I was looking for a fridge-freezer specifically, considered Haier but went with Liebherr in the end - I like that (in terms of white goods/kitchen appliances) it only makes refrigeration units, other than where you use them there's nothing tying them together in why a manufacturer would be good at making them all really, makes sense to specialise in refrigeration, or dish washing, or gas products or whatever IMO.
According to the user guide, a water softener is recommended if your municipal water hardness is >250ppm which would be quite hard for municipal tap water.
In my region of central Florida the city’s water quality report shows a hardness well below 250ppm, Which you can divide by 17.1 to determine how many grains of salt to take that with.
[0] https://www.fisherpaykel.com/us/dishwashing/all-dishwashers/
(Aside, and I don't know if they are still any good, but these dish drawers are really well engineered. Mine had some problems early on that were resolved by small changes in the design, but FP provided me the parts to retrofit my washers. They've been nearly trouble free since then.)