The Midea Countertop Dishwasher earned praise for its excellent loading options and user-friendly design, which set it apart in this category. The Spruce reviewers highlighted that it takes dishes without pre-rinsing, and noted how quietly it runs. Some users found the missing built-in water tank and the trouble with faucet connections to be drawbacks. Buyers who want a compact, efficient cleaning solution are the fit; anyone who prefers a self-contained model may not be.
Full review
Cleans without a pre-rinse
Serious Eats found the Midea cleaned as well as a full-sized machine, handling sticky sauces and oily tomato residue without a pre-rinse, which is the test most countertop dishwashers fail. That is the single strongest thing anyone says about it, and it is the reason it earns a place on the list despite everything below.
Owners report a similar experience with baked-on food, with the caveat that tablets rather than powder are needed for the worst of it, and that the lower rack in particular tends to come out clean but not fully dry.
The best loading layout of the group
The Spruce singled out the racking as the best among the machines they looked at. Their account of what actually fits is specific: four to six large plates, four sets of silverware and three to six mugs or glasses, with bendable tines and a removable silverware holder that lets you reconfigure around awkward items. On a machine this small, rack design is the difference between a useful load and a frustrating one.
The footprint is genuinely compact and the machine is quiet in use, both of which matter in the small kitchens it is aimed at. The silverware holder is restrictive for longer utensils, which is the one loading complaint that recurs.
Faucet hookup that fights back
The connection is the recurring practical annoyance. Owners report difficulty getting the inlet hose attached and sealed to their tap, and because the machine is designed around a faucet hookup, a bad connection is not a minor inconvenience but a machine that cannot run.
Build quality is the weaker half of the package. The cabinet mixes stainless with plastic, and enough owners describe it as fragile that it counts against the machine rather than being an outlier opinion.
Error codes and early failures
The serious concern is reliability. Owner reports include units arriving with error codes and refusing to run out of the box, repeat replacements with identical faults, and machines that stopped working inside a month after water reached somewhere it should not have. Warranty handling has drawn complaints of its own, including requests for the original packaging as a condition of a claim.
The warranty runs a single year, which is short given how often these reports appear. Against a machine that cleans well and loads better than anything else in the category, that is the trade: strong performance, questionable odds on longevity.
For one or two people without plumbing
This suits a single person or a couple in a flat or a rental, cooking often, with counter space for it and no dishwasher connection to work with. It does not suit a family: the capacity tops out well below what a household of four generates in a day, and the machines The Spruce and Serious Eats both rated higher are the better answer if capacity or long-term reliability is the priority.
Strengths
- +Best loading options among tested models
- +Compact footprint suitable for small spaces
- +Quiet operation during cycles
- +Effective cleaning performance with no pre-rinsing required
Watch-outs
- −No built-in water tank, requires faucet connection
- −Some users reported difficulty attaching inlet hose
How it compares
The Midea model has better loading options than the Farberware and Hava models, but it lacks a built-in water tank, unlike the Comfee and Hermitlux models. It's more efficient than the Danby in terms of water usage, but it has more complex controls than the Hava and lacks the specialized cycles of the Comfee and Danby models.
Rating sources
“This compact dishwasher from Hava is our favorite countertop model because it holds a surprising amount of dishes and cleans them extremely well.”
“The Comfee countertop dishwasher can deliver sparklingly clean and bone-dry dishes in no time.”
Our 4.3 score is the average of these published ratings. Ratings marked * were derived from the reviewer’s written analysis or video transcript — the publisher didn’t print an explicit numeric score, so we inferred one from their own words. Click through to verify. More about methodology.
