Report Reveals Best Kitchen Appliance Brands
Are you in the market for a new home appliance?
Consumer Reports has released its first-ever rankings of kitchen appliance brands.
The 2026 ratings are for cooktops, ranges, wall ovens, dishwashers and refrigerators.
LG emerged as the top brand in several categories and is consistently ranked among the highest in all five.
Cooktops
For cooktops, LG is the clear winner, with 91 and 83 points for combination induction/conventional smoothtop electric and gas options, respectively.
The brand scored well for its high-performing 30- and 36-inch induction models.
Frigidaire, Samsung, KitchenAid and Whirlpool earned strong scores ranging from 77-80.
Samsung also fared well with its gas model and was just five points shy of LG’s rating of 78. GE nabbed the third spot with 75 points. Poor performing gas cooktop brands include Whirlpool (41) and KitchenAid (40).
Wall Ovens
With 78 points, LG beat out other brands for its wall ovens, surpassing Frigidaire by one point.
Whirlpool and GE are at the bottom of the ratings, in the low to mid-60s.
Ranges
Consumer Reports covered two types of ranges: the combination of induction, smoothtop and electric coil; and gas.
In the first subcategory, Frigidaire narrowly beat out LG with 75 points compared to 74. GE is not far behind with 72 points.
For gas ranges, GE heads the brand ratings at 74, with seven recommended models. LG and Café also earned strong scores, 66 and 64, respectively.
Dishwashers
Of the 12 dishwasher brands tested, for a combined total of 130 models, Bosch proved victorious with a ranking of 79. Midea (76), LG (75), KitchenAid (71) and Miele (70) round out the top five.
Refrigerators
For refrigerators, LG ranks high for top-freezer, French-door and side-by-side options.
The brand is first in the top-freezer subcategory, with 73 points, closely followed by Samsung (72). There is some distance between these brands and Frigidaire (65), Hotpoint (63) and GE (62), which complete the top five.
Bosch squeaked out first place by just one point (73) in the French-door subcategory. Taking second place are LG and GE, tying with 72 points each. Hisense and Whirlpool also scored identically, with 71 points each. LG’s high brand score might surprise some people, given widely reported problems with the compressors in various models. However, Consumer Reports found LG provides comparable reliability overall to the competition.
The performance in laboratory tests varied widely in the side-by-side category. LG placed second once again, with 65 points, behind GE by four points. Whirlpool and Samsung both rank third with 62 points.
Methodology
To identify the best brands, Consumer Reports engineers and data experts created a statistical model that aggregates the overall scores for every tested model within each category. The calculations reflect lab performance, predicted reliability, available features and owner satisfaction. Brands earn additional points for delivering high performance at a lower cost than their competitors.
Only brands with at least three models in each category were tested.
Consumer Reports is a 90-year-old non-profit research, testing and advocacy organization. Its ‘best brand’ mark, earned by the highest-scoring brand in each kitchen appliance category, helps shoppers identify brands that consistently deliver better products.
