Best and Worst Notebook Brands 2013

More rah-rah for Apple laptops. Eh, whatever. The only thing I like about them is the track/click pad. Best in the biz.

Laptop is a laptop. They are all slow, break easily and are disposable in my opinion.
 
schizrade said:
More rah-rah for Apple laptops. Eh, whatever. The only thing I like about them is the track/click pad. Best in the biz.

Laptop is a laptop. They are all slow, break easily and are disposable in my opinion.
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Don't know that I agree with the slow, break easily part... depends on what you are buying. As far as slow.... sure they will never beat a gaming pc or a tricked out workstation, but do you really need it to in most cases? As far as break easily, I can't speak for other brands, but my Thinkpad has been a tank (even under Lenovo who has slipped in quality compared to the IBM years of the brand).

If you are buying cheap, low spec, replaceable machines... I guess I agree, but I think that the statement is too general overall.
 
Would be nice if they had a "serviceability" category. Regardless, other than the Apple ranking, I feel things landed about where they should, imo.
 
I have both Lenovo and Apple. I would agree the Apple edges out my Lenovo in a number of areas, but both have their positives and negatives. I carry the Lenovo when I need connectivity (i.e. ports) or brute horsepower. However, I tend to haul the Apple(s), I have an Air and a Retina Pro, more often than the Lenovo just because they are lighter and slide into a smaller bag. As for that chart, "Reviews" is a BS category. If you took it out, the two would be ranked much more closely together and in a way that I think reflects how I would rate them.
 
We have three lappys in our family.....

two MSI gamers, and an Apple MBP.

We had a Dell for 18 months, but it literally fell apart. and had two mechanical failures.

Other than than, the MSIs(who aren't even in the poll) from Powernotebooks have been as good or better than the MBP.
 
RTFA?
By examining reviews from January through December 2012, this category is weighted heavily to reflect the average star ratings and performance scores from a given company’s notebooks. Extra points are offered for Editors’ Choice Award-winning machines.
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Sounds like one of the more reasonable ratings they have on there. I question their ratings as well, HP is way too high up. Maybe my employers keep buying the crap models, but I doubt it.
 
In many ways I agree with this list but price ranges should be listed as well. For instance I would not recommend anything but a Toshiba or HP in the $300 - 450 range as the touchpad and keyboard are good quality while the other manufacturers tend to skimp in this department. THEY ARE THE WAY YOU INTERACT WITH THE DAMNED COMPUTER! :eek::rolleyes:
 
I feel i can give a much better opinion than this article having to deal with the after math of hundreds of defective laptops. Never buy a hp/compaq or toshiba laptop.... ever. So many outright poorly designed laptops over the years from their top end to the low end that are failure prone and they simply aren't getting any better. If i had to rank reliability them i would say.
1.apple
2.dell
3.lenovo
4.acer
5.sony (decent quality but overpriced)
Don't get enough asus or samsung to make a accurate opinion on those.
 
yourgrandma said:
I feel i can give a much better opinion than this article having to deal with the after math of hundreds of defective laptops. Never buy a hp/compaq or toshiba laptop.... ever. So many outright poorly designed laptops over the years from their top end to the low end that are failure prone and they simply aren't getting any better. If i had to rank reliability them i would say.
1.apple
2.dell
3.lenovo
4.acer
5.sony (decent quality but overpriced)
Don't get enough asus or samsung to make a accurate opinion on those.
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I'll never buy another Dell again.. I have had two and their customer service has been awful and the last one fell apart and refuses to charge despite a new battery + charger which is a common problem
 
my vote is for ASUS.. espeically their G lineup.. i started with thte G50VT and have loved each one we have gotten ever since (and the G50VT is still going strong)

although i am not suprised Apple is at the top, i would be suprised if they were considering their bread and butter prior to the ipad/iphone was the macbooks..
 
yourgrandma said:
I feel i can give a much better opinion than this article having to deal with the after math of hundreds of defective laptops. Never buy a hp/compaq or toshiba laptop.... ever. So many outright poorly designed laptops over the years from their top end to the low end that are failure prone and they simply aren't getting any better. If i had to rank reliability them i would say.
1.apple
2.dell
3.lenovo
4.acer
5.sony (decent quality but overpriced)
Don't get enough asus or samsung to make a accurate opinion on those.
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I would never get another dell in the $500 range again. I had a nightmare of a time with a 14inch i5 Inspiron. I figured it might just be a "one-off"
 
yourgrandma said:
I feel i can give a much better opinion than this article having to deal with the after math of hundreds of defective laptops. Never buy a hp/compaq or toshiba laptop.... ever. So many outright poorly designed laptops over the years from their top end to the low end that are failure prone and they simply aren't getting any better. If i had to rank reliability them i would say.
1.apple
2.dell
3.lenovo
4.acer
5.sony (decent quality but overpriced)
Don't get enough asus or samsung to make a accurate opinion on those.
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Really, really?

I had a Dell for my daughter for school.
I should have known better.....biggest POS I ever owned. Less than a month in the optical drive broke, then a month later the HDD died. At one year the hinge broke.
Not to mention talking with customer service "Dave" from India.....trying to convince him I had diagnosed the HDD failure and simply wanted them to send me a new drive I could install myself. Blew the guy's mind in a number of ways.

As I said, the MSI models we've had are used daily in college in all kinds of conditions and are stout, haven't missed a beat in three college years combined.
 
