Best and Worst Laptop Brands 2016

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tomsguideUS

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Our sister site Laptop Mag posted their Best and Worst Laptop Brands for 2016.

You can see the scorecard below. For their reasoning and more detailed graphs and charts, check out the full story on laptopmag.com.

best-worst_ltp_brands_2016_full-scorecard_v2.5.jpg


Apple, Dell and Asus took the top prizes, with Acer, Samsung and Toshiba left in the dust.

What do you think are the best and worst laptop brands? Let us know!
 

carsong

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Buy a laptop to favour your needs, no laptop brand is the best or the wrost, although build quality is a factor but the generally big brands hp, asus, acer, sony have pretty good build quality.

And remember, its whats in the inside that counts, not the outside
 

Ender P

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I would love a Mac laptop case with Microsoft software and Intel/Nvidia innards at a non-Mac price. Keep dreaming, right? My dell laptop has been a great value, but is starting to give me GPU heat problems after 5 years of gaming with it, then messing up the thermal pads. Oh, that and a little problem with the screen from someone stepping on my laptop. Other than that it's been a trooper, I've never been disappointed by its performance.
 

Melvyn Longtin

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My brother purchase anew laptop and it is Apple Macbook pro 13-inch I can say that it is a worth brand even it has a expensive price than the other brand. The updated 13-inch Macbook Pro packs a new fifth-generation 2.7-GHz Intel Core ig-5257U processor along with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of faster flash storage. And because of this the macbook pro allow to power past bits competition and then some. Blazing speed an innovative new touchpad and super-long battery life is the one my brother love to this macbook. We never disappointed by its performance. Thank you for this forum it will help me a lot to know what is the status of the ranking of different brands now a day. Thank you for updating the members for this. So much appreciates!
 

orlbuckeye

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I think you have to look at models and not brands. Most Windows machines have high end machines and low end. That's means the high end are going to have more expensive and higher quality components. Apple sort of has an advantage as they have fewer models with less components. They have less driver issues.
 

dbryan94

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Everyone I know with an Asus laptop has had several technical difficulties, including myself and my sister. There's this guy who already had technical difficulties on the first day of using his Asus laptop.
 

Theminecraftaddict555

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in my opinion (Feel free to correct me with constructive criticism), this article could be biased in some way in some how when it comes to laptops....I'm not sure how but I do know that they only focused on one or three laptops from the companies rather than the whole thing or by people's ratings unless those one or three laptops were the only recent thing released this year :/
 

orlbuckeye

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Well I've had 3 Acer's and they were great but they were high end components over $1500. I don't like to shop brands I shop models because every model of every brand is different.
 

rumble

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One important thing that is not mentioned in article are spare parts. In my country (Croatia), some companies like Dell don't have official representative and because of that spare parts are expensive and rare. On the other hand, HP is very well established and it is easy and cheap to fix or replace anything. For non-US countries that is a big deal.
 
This is pointless. Aside from maybe Samsung and MSI, none of those companies actually make laptops. They're made by ODMs - original design manufacturers. They're like OEMs, except they also design the product. The companies listed in the survey just hire an ODM, tell them the specs they want the laptop to have, and ok/reject what the ODM comes up with.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laptop_brands_and_manufacturers#Original_design_manufacturers_.28ODMs.29

Most of those companies use multiple ODMs. So there's very little orthogonality between laptop brand name and the qualities measured in the survey. A particular model HP may have more in common with a Dell or Mac than with another model HP. About the only thing the brand name tells you is how good the aftermarket support will be.

Also, there's a strong pro-Apple bias in most of the laptop reviews I've read. e.g. If a PC laptop doesn't have full-sized arrow keys, it's almost always noted as a drawback in the review. I have never seen a review ding a Macbook for not having full-sized arrow keys.
 
Bruh...

If there were a pure "value" category, Apple would get the worst score. Do you see how much they're charging for what? You could get something just as powerful, if not more, for half the price of a Macbook.

Also, Acer shouldn't be at the bottom of the list. I recently purchased an Acer laptop with a Core i5-4210U and a Geforce 840M for 550$ USD, still working all fine today. You don't find that many laptops with dedicated, overclockable GPUs at that price point.

