I'm a New Zealander who has owned Fisher and Paykel appliances, and was interested to see if they were still independent, as they weren't mentioned in this article.

Since 2012, they've been 90% owned by Haier, one of the "big four" he lists.

I used to sell these about fifteen years ago and maybe they have changed but they were no different than any other fridge brand and their washing machines... they were one of the first brands to have led control panels which used to always break after five years. But that's a while back now.

I own two fridges, an oven and a dual dishwasher from them. The fridges are beautiful to look at but the pump is rather noisy. The oven is the best oven I've ever had in my life. The dishwasher broke down more times than I care to say and caused water damage in my house.

I've had the lot for 4 years now.

What's really good about those is the motor.

They're one of the first pancake motor users in appliances and because of the extremely short unsupported section of shaft are next to indestructible if not abused.

I've seen people scouring dumps for those for some hobby project or other (windmill, hometrainer, electric go-cart...).

I'm in Australia and have mostly fisher paykel and that has been my experience - can recommend

It's really weird seeing F&P as an appliance maker, they also make (or did, the design keeps getting sold off to various companies) the CPAP mask I wear every night.