Anecdotal but I've had very good experience with Samsung front loading washing machine, might depend on regions of the world though, I've had one in Asia and one in Europe.
My Samsung front-loader failed the first time in less than a year. Right after that, the Samsung dryer I bought with it also failed.
My Samsung refrigerator had the display fail after two years, and the replacement display started failing in a month. I no longer bother buying replacement displays because everyone else agrees they never last more than a few months.
No more Samsung appliances for me, ever. And CR's credibility took a major hit in my eyes because I bought the washer & dryer on their recommendation, even after I already knew that Samsung refrigerators were garbage.
That's crazy because I've had terrible experience with Samsung front loader washing machines. I own a few rental properties, so I tend to go through appliances a lot and I've had more Samsung washers and dryers fail than anything else.
The dryers are the worst. They use a plastic tensioner pulley for the belt, but the pulley doesn't have a bearing...it just rides on a metal sleeve. This eventually wears out and causes the belt to fly off.
The washers have this issue I think due to incompatible metals (aluminum mounting to the stainless drum maybe) that causes them to break after about 5 years.
Trouble with this way of deciding is that it's biased by the number of individual products a brand has. Samsung has a lot so they're exposed to more risk of some bad ones even if they're safer on average than their competitors.
You used to see this with car brands back when everybody worried about reliability. Somebody would hear a bad story and go round saying "Don't buy BMWs because their fuel injectors fail". Fortunately, most people have goldfish memory, so people still buy Ford cars despite the Ford Pinto's fuel tank fires and they still buy Toyota despite the Prius's uncontrolled acceleration or whatever.
My experience has been fine after I learned that ankle socks and masks will cause the machine to jam. Now I just hand wash small items and the machine works perfectly /sarcasm>
Edit: I’m getting downvoted. Is this a well known thing not to wash small items? (I’ve been using washing machines for 20 years, without a problem until this one.)
> Is this a well known thing not to wash small items
Front loaders specifically - though usually to protect the objects being washed, not the machine itself. The joint around the door tends to pinch small objects. I put masks in a mesh bag meant for washing "delicates"
Samsung and LG are so big that I would not expect to be able to make an objective statement on either's quality relative to another, not even for a specific product line, much less company wide.
I think the issue is that both companies make very cheap and very expensive products in various places around the globe. So, we could be reading series of negative comments from people that got an inexpensive model made in Mexico versus people that got an expensive one made in Korea, or something like that.
