I give this product two stars as an average: 3 stars for design, 1 for quality. Because most of my dishes and glasses go into the dishwasher I wanted a large open dish rack for pots and plastic bowls and containers. I don't find the "wave" design holds up these items very well, but there's plenty of room to stack them; the utensil basket isn't really deep enough to keep cooking utensils from flopping over, but I can live with these issues. My biggest complaint is that the stainless steel wires have rust on them! Each juncture where two wires meet has rust around it, but there's also rust at the ends of each wire. Even some of the wires have rust along the lengths with more on the underside than above. I have aluminum pots so they aren't the cause of the rust. A $50 stainless steel dish rack should not rust after only two months use...a major disappoinment!
This is a huge dish rack with excellent drainage. However, the sides are clip on plastic pieces which broke within 2 months of use. The plastic parts hold your glasses and silverware. They clip into the stainless steel rack. The hole in the plastic that gets clippped into the stainless steel broke and no longer stays attached. The glass "fingers" to hold glasses, broke. Not that they ever held glasses. Everything fell off of them. This is the worse dish rack I've ever owned. If the plastic was replaced by metal, it would be great. I'm sorry I dumped my Rubbermaid dish rack and replaced it with this one.
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First let me say, I'll never, ever forgive Rubbermaid for discontinuing large drain boards with the lip on the short end, nor for so seriously downgrading the quality of their dish drains. They were long-lived, functional, easy to clean, and all-around user friendly.
But even Rubbermaid's original quality items don't last forever, so I bought this OXO Good Grips folding stainless steel *contraption* (there's no better word for it), at a pretty steep price, in the hope that at least the capacity would be sufficient. I don't know about you, but the major reason I need a dish drain is for large items that don't go in the dishwasher, like cutting boards and large pots and pans.
I've used it for about 24 hours now, and can say it has a couple of good points but several bad ones as well:
The main good point is that it is quite capacious and works well enough for those big spaghetti pots, long knives, big wooden spoons, plastic dishes and the like while the dishwasher does what it's good at: the plates, glasses, cutlery, and cups. It also appears to keep the counter underneath dry, which matters a lot.
The other major good point is that the board underneath can be rotated so the spout points in whatever direction you wish, so in turn the drain can be oriented as you wish. Thank you, OXO, for that little design thought.
However, it is a delicate assembly. It's got very fancy utensil holders at both ends that are supposed to clip into place to keep them from tipping over. The clips don't stay clipped, so if you try to move the monster, say, to get the spout a little farther over the sink, and accidentally grab the utensil holders to do so, they come unmoored.
The board doesn't stay well seated under the drain, either. The slightest nudge dislodges it, allowing the dishes to wet the counter top. I admit it, I'm a klutz, and nudge it constantly, and constantly have to reposition it.
The cup holders would work only for something like a lightweight (plastic) child's juice cup. They're not tall or sturdy enough to hold even an ordinary coffee mug upright.
This thing is bulky. When the spout is well-positioned to drain into the sink, the utensil holder sticks a good two inches over the sink as well. So that means I hit it all the time while washing anything large. Which means, the utensil holder disconnects and the drain board moves out of place. Sigh...I feel like I'm fighting with it constantly.
Had I designed it, I would have made the wire arcs intended to hold plates vertically at least a half inch larger in all dimensions. As they are they barely hold a cutting board, or, say, the glass carousel from the microwave, upright. I also would have made the water spout longer, and a bit wider.
I haven't yet attempted to clean it. We'll see whether the water spots can be removed with a little dish soap and gentle scrubbing. If not, the next best cleaner is Barkeeper's Friend Lime & Rust Remover. It worked extremely well on the Rubbermaid drain board, let's hope it doesn't destroy this contraption!
ADDENDUM after a full week of use:
I like it better, we've got a more friendly relationship and I've learned how to avoid knocking the board out of place and so forth. I've also discovered that if you put a mug over TWO of the cup fingers at a time, it works as it's supposed to. And finally, today I used a little Barkeeper's Friend Lime & Rust Remover on a wet sponge to wipe away the water spots on the board and it worked perfectly. The board did not melt away, and the spots came off just fine and it looks like new after being dried with a paper towel. YAY!
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Very sturdy, holds a lot of dishes, and water drains right out. It's a huge improvement over my last dish rack. My only complaint is that the utensil holders are a little awkward because they don't hold the utensils upright very well. But I like the slots for small knives, which keeps them away from other utensils.
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I've had this dish rack for less than a year. Some problems were evident right out of the box but others have developed over time. Our kitchen sink has a very high lip and the elevated drip spout is not high enough. Perhaps I should have taken the rack back at that time but I decided to prop the rack up off the kitchen counter. This never worked very well and the rack has consistently bled water onto the counter. This rack will work with an under-mounted kitchen sink but it will not work for sinks with a raised lip.
I was skeptical about the quality of the plastic parts and, sure enough, all are chipped or broken after gentle use. The uprights for holding glasses are flimsy at best. One is now gone. There are structural cracks at the joints where the wire ends engage the plastic.
Finally, this product is not easy to assemble and has a tendency to auto-disassemble. To build the unit, you insert the ends of metal rods into keyholes in the plastic ends, then pivot the plastic down to clip the bottom onto the metal rack. This is a fussy operation and doesn't hold very well. When you move the rack to clean up the water that accidentally pools beneath it, the rack frequently comes apart.
I have been a big fan of this brand for years (best vegetable peeler in the world!) but this item is poorly designed and poorly manufactured. Please avoid.
I was a little worried about this purchase because some reviewers said it was cheaply made and only had one drawer. I received the chest and it had two drawers. It has good construction, although the drawers are a little loose. The wood is nicely stained. The handles are securely fastened. Overall, for the price, it was worth it.
