Samsung, LG and Maytag took the top spot in nine of 12 appliance categories in J.D. Power’s 2026 U.S. Appliance Satisfaction Study, released this month, while brands that led the field just a year earlier, including GE and Whirlpool in refrigerators, failed to crack the top two in any fridge category this time around.
Who Won What
J.D. Power surveyed 28,411 people who purchased a major kitchen or laundry appliance between April 2025 and April 2026, scoring satisfaction on a 1,000-point scale across 12 segments. Samsung was the biggest winner by category count, taking French door refrigerators (733), side-by-side refrigerators (750), top-mount freezers (715, its second consecutive year in that segment), over-the-range microwaves (716), clothes dryers (727) and tying KitchenAid for the dishwasher win (720 apiece).
LG won both range/cooking (721) and wall ovens (732), plus top-load washers (719). Maytag topped front-load washers at 741, the single highest score of any individual appliance category in this year’s study. Whirlpool’s lone win came in cooktops (724). Best Buy was the top-rated appliance retailer at 726.
“At Samsung, every innovation starts with our customers, making this recognition based on their experiences especially meaningful,” said Michael McDermott, Executive Vice President of Samsung Electronics America’s Consumer Electronics Business, in the company’s own announcement of the results.
The Brands That Slipped
The bigger story for shoppers may be who didn’t win. GE, which led refrigerator satisfaction rankings in last year’s study, did not place in the top two of any refrigerator category in 2026. Whirlpool, the brand the American Customer Satisfaction Index had separately named the most satisfying refrigerator maker as recently as 2025, also failed to place in the top two for any fridge segment this year; its only category win came in cooktops. Frigidaire came in second in top-mount freezers but didn’t win outright anywhere, and Bosch placed third in dishwashers behind the KitchenAid/Samsung tie.
Overall satisfaction across the industry actually rose, hitting 705 out of 1,000, up six points from last year, even as the average appliance price climbed $54 to $910. Retailer satisfaction jumped 23 points to 706, J.D. Power’s largest year-over-year retailer gain in the study’s recent history.
An Odd Wrinkle for Whirlpool
KitchenAid’s dishwasher win adds an unusual layer to Whirlpool’s disappointing year, since KitchenAid is itself a Whirlpool Corporation brand. The same parent company that watched its flagship Whirlpool nameplate lose ground everywhere except cooktops still picked up a category win, just under its higher-end label instead. For shoppers, it’s a reminder that brand families don’t always move together: a bad year for the name on the box doesn’t necessarily mean a bad year for every product line the same company owns.
The $54 price increase is also worth sitting with. A rising average purchase price alongside rising satisfaction is not the pattern you’d expect if inflation were simply squeezing buyers on a product they resented paying more for. It suggests shoppers are, on balance, getting appliances they feel are worth the higher price tag, at least among the brands that won their categories this year.
The spread between winning scores was also fairly tight. Whirlpool’s cooktop win came in at 724, while Samsung’s side-by-side refrigerator topped the entire study at 750, a 26-point gap separating the lowest and highest category-winning scores. That narrow range at the top means the real separation this year happened lower down, between the brands that won and the ones that didn’t place at all, rather than among the winners themselves.
What It Means If You’re Shopping
The rankings suggest the appliance categories most worth cross-shopping by brand this year are refrigerators and dishwashers, where last year’s leaders visibly lost ground and Samsung and KitchenAid picked it up. If you’re replacing a washer, Maytag’s front-load score of 741 stands out as the single highest mark anywhere in the study, well above the industry’s 705 average. And if a salesperson tells you a brand is “the one everyone’s buying,” it’s worth asking which specific category that claim is based on, since this year’s data shows satisfaction leadership shifting category by category rather than sitting with one brand across the board.
For a purchase this size, the practical takeaway isn’t which single company to trust blindly, but which company won the specific appliance you’re actually replacing. This year, that answer changed for millions of refrigerator shoppers whether they’ve noticed yet or not.