On a final note, Toshiba deserves its place on the bottom of the list IMO. A few years ago, I got a Toshiba laptop, and a few months later, the HDD broke. It ended up being replaced with a WD Scorpio Blue, which is also still working today.
 

wizzle_wazzle

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Ive been using Acers for the past 6 years and all have been rock solid devices. All three (which are still going today) have been dropped, kicked, gamed on, worked on through and through. I replaced one keyboard ($15) because my WASD letters rubbed off but that's it.

Toshiba...no thanks. Returned mine because of faulty touch pad, wifi died in my mothers one, my friends have them and the bezels around the screens are clicky (clips are not good enough). Even the ones I see in stores, the build quality for me is just not there.
 

Arabian Knight

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There is nothing called best Laptop Brand as you put it.

you should say which is best Brand for Specific usage.

- Best for Business. that is portability and battery life and endurance.
- Best for Engineers and workstation users.
- Best for Gaming.

very Few Companies make Workstations Laptops , and very few make good business ones ... etc

IMO ,

1- Best for Business , Lenovo Think Pads , Apple
2- Best for Workstation , Dell then HP then Lenovo
3- Best for Gaming , MSI then Asus then Dell

you cant mix those in one basket.

and if you want Rugged Laptop , Only Panasonic Tough books.
 
nothing was tested for reliability?
For most people, they just want it to last a couple years without failing, many models fail to live up to this.
In my experience, Dell have been the most reliable. Never ad any experience with Apple, but thats only because i have no use for their OS and they have poor price/performance.
 

orlbuckeye

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Another category you missed is easiest to upgrade components.
 

skylord_

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Best would be apple then Lenovo
Worst would be Emachine (crap boxes)
Next would be Asus major technical issues.
And over 20% repair rates...

I really have never had a good laptop. But one day I hope I will
 
A few years ago, Acer were pretty chill about you upgrading parts in their laptops (RAM, HDD and even Wi-Fi card) but nowadays, it seems that they don't want you to upgrade anymore and instead buy a new laptop. Before, laptops had this big panel that you could screw off to access the aforementioned parts, but now, you have to take apart the whole laptop to even take a peek at the inside components, which can be daunting for beginners. That is the case with my current laptop.
 
I thought i'd add to this, that in my experience (i have been in a position servicing laptops both in and out of warranty), that at least 50% of the repairs were due to physiocal damage or miss-use. With how i have seen some laptops treated, i would say that repair-rates are also questionable. If you have an expensive macbook, your more likely to look after it too.
 

Flying-Q

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I have spent many years in a repair shop. This is a summary (subjective I admit) of what comes in the shop.

broken hinges - lenovo, dell, toshiba, lots of cheapies like emachines
broken power sockets - lenovo, sony, toshiba, cheap badge makes like emachines
broken screens - samsung, fujitsu, msi, lots of cheap badge makes
broken keyboards - apple, lenovo, cheap badge
broken track pads - asus, acer, occasional dells, cheap badge
broken optical drive - apple, dell, toshiba, cheapies
broken HDD - dell, sony, lenovo
broken wifi - no clear loser


It has got to the point that when someone walks in the shop I can often guess right from the label on the bag what the likely problem is.

On the software side, specifically drivers, if it is a recent model then dell is great for downloading fresh drivers after a clean install but for an old model the detector software often fails. Lenovo is awful for getting any drivers, Samsung is good for recent models and like dell less good for older models. Acer and Asus are both model dependent (even recent ones) as to whether the drivers are available. In general all manufacturers are very picky over which OS is supported driver-wise. If your laptop was released with Vista Basic installed then you are unlikely to find Vista64 or Win7 drivers on the manufacturers website.

In terms of design, any clamshell built model where you have to work your way down through the keyboard, fascia, cables, motherboard etc to get to items to repair is awful, underside access panels are great (thank you dell top-end models and lenovo likewise)

Over the years track pads have got worse with the clickable pads prevalent on Win8 machines being the worst, especially asus and acer.
 

orlbuckeye

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I disagree heavily on Apple being the best for Business. The biggest reason to select a business class laptop is because of Software. Battery life is only a concern for mobile devices in business. Important features of mobile units a durable. Connectivity since these devices make it easy to collect data in the field . If you don't have connectivity you better have reliable ways to sync data. I would put Dell in there and add a category graphics design and put Apple in that category. Even if Apple is best suited for business the software in limited. Plus Apple is harder to attach to Windows networks.

My company has shifted from Toughbooks to Getac devices.

 
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