GE Café CDD420P4TW2 Double Drawer Dishwasher Review

About the GE Café CDD420P4TW2 Dishwasher

• Dimensions: 34" x 23.56" x 21.75" (H x W x D)
• Finishes: Matte white, matte black, stainless steel
• Cycles: Pots, Plus, Normal, Express, China, Rinse
• Cycle options: Ultra Dry, Fast, Sanitize
• Capacity: Up to 14 place settings
• Special features: 6 handle treatment options (brushed bronze, brushed black, brushed copper, brushed stainless, brushed brass, flat black), knock to pause cycle
• Control panel: Top-control
• ADA compliant: No
• Energy Star rated: No
• User manual: GE Café CDD420P4TW2 dishwasher drawer manual

The GE Café CDD420P4TW2's form factor immediately sets it apart from other dishwashers. Its unique, two-drawer design is more like the setup you'd find behind a bar than in a home kitchen. This isn't an industrial dishwasher, though, and it can be customized with three finishes and six different metallic handle treatments to create a look that complements your kitchen or matches your personal style.

Opening up the top drawer reveals a plastic interior with coated wire racks. With a design-forward appliance like this, a portion of the price is going to its looks, but the interior of this GE Café dishwasher feels a bit cheap when compared to its gorgeous exterior with customized metal handles.

There are stem holders along the left edge and a utensil basket on the right, towards the front. The right wall has fold-out, adjustable-height shelves for additional storage. Underneath the wire basket are the spray arm and filter.

The lower drawer features a similar layout, but it's a little shallower than the top drawer.

What we like

It's capable of delivering a high-quality clean in both drawers

While not a stain-scrubbing superstar like the 2023 Bosch 800 Series dishwasher, the GE Café double drawer dishwasher is no slouch.

The dishwasher's Heavy cycle is the one to use for your most stubborn stains, getting rid of over 98% of our test stains, when we ran it through our dishwasher testing procedures in Reviewed's Cambridge, Mass., labs. The Normal cycle is good to use for everything else, and it still managed to clear away over 93% of the test stains.

Its two-drawer design allows for rolling wash cycles—or just provides easy access

If you're interested in this dishwasher, it's probably because you like its aesthetic, or can leverage its relatively unique two-drawer design.

If you’re unfamiliar with a set-up like this: The idea is that you can stagger wash cycles between the two drawers. This lets you run a wash cycle in one drawer while maintaining space for dirty dishes in the second drawer. The idea is to run smaller cycles more frequently, so there's a constant stream of fresh, clean dishes.

When it comes to usability, we found it was easy to load and unload dishes quickly. Both the top and bottom drawers are easy to access, though you will have to stoop to unload everything from the lower drawer. And if you don't want to stoop, this dishwasher's design lets you just run cycles in the upper drawer, where everything is easily within reach.

Of course, if you have a ton of dishes in need of washing, you can also run both drawers simultaneously. When running both drawers at the same time, you'll need to program the wash cycles for each drawer separately.

There's a lot of customization options available

One of the benefits of the GE Café line-up is the degree of aesthetic customization available.

In addition to picking one of three different finishes (matte white, matte black, or stainless steel) you can also pick which handle treatment you'd prefer from a line-up of six: Brushed bronze, brushed black, brushed copper, brushed stainless, brushed brass, and flat black.

While this isn't exactly Bespoke levels of customization, the Café brand still provides more options than what you'll find on the average dishwasher.

The downside? Any customized accent hardware (handles, knobs, etc.) that isn’t part of the default set for each base color adds $359 to the overall price. Given that the base price is already over $1,000, this level of customization isn't ideal for every budget, but we do like that the option is available.

The interior fixtures can be repositioned easily

With each drawer measuring about half the size of a regular dishwasher's tub, customizing the space you do have is important. Thankfully, the CDD420P4TW2 has you covered.

Both drawers offer several features to help you fit in awkwardly-sized objects. To start, the tines are staggered so that one set can slide relative to the other, as pictured above. This can allow for bulkier cookware to slot in easily.

The sides also feature several tiny adjustable-height shelves that can be repositioned or folded down and away when not needed. These shelves are like a faux third rack, and can allow you to store larger utensils that don't really have a spot elsewhere in the dishwasher.

What we don’t like

We saw more redeposit than we would have expected

Despite getting a lot of stains off dishes, we saw a surprising amount of redeposit, which is when food soil is washed off one dish and onto another one.

