I love Bosch, all the stuff we have from them works perfectly many years after buying. Similar for Siemens. But for me - AEG, Whirlpool and Electrolux are the crappiest of the crappiest stuff I've experienced, those brands are banned at my home.

But there is the trick - go for highest offline-only range, which is normally in the middle or just above middle of the range. Best value for money. Plus I couldn't care less of some online features, don't need them, hate them, its just a ticking bomb regardless of manufacturer.

Same as recently discussed here Samsung HW-Q990D surround soundbar update bricking the devices for some. Why the heck would I ever want to update surround speakers which work perfectly fine now? Some sort of OCD out of hands? They never add anything important with such updates, and the general risk is not worth doing it. Plus avoiding not-another-stupid-app-in-phone syndrome.

Often the parts you actually care about are the same among most of the products in a range. When looking at Miele dishwashers recently they all had the same core dish washing mechanics, and all you got when moving to the highest end model was some superficial design changes, an app and that the door popped open once it was done.