, I think I’ve found the best one before you jump to the models that are handmade in Europe by skilled artisans.
The LG 15 Place QuadWash Dishwasher (also known by its XD2A25MB model name) may have a stupid name, but it’s a dishwasher that can wash 15 place settings without you hearing anything other than water going down the drain. It’s the very definition of a machine that does exactly what it promises and then gets out of the way the rest of the time.
I’ve now spent several months marvelling at the wonder of the LG 15 Place QuadWash Dishwasher XD2A25MB, and here are my thoughts.
Table of contents
- First impressions
- Specifications and price
- Cleaning performance
- Maintenance
- Extra features
- Who is the LG 15 Place QuadWash Dishwasher for?
First impressions
The LG XD2A25MB is a sleek appliance. It does have an LED timer on the front, but that’s invisible when the dishwasher isn’t running. All the buttons for starting various cycles are on the top of the door, so they’re only visible when the dishwasher is open. It’s obviously designed to be unobtrusive, and I appreciate that.
The setup was easy, mainly because I had an appliance installer guy do it. From the looks of it, it seems about as straightforward as any dishwasher installation.
Hooking it up to the LG ThinQ app was also straightforward. The app doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, but it does allow the user to download some extra cycles and get notifications when a cycle is finished and when the dishwasher wants more rinse aid.
LG 15 Place QuadWash Dishwasher (XD2A25MB) specifications and price
| Model name | LG XD2A25MB |
| Price | $1,899 |
| Warranty | 10 years on the inverter, 2 years on the product (in addition to your Australian consumer law rights |
| Manufacturer’s website | LG Australia |
| Energy rating | 4 stars |
| Place setting capacity | 15 |
| Installation type | Free Standing |
| Cutlery rack or basket | Cutlery Rack |
| Operating noise | 40dBA |
| WELS Water Consumption L | 11.1 |
| WELS Water Rating | 5.5 Star |
| Energy Consumption (KWh/365 uses) | 246 |
| Product WxHxD in mm | 600 x 850 x 600 |
Cleaning performance
First of all, the most important thing: this dishwasher cleans plates, pots, pans and cutlery really well. It’s rare that I take something out of the dishwasher that still has food encrusted on it, and when I do, it’s usually due to user error.
While there are a lot of settings with various degrees of hardcoreness, I found the eco setting to strike a good balance. Combined with the Aldi Logix Platinum Dishwasher Capsules, and some Finish Rinse Aid, there was almost no cleaning task that it wasn’t equal to.
Admittedly, I do usually soak my pots overnight after making something intense like a risotto, but even then, I use stainless steel pots and pans. There is no non-stick in my household, which means that everything sticks and burns on. We do things on hard mode.
I performed tests with burnt on risotto (not soaked), dried tomato sauce, dried chia pudding (essentially super glue), dried porridge, and coffee in white mugs.
The burnt-on risotto came off surprisingly well. There were still some burn marks left on the pot, but all the food chunks were gone, and I could barely get the burn marks off with elbow grease. Dried tomato sauce came off easily; the plate looked almost brand new.
The chia pudding did have some remnants left behind, but far less than on the 2018 model Bosch my dad has at his house. The small amount of remnants came off with a cloth afterwards, so it did 97% of the job. Anyone who has had to wash off dried chia pudding in yogurt from a toddler knows how hard it is to clean, so hats off to the dishwasher. Porridge dried on a spoon also mostly came off, with just a particularly dried fleck needing to be scraped off with a nail.
Coffee was no problem at all for the LG XD2A25MB. The mugs look new.
All up, in the months that I’ve had this dishwasher, I have never once had to curse it for failing at its task. That should be the bare minimum, but it is actually kinda impressive given the hell I put my dishwasher through.
Maintenance
Sadly, while a dishwasher can wash dishes, it cannot wash itself. This is disappointing on many levels.
The good news is that maintaining the LG XD2A25MB is easy. The filters are simple to remove, and they’ve clearly been designed to be as quick and efficient to clean as possible. An easy task once a month.
After around six months, we haven’t yet had anything get stuck in the spray arm, partially due to the clever design. Our much older Smeg blade arms seemed designed to consume as much detritus as possible. The LG XD2A25MB arms just want to put out water and not consume, and I appreciate that.
I also like that it’s easier to put in rinse aid than the 2020 model LG dishwasher we had previously. We don’t spill as much liquid, and the process is less frustrating.
Extra features
This model has a few extra features that just make for an easier and nicer experience.
My favourite is a small thing that’s becoming more common in dishwashers, but I still really appreciate: it has a light inside. It’s such a small thing, but it makes a real difference when emptying the dishwasher. Not worth upgrading for, obviously, but a quality of life improvement.
Next favourite is the removable wine glass rack. Growing up, I remember my parents always having problems with the stems of their wine glasses getting broken in the dishwasher, or not quite fitting on the fold-down roof of the top drawer.
This removable wine glass rack is able to accommodate four wine glasses of varying stem heights to keep them fully protected from the chaos of the rest of the dishwasher. It even fits our weird (but pretty), very large wine glasses that we use for mocktails. It’s a thoughtful touch, but also easy to take out if it’s not something you need for that cycle.
The biggest difference I noticed with this dishwasher is just how quiet it is. I had to check multiple times that it was actually running the first week I had it. The sound of the water going down the drain is the only part of the cycle I can actually hear until it sings to herald the end of the cycle (and you can turn the jingle off if you want it to be completely silent).
This is huge for parents with small children who sleep lightly, those in small apartments, and people who just don’t want to have to hear the motor in their dishwasher. 40dBA is super quiet.
The LG ThinQ app adds smart features to the dishwasher, but not particularly intense ones, and they’re entirely optional if you don’t want another app. Being able to download an extra cycle or two if you have a specific need is nice, and I enjoy getting notifications that let me know when a cycle is done, or the machine would like more rinse aid.
But it’s not like there’s an in-machine camera to monitor your dishes, or ‘smart insights’ that judge the way you use the appliance. LG’s approach to smart technology is largely hands-off, which is going to be ideal for a lot of people.
My one issue is that LG tried to get fancy by using touch controls instead of buttons. The problem with this is that touch controls sometimes don’t work if your hands are wet, which is annoying on a device used by people who would have wet hands from getting dishes out of the sink. It’s trying to be fancier than it needs to be. A good old-fashioned physical button would have been far more appropriate here.
Who is the LG 15 Place QuadWash Dishwasher for?
This is the dishwasher for people who have a mid-high budget and higher standards for their dishes. It’s a sleek and beautiful machine that is extremely capable. The only people I wouldn’t recommend it for are those who either want a fully built-in machine (this is freestanding) or need a different-shaped dishwasher.
The LG 15 Place QuadWash Dishwasher XD2A25MB is expensive, yes, that will disqualify it for a lot of people. But if it’s in the budget, it’s the size and shape that you want, then this is a great dishwasher that I would recommend.
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