Study: Asus, Toshiba Make Most Reliable Laptops

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I read the PDF, they need to do a study showing the trends in mainboard/display/graphics adapter failures. Failures due to normal wear and tear components don't count.
 
Failure rates have to do with the customers who buy these products. HP/Compaq laptops can be bought at any computer retailer for mid range to really low prices, and everyone knows the name so any idiot can buy one and feel confident until they wreck it. Whereas Asus is usually sold online and at some retailers for a mid range to high price, the brand is recognized most by the tech savvy (...anyone who has bought a motherboard) and these people take good care of their equipment.

Analogy to cars:

If you go to a dealership and buy the first thing that catches your eye and meets your budget, you're not apt to put much love into it. If you search several dealerships and find a specific model that you like, you'll take great pride in it and care for it regularly.
 
My personal experiences with Toshi products have all been bad. That includes the two Toshiba notebook drives that I have owned over the years. Guess My Milage has Varied. (significantly)
 
I think they need to compare products of the same performance level. It's reasonable that a 2.8GHz laptop will fail more often than a 2.0GHz laptop due to more complicated circuitry. But also, ppl who buy higher-end products are those computer or game experts who need high performance & running intensive jobs while those who buy average performance one only use for accessing Internet, listen to music and watch video, of course, laptop will last longer.
 
Want is intersting is that Apple laptops fail about as much as Dell. Something I have known but Apple and its fans hide. Yes, you pay a nice penny for them but their all made somewhere in China.
 
I think that you would need to include the number of laptops sold in proportion to the number of failures for this to be valid, but from my experience with all of these brands laptops this seems pretty dead-on for the ranking of the manufacturers.
 
Great. I just ordered an HP DV7 i7 quad laptop. Maybe I should purchase the the extended waranty?
On the other hand my 4 year old Dell still runs OK despite bad rep. I had to solder new DC power jack to the mobo this year because it was all worn out, but other than that it served me well. I had extended warranty on it, but used it only once to get a new power supply (which costs only 30 dollars on ebay anyway).
I hope the high failure rate of HP is more due to the type of customers it has than bad engineering.
 
I've had 2 Gateway Notebooks, one from 11 years ago, and one from 1 year ago. Had to fix the one 10 years ago twice, and one from 1 year ago once already. Ended up selling them both.

I have an HP now... wish this article was around two weeks ago... :)

Guess I'll look into Asus and Toshiba once I sell my HP in a year or two.
 
Of course HP is going to have the highest failure rate! THEY HAVE THE MOST LAPTOPS ON THE MARKET!!!

Compare Acer/Gateway and Dell failure rates to their respective market share and you will see alarming failure rates.

And Toshiba DEFINITELY has higher failure rates than that. When I worked retail here in Canada I saw Toshiba's dying left right and centre. Worst model was the Toshiba L300-044. Ran more than 50% failure rate at our store. It was horrible!
 
I have a HP dv9000 and in terms of the computer itself doing whats it supposed to, the battery still holds a decent charge (for a 17" monstrosity), but I can see why they are low on the list, one of the hinges went kinda knobby on me and is a common fail point on dv laptops, it doesn't bother me, but it is a bad mark for reliability.
 
Well some of this is right on the money & some totally way off base. In our shop we see a lot of HP laptops with failed screens some are only a few months old. But here is the kicker We see just as many Toshiba laptop's with failed hardware eg hard drives failing to post etc etc. We also see a few Acer's that have failed as well & OMG don't even get me started on Dell I refer to my bench most times as Dell Hell they always seem to be in for repair for one reason or another. One thing is for sure the biggest thing that makes these laptops fail is user abuse the end user's most of the time expect these tings to be able to go to hell & back & keep working. I had one customer spill a rye & coke all over his brand new Acer laptop & he took it & put it in water for 3 days to get the coke out of it then let it dry for a week well it worked after wards for about a 5 days then failed. He came into the store yelling we sold him a piece of junk & he wanted his money back yea right the thing smelled like dish soap lol. I pulled the memory cover off & looked inside sure enough there were stains inside & the board was starting to swell from water exposure he claimed it must have came that way I tols him sir I was the one that loaded this & I know it did not have dish soap inside it when it left the shop after all I was also the one that added the extra 2GB of memory. He then told me what he did lol. Well to he asked send it in maybe they will replace it under warranty well I did & they did replace it So Acer decided that because he bought the no questions asked warranty plan he was entitled to a replacement I guess if it was up to me I would have told him no way I mean who is dumb enough to submerge a laptop into dish soapy water.
 
Typical YIS vs failure rate trends, its expected to see failures increase with time.
You get what you pay for? ASUS charges a premium, although not as much as Apple some would argue.
 
I point 50% of those scores right at nvidia defects since there in most of the HP/Compaqs out there.

As for dells, they seem to be atleast the better make to service (atleast the newer ones bar a studio i worked on), and reliability - maybe im odd but id trust a dell over a toshiba, and atleast i get remove the HSF from the dell easily to clean etc.

Toshiba HDD's and hatachi drives are horrible - give me seagate and wd any day, and maybe even samsung here.
 
I find this odd since I've actually had decent luck with HP. First one I bought, I got used on eBay. It died when it was close to 2 years old (I had it about a year). Fried mobo but it was a super cheap model (brand new I think it was $400). Bought a Compaq after that one died. Again used, but it was only about 2 or 3 months old when I got it. I bought it from a friend who worked for BestBuy. It was already a cheap model (bout $450 new) with a RAM upgrade (had 512MB to start, he added another 1GB). Only major factory issue I ever had to fix was overheating. Fresh Arctic Silver 5 fixed that. After that I broke the LCD and replaced it. I've had it 2 1/2 years. My dad uses it now (still runs like new). Hell both batteries (which one actually came from the laptop before it) still hold 2 hour charges despite their age.

