water softeners in general are pretty bad. they're not great for your health, they're terrible for your soil. and the benefits to pipes and appliances are marginal at best. i completely shut down my water softener.
It probably depends on how hard your tap water is. My tap water is really hard. because it all comes from a river fed via glacial runoff in the mountains, so a water softener makes a huge difference, to the point where the water even feels different in the shower. But if your water source is naturally softer, then I can see that it would make less of a difference.