Hinge broken on 4yr old laptop

Madmumofthree26

Hi - I just wondered what the consensus view was on this.
i have a 4yr old HP laptop. We have already had a hinge replaced on it & a hinge has broken again. The laptop itself is fine but can’t be used as can’t open it up properly.
John Lewis told us to speak to HP. 

HP said that there was nothing they could do (they don’t hold spare parts).
Any ideas on what I can do?

Alderbank

You know there is a saying in the trade that HP stands for Hinge Problems?

If you push JLP hard enough they should give you a refund of about 20% of what you paid since they can't fix it.

At 4 years old they will ask you for a report to say that it has failed because it was inherently faulty and not because of user handling. A local repair shop might do that for you. With your refund from JLP you can then return to the repair shop and ask them to fit a replacement hinge. There are literally hundreds for sale on eBay.

My opinion, fwiw, is that it is almost always user abuse, other might disagree. I have a lot of experience of laptops over 30 years, not least because I am the IT manager, fixer and general gofer in our house.

You must carefully, slowly and delicately open a laptop always from the centre of the lid. Many people yank them open from a corner. That places a lot of sideways twisting torque on the mechanism inside the hinge which it's not designed for. Once the hinge innards are deformed at all by that torque the demise is inevitable.

At one time laptop lids were closed with a mechanical catch in the centre which you had to release. That encouraged good practice. Sadly those days are gone.

Wyndham

For a laptop I'd be looking to replace it at around the 4 year mark anyway. Unfortunately, they don't last forever!

Jenni_D

Wyndham said:

For a laptop I'd be looking to replace it at around the 4 year mark anyway. Unfortunately, they don't last forever!

As the old saying goes ... you get what you pay for. (HP laptops aren't usually top notch). That said, my current Asus TUF Gaming laptop is 4.5 years old and still running great. (I added an SSD drive to complement the installed NVMe drive, and also upgraded the RAM to 32GB - the max possible). So the 4 years "rule of thumb" depends on what you bought in the first place.  

TELLIT01

Check with a local computer repair company. They may be able to replace the hinge even if HP say they don't hold the part any more.  If the laptop does what the OP needs it to do there is no reason to replace it, assuming they can find a fix for the hinge issue.

Wyndham

Jenni_D said:

Wyndham said:

For a laptop I'd be looking to replace it at around the 4 year mark anyway. Unfortunately, they don't last forever!

As the old saying goes ... you get what you pay for. (HP laptops aren't usually top notch). That said, my current Asus TUF Gaming laptop is 4.5 years old and still running great. (I added an SSD drive to complement the installed NVMe drive, and also upgraded the RAM to 32GB - the max possible). So the 4 years "rule of thumb" depends on what you bought in the first place.  

Absolutely! And my 3.5 year old Dell is doing really well

Money_Grabber13579

My Toshiba tells me it is 11 and I still use it daily. The battery is long since knackered and I upgraded the RAM and hard drive to SSD but otherwise is fully original.

unfortunately the end of support for windows 10 is likely to see the end of its life but I might try upgrading to windows 11. Just to see what happens.

Zinger549

Money_Grabber13579 said:

My Toshiba tells me it is 11 and I still use it daily. The battery is long since knackered and I upgraded the RAM and hard drive to SSD but otherwise is fully original.

unfortunately the end of support for windows 10 is likely to see the end of its life but I might try upgrading to windows 11. Just to see what happens.

My Toshiba lasted about 12 years. Had to replace as there were issues with the fan and it was running Vista.
.

Jaybee_16

My 6+ year old HP laptop is working just fine. Around 2 years old I turned it on one day to a blank screen. Called HP to find it had a 3 year warranty I wasn't aware of. 

DPD collected the laptop on a Wednesday and delivered it back to me on Friday of the same week. 

No problems with buying HP.

oldagetraveller1

Wyndham said:

Jenni_D said:

Wyndham said:

For a laptop I'd be looking to replace it at around the 4 year mark anyway. Unfortunately, they don't last forever!

As the old saying goes ... you get what you pay for. (HP laptops aren't usually top notch). That said, my current Asus TUF Gaming laptop is 4.5 years old and still running great. (I added an SSD drive to complement the installed NVMe drive, and also upgraded the RAM to 32GB - the max possible). So the 4 years "rule of thumb" depends on what you bought in the first place.  

Absolutely! And my 3.5 year old Dell is doing really well

As is my 9 years old PC Specialist laptop. It doesn't meet the requirements for Win.11, but I have no intention of binning it and buying a replacement, in spite of Win.10 support being stopped soon.

DullGreyGuy

Jenni_D said:

Wyndham said:

For a laptop I'd be looking to replace it at around the 4 year mark anyway. Unfortunately, they don't last forever!

As the old saying goes ... you get what you pay for. (HP laptops aren't usually top notch). That said, my current Asus TUF Gaming laptop is 4.5 years old and still running great. (I added an SSD drive to complement the installed NVMe drive, and also upgraded the RAM to 32GB - the max possible). So the 4 years "rule of thumb" depends on what you bought in the first place.  

HP are like most brands in that they have their sub £300 budget models and they have their over £5,000 laptop workstations and everything inbetween. 

Use of laptops varies massively too, my mothers sits open on her desk at home 24/7, the theory was it could be put away if needed but if that happens once a year I'd be surprised. On the flipside mines is open and closed 10+ times a day. Clearly the later will put much more wear on the hinges than the former and as a consequence I buy a more robust business orientated machine than the plastic cased thing she uses. 

The CRA/its notes state that cost and description should be considered when considering matters like durability. 4 years isnt a terrible duration for a budget laptop with notable use, it would be a less reasonable life for one sold as being rugged, full metal case and highly durable. 

Our oldest laptop is 14 years old and still going fairly strong other than the battery which needs replacing but runs fine off mains but it wasnt a budget one, its used moderately and is a full metal case.