alt Hacker NewsI have a previous generation Bosch 500 series dishwasher. For my use case I get the best results with the heavy cycle. However I found that adding loose detergent in there for the "prewash" resulted in soapy residue being left on the dishes if used in conjunction with the heavy cycle (but not with the normal and auto cycles).
Alec's dishwasher videos are based on some rather primitive dishwashers. For instance he talks about his test unit not flushing out the spray arms, but Bosch/Siemens filters the water going to the spray arms so it wouldn't recirculate dirty water anyways. Same deal with the prewash. Bosch uses a turbidity sensor to determine how many "prewash" cycles to run and when to reuse the water, something his test unit very clearly does not.
Yeah, I think one has to understand the man to really get something useful of what he says. He is kind of a cheap man and much of what he says really applies to low-end devices. Some expensive devices may have similar problems to the cheaper stuff but really if you buy a premium device you won't have many of the problem he talk about.
I know this type of person very well. They always have some reductionist approach to things, where for them, the expensive stuff is mostly marketing with added bells-and-whistles and largely works the same. My experience is that this isn't quite right. Some brands do have a premium that is more related to style/status but if you buy some seriously engineered stuff it will work much better most of the time.