Hisense Hi9 HS693A90ADBX Review

Design and Features

• Touchscreen interface
• Large interior
• Works with ConnectLife app

I’ve been impressed with Hisense’s most recent washing machines, and the Hisense Hi9 HS693A90ADBX takes some of its inspiration from them, with a 6.86-inch touchscreen for wash cycle and option selection.

This is angled 15° upwards, so it’s easy to see when you’re standing up. Using this screen, it’s easy to select a wash cycle, with the display showing what the selected programme is for and how long it will take to run.

Once you’ve selected a wash cycle, there are additional options, including the ability to select to wash just the top basket or just the bottom basket. These are useful if you’ve only got a half load and want to get washing.

When a cycle first starts, the screen shows the timer, but this display turns off partway through cleaning, so you can’t see how long’s left at a glance, which is a shame.

Open the Hisense Hi9 HS693A90ADBX’s door, and you see the three racks, which are mostly well-designed, with some nice touches.

On the bottom rack, the tines at the back fold down, so it’s easier to get in larger items, such as pans.

I like the flip-up bottle stands, which stand vertically to keep taller items standing upright.

Hisense also provides a couple of clip-on cutlery racks for this bottom section, which are useful for very dirty items that need a more intense wash.

Overall, I found this section easy to load up with my selection of plates, bowls and dirty pans.

Moving to the middle rack, this can be placed in one of two positions. The higher position is better if you need more room below, and the sensible layout means that you can still fit in most items.

Typically, long-stem wine glasses are the issue on this rack, but the Hisense Hi9 HS693A90ADBX has plenty of glass holders. And, thanks to the sliding cutlery rack above, I could make more room to allow a wine glass to poke through. I found it moderately easier to load tall wine glasses into the Hotpoint H7IHP42LUK but there’s not too much in it.

This middle rack has two sets of folding tines, so you can stick them up for smaller plates and saucers, or drop them down if you want to fit in more mugs.

Overall, this is a large rack, and it took a lot of glasses and mugs before I’d filled it.

On the top is the cutlery rack, which can be full width, or either side can slide out of the way, so there’s more room below.

Hisense provides some clip-in cutlery holders that you can place where you want. It’ s a slightly fiddly job to start with, but once in place they’re set up the way that you want.

It’s a very large cutlery rack and, even with one side slid out of the way, I found it difficult to fill up.

This cutlery rack has a dedicated sprayer above it for targeting the cutlery.

In the base of the dishwasher is the standard spray arm, plus the corner boost sprayers. These target the back corners of the dishwasher, so place any very dirty items right at the back.

In the door, you’ll notice that there’s a standard tablet dispenser, plus a removable reservoir that you can fill with liquid detergent. With the latter, the Hisense Hi9 HS693A90ADBX can auto-dose detergent, and you can set the amount to use. I think that this dishwasher works best in this mode.

Depending on the wash cycle, the door can open automatically at the end, and there’s a fan to assist drying, too.

ConnectLife is supported, too. Via the app you can set the wash cycle that you want to use, plus get more information on it, and you get notifications when a wash has finished. That mostly makes up for the screen turning off.

Performance

• Very low running costs
• Capable of deep cleaning
• Eco cycle items may need a rinse

I used the Hisense Hi9 HS693A90ADBX with gel detergent, relying on its auto dosing. I started with a full load on the Eco cycle. As an A-rated appliance, I was impressed with how little the dishwasher cost to run: just 14p for the cycle.

Given that the dishwasher is rated for 16 places, that means that the cost per place is just 0.89p. That easily makes the Hisense Hi9 HS693A90ADBX the cheapest-to-run dishwasher that I’ve tested.

Cleaning performance is mostly good, although I found that some items may need a pre-rinse on this cycle, or you may want to switch to higher-temperature, more intense wash.

My coffee and tea mugs were cleaned perfectly, with the dried-on stains completely removed.

The same was true of my plate with dried-on ketchup: this was all removed with no rinsing required.

I was also impressed with the cleaning power on my frying pan, which I used to make scrambled eggs: this came out spotless.

My toughest test is the bowl used to make scrambled eggs in the microwave. Placed in the middle rack, most of the mess had come out.

I found that a few items didn’t clean up quite as well. My mac and cheese plate, for example, came out with quite a blob of leftover food. A rinse or better scrape before hand would have helped.

Simarly, the spoon and fork I used with the mac and cheese didn’t clean up very well with the eco cycle.

Switching to the intensive wash cycle, the cost increased to 35p. However, the cleaning performance also stepped up a notch.

This time around, my mac and cheese plate was completely clean.

I also found that the bowl used to make scrambled egg in the microwave was completely clean. That’s impressive work and shows that this dishwasher can handle very dirty items.

There’s also an automatic AI Intensive wash. This cost 37p to run, and the dishwasher automatically adjusts energy and water usage based on the levels of dirt detected. Cleaning power was similar for this test as for the intensive wash, but I’d be tempted to use AI Intensive, particularly if you’re not sure which wash cycle to use.

If you want items clean fast, there are a few options. First, you can use the Speed wash option on some cycles to speed up the wash at the expense of additional energy and water usage. 

There’s also a Fast wash option that cleans in just 30-minutes, and is ideal for items that are lightly soiled and that don’t need drying.

I found that this latter option cost 10p to run, but items came out pretty wet and cleaning performance is quite basic.

If you want a slightly more intense wash, there’s a 1-hour option, which increases running costs to 29p. However, cleaning performance is much improved. While this wash is aimed at lightly soiled items, my stained coffee mug was cleaned properly.

Should you buy it?