Frigidaire vs Kenmore dishwashers: an incident-report comparison

What this Frigidaire vs Kenmore comparison is based on#

Put the two columns beside each other and they read as each other's reflection. Whatever leads one corpus is small in the other, and whatever is small in one leads the other. That inversion — not a difference in volume, not a difference in quality — is what this page has to show.

The underlying evidence is 103 CPSC SaferProducts incident reports naming a component on a Frigidaire [dishwasher](/blog/repair-or-replace-dishwasher), filed between 2011 and 2026, and 461 doing the same for Kenmore dishwashers, filed between 2011 and 2025. Each column is a share of its own total, which is the only way two corpora of that different a size can be compared at all.

The inversion, row by row#

Frigidaire's leading row is the heating element at 45%. In the Kenmore column that same component sits fourth from the top at 6%. Kenmore's leading row is the control board at 53% — a clear majority of its filings. In the Frigidaire column the board sits second at 19%, prominent but nowhere near dominant.

The two gaps are almost the same size in opposite directions: 39 points on the heating element in Frigidaire's favour, 34 points on the control board in Kenmore's. Between them they account for essentially the whole distance between the two profiles, and there is no third row that either complicates or softens the picture.

The rows that do not invert#

Not everything flips. Wiring or the power cord is a minor row on both sides, 4% for Frigidaire against 7% for Kenmore. The motor is 1% against 5%. The thermostat or sensor is 1% in each column, which the table records as no measured difference. Kenmore's slightly larger figures in that band are backed by 24 to 31 filings apiece, while Frigidaire's are backed by one to four, so the gaps are arithmetically real and evidentially uneven.

That asymmetry is worth holding onto when reading any of the small rows. A 5% row in a corpus of 461 is two dozen separate incidents; a 1% row in a corpus of 103 is one. Both print as a percentage of similar size, and only one of them would survive a handful of additional filings unchanged. The table marks the closest of those pairs as one-report noise for precisely this reason, and the marker is doing more work in the Frigidaire column than in the Kenmore one.

Reading an inversion honestly#

An inversion this clean invites a causal story, and the data does not carry one. A corpus concentrates where reports concentrate, and reports concentrate for several reasons at once: a component that genuinely fails more, a component whose failure is alarming enough to prompt a filing, a recall episode that produced a cluster, or a fleet whose age profile favours one failure over another. None of those is separable here.

What is defensible is the operational reading. Among reports filed about Kenmore dishwashers, the control board is what more than half of them are about. Among reports filed about Frigidaire dishwashers, heat is what nearly half of them are about. Those are two facts about two records, useful as a first suspect and useless as a ranking, since neither corpus knows how many machines it is drawn from.

Frigidaire vs Kenmore dishwashers: what the reports mention#

Both columns are shares of their own corpus, and the corpora differ in size. Frigidaire: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Frigidaire dishwashers, 2011-2026, n=103. Kenmore: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Kenmore dishwashers, 2011-2025, n=461. A difference no larger than one report on either side is marked "within one-report noise".

About the corpus: these are CPSC SaferProducts reports — incidents someone chose to report, not units sold — so the shares on this page are shares of the reports and never a failure rate. The corpus is weighted toward safety events: 12,007 of its 20,581 records (58%) are fire, smoke, burn or melt reports, which over-represents the components that burn and under-represents the ones that merely stop working.

Frigidaire dishwashers: the reported component split#

Frigidaire dishwashers — every share in this table is a share of: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Frigidaire dishwashers, 2011-2026, n=103.

Shares of reports, not failure rates — see the corpus note above.

Kenmore dishwashers: the reported component split#

Kenmore dishwashers — every share in this table is a share of: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Kenmore dishwashers, 2011-2025, n=461.

Shares of reports, not failure rates — see the corpus note above.

How to use these numbers#

What this comparison can settle: which components the reported incidents of each brand actually concentrate on, for this appliance. What it cannot settle: which brand fails more often. That would need units sold, and no public source states it. Use the component split to plan for the repair each brand is most reported for, not to rank the two.