Best Laptop brand for reliability / value for money?

wookie6

Hi,

Ignoring specs of laptops, I would be interested to know which brands of laptops people believe are best for reliability / value for money?

In a nutshell if you had to buy ONE laptop based on reliability and value for money, but had no idea of the specs which brand would you go for?

Knarf44

This is a bit like asking people for their recommendations of cars - difficult question to answer precisely as everyone's experience will be different.

If you like reliability surveys then the American company, Squaretrade (a third party warranty company) did a survey (in Nov 09) of 30,000 new laptops covered by their warranty plans. They found that one-third of new laptops fail within three years and two-thirds of those failures were hardware related.

Their report went on to show the most reliable laptops based on their survey were (in order):

Asus, Toshiba, Sony, Apple, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Gateway, HP

Obviously this is only a relatively small sample and most people will defend their preferred brand to the hilt. As long as you remember that there is always a chance of your new laptop failing irrespective of brand, you would be well advised to also research which ones offer the best Customer Support and extended warranty.

Hammyman

Lenovo Thinkpad business range. Toshiba Tecra. Neither are cheap.

wookie6

Thanks for the comments so far, I understand that this is very subjective, however I'm trying to get a feel of 1,2 or 3 brands as a starting point that have been good for people or have performed well in surveys so all comments are appreciated

jaydeeuk1

Value for money though often means somethings built to a budget. For the cash, a £400 asus, acer, dell or msi will give you far more spec wise than a £400 sony unit, but may not be as well screwed together. I'd say acer timeline or msi for the best of both worlds.

Are you a skoda or an alfa romeo man?

zzzLazyDaisy

I have a samsung netbook, and liked it so much that I bought a samsung laptop. Am very pleased with both - good value for money in my opinion (but of course that's the problem with the question, it's just my opinion!)