I now have another HP which is stouter and more expensive ($950) than my old one and I actually got it new this time. But not before having to return and trade a defective Toshiba for it. Within 30 minutes of using it, the Toshiba I had at first overheated and locked up. It wouldn't boot for a while. I let it sit for an hour and tried again. This time it booted and I found a way to keep it cool, restored it to a factory state, returned it the store I got it, paid an extra $50 and got the HP. It doesn't overheat, has reportedly better batter life, bigger screen (17" vs. 16"), Blu-Ray, and a frickin remote 😛 (actually I use it a lot since I have a tuner card and use it for TV in my room). The only real trade off was the Toshiba had a dedicated Radeon HD3650 I think while the HP has an Integrated Radeon HD3200. Still it can play TF2 without missing a beat so it's all good.

I've never really liked Dell cause I've had to work on quite a few for people. I've encountered multiple battery failures. In fact, my friend only had her laptop a year before her battery became completely nonchargeable. Like I said before, I've got 2 HP batteries (1 nearly 3 years old and the other around 4 years) that both still hold at least 90% of the original capacity. The Dells also seemed to have relatively poor build quality.

I built my main rig with an ASUS board. It's been nothing less than reliable. When I have money again and I want another laptop, I'll very likely get an ASUS since I've heard a lot of good things about them. They also seem to be good value too. Looked at one that was $1500 and I guarantee you it would cost $1700 or more from someone like Dell or HP.

As for the others, I've always heard bad of Acer's PC's (but the displays are alright), I've heard crap about Gateway quite often, don't really have experience with Lenovo, Apple can suck it, and I've never really dealt with Sony but they seem good.
 
In Indonesia this is what happen:
I buy Toshiba Tecra S1 for $1500. 3 years it has been broke. 4 years (1 year just idle die) later it is sold for $75 without HDD + mem.
Second time I buy Dell Latitude D630. It has been broke 2x motherboard replacement, 1 batterai broke (the batterai warranty has been out), one DVD RW broke. Thank to 3 years warranties (except batterai) I got all my part fully replace.
My Point is: Why the road warrior notebook is so weak?
Today it is event worst! Many notebook and gadget are so thin. This thinness must be pay by reduce of durable part. Today also less powerful casing because it is heavy. With 2 factors today laptop and gadget are event more weak that many years ago.
 
Hell, my laptop lasted 5 years (1.6GHz solo core, 512MB RAM, 40GB HDD, 15" screen), and the only issue it had was a very short battery life (used up to 12 hours a day for the final year). Though it seems the battery finally died.
Desktops however, I find they keep failing on me... way too often.
 
[citation][nom]rocky1234[/nom]Well some of this is right on the money & some totally way off base. In our shop we see a lot of HP laptops with failed screens some are only a few months old. But here is the kicker We see just as many Toshiba laptop's with failed hardware eg hard drives failing to post etc etc. We also see a few Acer's that have failed as well & OMG don't even get me started on Dell I refer to my bench most times as Dell Hell they always seem to be in for repair for one reason or another. One thing is for sure the biggest thing that makes these laptops fail is user abuse the end user's most of the time expect these tings to be able to go to hell & back & keep working. I had one customer spill a rye & coke all over his brand new Acer laptop & he took it & put it in water for 3 days to get the coke out of it then let it dry for a week well it worked after wards for about a 5 days then failed. He came into the store yelling we sold him a piece of junk & he wanted his money back yea right the thing smelled like dish soap lol. I pulled the memory cover off & looked inside sure enough there were stains inside & the board was starting to swell from water exposure he claimed it must have came that way I tols him sir I was the one that loaded this & I know it did not have dish soap inside it when it left the shop after all I was also the one that added the extra 2GB of memory. He then told me what he did lol. Well to he asked send it in maybe they will replace it under warranty well I did & they did replace it So Acer decided that because he bought the no questions asked warranty plan he was entitled to a replacement I guess if it was up to me I would have told him no way I mean who is dumb enough to submerge a laptop into dish soapy water.[/citation]

But if you remove all power sources, including the clock battery on the motherboard, then I think it is ok to submerge it in distilled water. If you can make sure it is bone-dry when you power it up again of course. There are a lot of cavities in a computer where water can still remain. My point is that it is not the water per se that is harmful, but the salt ions...

Funny story though. It reminds me of stories about customer support where customers make strange complaints. One customer complained that the floppy disks (the big soft black ones 5.25" or bigger) didn't work. Then it turned out that she punched holes in them so that they would find into a binder. Another customer complained about a broken cup holder on the computer. The support was very confused about it until it turned out to be the disc tray of the CD-ROM drive.
 
About the water submerging thing; But I doubt that the LCD panel and the harddrive would like that sort of treatment. I used to think that the harddrives are airtight but it seems like they aren't even watertight, and I find that strange because they must be sealed somehow so that no dust can enter the platters.
 
Good for ASUS, they pack great performing components in small form factor laptops. They also offer the GTX 260 for $1000, which is a hell of a deal.
 
A lot of brand name computer( i.e HP, dell) sub contract their notebooks to asus....

I'm not surprise with Toshiba.

The bottom line is you get what you paid for. If you buy those cheap PCs from(Home & School) Dell, Acer, HP these products are good as the 1 year warranty.

Sony creates one of the most frail notebooks in the industry. Its expensive and nice looking but you have to take care of it like a baby.


My most reliable notebooks are Toshiba and real-IBM. These notebooks get old but are still running.
 
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