This is typically caused by the filter not fully removing tiny particles, which then get mixed in with the wash water and wind up back on other dishes.

We often see issues with redeposit due to our most difficult stain: Pureed spinach, which—like any plant-based powder or protein—consists of tiny insoluble particles that are notoriously difficult on filters.

Few dishwashers are capable of handling it without at least some redeposit, but the CDD420P4TW2 in particular struggled with it—and it wasn't just the spinach. We also saw bits of meat from our test stains that washed onto other dishes after a wash cycle.

If we only saw problems with spinach, it wouldn’t raise as much concern, but since we saw larger pieces of food soil, the problem doesn't seem limited to just tiny specs of plant fiber. This may be a dishwasher where it's best to rinse plates before a wash cycle—and that's a waste of a valuable natural resource.

Some interior materials and features don’t live up to expectations

For a product in the design-forward Café line-up, the CDD420P4TW2 has a few details that feel decidedly off.

For a dishwasher in this price range, we are surprised to see such plasticky features: We expected to find a stainless-steel interior, and fixtures that feel a bit more robust. This dishwasher has a sleek, high-end look to its exterior, but not so much once you open it up.

We also found it difficult to access the filters for cleaning. Given the above issue with redeposit—we had to manually rinse out the filter during testing—we were disappointed this process wasn't more streamlined.

The rinse aid spout is also a bit difficult to access. It's located against the inner wall at the front of the drawer, facing away from the user at an angle. This angle makes it easier to fill while standing at the front of the device, but also means it sticks out and gets in the way when removing the racks—which you'll need to do each time you clean the filter.

The dispenser door was also sometimes difficult to get open. You need to push down on the tab to pop it open, but we occasionally had to press the button repeatedly to get it to unlatch.

Water tends to pool at the bottom of the drawer

Typically, pooled water indicates a drainage problem or an issue with the filter. Given the redeposit we saw during testing, we initially assumed it was a clogged filter, but according to the manual, some amount of pooling water is to be expected. However, the manual also calls this "normal condensation," which wasn't what we saw: We saw standing water that fell just short of reaching the underside of the rack.

Normal behavior or not, if you open up a dishwasher and see this much standing water, it doesn't feel normal. Fortunately, as the water level does stay below the rack, it won't affect your dishes' cleanliness.

What owners are saying

As a newer and relatively high-end appliance, there aren't a ton of reviews available online for the GE Café CDD420P4TW2—most sites only have a hundred reviews or so, far fewer than the thousands we typically see.

That being said, we can still draw some conclusions from what is available. Users have a more mixed reception than what we typically see, but still award it an average of 4.2 out of 5 stars across major retailers.

Those who are happy with their purchase are making good use of the two-drawer design, love the aesthetics of the machine, and find it quiet and intuitive to use.

The negative reviews admit the unit looks great, but they are unhappy that the interior isn’t up to the same build quality as the exterior. Other common complaints revolve around the standing water being an eyesore, the quality of the clean, or simply don’t find the two-drawer design to be useful.

Warranty

GE provides the standard one-year warranty of coverage for the Café CDD420P4TW2.

Other high-end dishwashers with emphasis on design, like the Bosch 800 Series SHP78CM5N, offer extended warranties for certain parts that last for five or 10 years.

Should you buy the GE Café CDD420P4TW2 Double Drawer Dishwasher?

Maybe—If you want the double-drawer style and are willing to pay a premium

The GE Café CDD420P4TW2 is more of a specialized appliance that may not appeal to a broad audience. Its two-drawer design is helpful in certain use cases and awkward in others.

This design has its perks, like providing easy access to the top drawer that doesn't require bending down to unload, and the ability to stagger wash cycles between the two drawers. If you don't generate a lot of dirty dishes on a regular basis, or you like the idea of the easy-to-reach design, give the GE Café CDD420P4TW2 a look.

This GE Café dishwasher is one of few double-drawer dishwashers on the market, which is why we've landed on a "Maybe" here in the conclusion. If there were more options available, some of the problem areas we experienced here would be disqualifying at this price, but there simply aren't many alternatives out there.

If you don't need a two-drawer design, or you simply want to get the best of the best, we recommend the Bosch 800 Series SHP78CM5N, our current highest-rated dishwasher.