When a kitchen appliance breaks in a Dubai home, how do we decide repair versus replace?

There's a fairly reliable rule of thumb, and it's about age, part cost and which part failed. Repair usually wins when the appliance is relatively young and the fault is a specific, affordable component, a door seal, a valve, a pump, a thermostat or sometimes a control board. Replace usually wins when it's an old unit and the failure is a core part, a compressor in a fridge, a motor, a sealed system, because the repair cost approaches a new one with no guarantee on the rest. A common guide is if the repair is more than roughly half the price of replacing and the unit's already old, replace. The other factor here is heat and dust, which are hard on appliances, so a cheap unit limping along often isn't worth repeated repairs. Get a proper diagnosis first, a technician doing kitchen equipment maintenance can tell you the fault and part cost so you decide on facts, not a guess. Diagnose, then apply the age-and-half-price rule.