My plant has been using Lenovo laptops/desktops for the last 6+ years and it's really changed my opinion of Lenovo laptops. During that time I've ordered and maintained at least two dozen laptops, ranging from the older T-61s to the newer T430s and the only issue I had with any of them was a couple of the T-61s having fan issues after almost 6 years of use.
 
magoo said:
Really, really?.
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yes really. I have experienced a few defective dells but no where the amount from the other brands. Hard drives in laptops fail for all brands and most of the time it's user error. Dell customer service is better than most and they have sent out a tech a few times to swap a bad drive without having to send the computer back which is nice.

aL Mac said:
I'll never buy another Dell again.. I have had two and their customer service has been awful and the last one fell apart and refuses to charge despite a new battery + charger which is a common problem
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Not really that common unless you damage the port or charger pin. 9/10 is the port is damaged.
 
Meh,

I've had apart a discrete MBP and I have to say it was one of the most painful experience of my computer geek life.

They were also not too impressive on the build quality side, with things just randomly wrapped in plastic and shoved in corners.

One thing that this review doesn't show is that some laptop brands have cheap lines, and better lines.

Dell - for instance - has some absolutely awful cheap consumer laptops, but their enterprise models are really solid, good machines.
 
H-street said:
my vote is for ASUS.. espeically their G lineup.. i started with thte G50VT and have loved each one we have gotten ever since (and the G50VT is still going strong)
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I used to be rah-rah-rah about Asus laptops... but all three of mine have had been RMAd at least once. (the G1S three times)
 
Yeah, with Dell/HP/Lenovo, you are doing yourself a disservice if you are not going with their business models (unless you are going gaming via alienware or the y500).
 
I guess it's fair as Apple really only has one laptop model with a few different configurations. The other companies have a huge range of laptops in their line, so it's hard to directly compare. As an example, I've owned many Thinkpads from Lenovo and they're the best laptops that I've ever owned, while my Yoga 13 from Lenovo is the biggest POS that I've ever wasted time and money on.
 
I would have thought Toshiba was much higher than it was. At the very least in front of Dell and HP. I guess maybe at one point a few years ago they were rated much higher. My father has a Toshiba from 2005 that is still running strong. The only thing wrong with it is the fact that he uses it so much the paint is wearing off on the palm rest. We gave that thing a 4GB RAM upgrade, replaced its hard drive and installed Windows 7 32bit 2 years ago. Runs like a champ. My mother recently bought one that was a desktop replacement. It looked very gimmicky with with a weird red glossy paint job.
 
Deinos said:
Yeah, with Dell/HP/Lenovo, you are doing yourself a disservice if you are not going with their business models (unless you are going gaming via alienware or the y500).
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This.

I wouldn't consider their consumer lines...but their business lines are another story altogether.
1. Latitudes off the outlet are great for general usage for pretty cheap.
2. Thinkpad X series are phenomenal.
3. EliteBooks are great workstations, and I prefer them to Precisions.


Admittedly, that also mirrors how I've ordered them, so I may be biased, EliteBook 8560w as my primary workstation, a Thinkpad X230t for mobility and portability, and a Latitude E6420 for a "cheap" laptop I can use for work.

I generally recommend to family and friends to pick up an outlet Latitude e6000 series, as they're good enough for what they're doing, and cheap enough with 3 year warranty that they'd actually consider it.




Personally, I count Apple as a separate option. You can compare hardware, device reliability, etc., but with the OS differences, it's like comparing a car with a motorcycle. They both get you from point A to B, but there are some pretty major differentiating factors that don't make direct comparisons as possible, as there are certain things that one can do that the other cannnot.
 
Lenovo is good but they could use better quality plastic (maybe they do now?). I have changed the casing once and the second already have a small crack at the palmrest.
 
To the people crapping on Dell, it really depends on which side of Dell we're talking about. Their consumer level stuff is indeed garbage, but the Latitudes on the business side of things are great notebooks that are easily up there with Thinkpads.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
I would have thought Toshiba was much higher than it was. At the very least in front of Dell and HP. I guess maybe at one point a few years ago they were rated much higher. My father has a Toshiba from 2005 that is still running strong. The only thing wrong with it is the fact that he uses it so much the paint is wearing off on the palm rest. We gave that thing a 4GB RAM upgrade, replaced its hard drive and installed Windows 7 32bit 2 years ago. Runs like a champ. My mother recently bought one that was a desktop replacement. It looked very gimmicky with with a weird red glossy paint job.
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Seconded. I have two Toshiba's and they have both been strong performers. I had one repaired under warranty and it was an easy, quick and hassle free experience.

Any rating system that uses reviews is already flawed. How many reviews have come out and said an apple product was shit? Very few. Most of the folks that review apple products have been long time drinkers of the koolaid.

Then there's a question of how honest a lot of mainstream reviews are - as opposed to a paid ad placement in said magazine.
 
All I can say is that this was totally expected. I do find it unbelievable to see them claim Apple keyboard and touchpad and innovation are so high. They haven't innovated in a long time in computers and only innovation in their recent products is the retina screen (or rather a push for higher rest screens). That Apple touchpad on the laptops is probably one of the worst (even more so once they dumped the physical buttons), maybe only some HP models have worse touchpads. Casting Sony so far down the list is also crazy since they had lighter and more featured computers than perhaps any other brand, and still do if you're willing to spend. This is yet another Apple centric article which the internet is full of. I guess as long as people keep drinking Apple's kool-aid and plunk down the money, this will not change.
 
Not too surprisingly, the Anything But Apple contingent is out in force on this one. I'm amused by the people who virtually break out in hives when they hear anything good said about the company.

The MacBook Air and Pro lines aren't perfect, but Apple actually seems to get that battery life matters. Keyboard and trackpad quality matter. Design matters. That you don't "punish" home users with shoddy build quality and poor service (see: Dell, HP) while reserving the best for your business customers.

To some extent, all of the companies here get it at least a little bit. The question is how much. ASUS and Lenovo seem to understand it the most and produce interesting systems across a broader range. Samsung is definitely upping its game, but Acer, Dell, HP, Toshiba and their kind still tend to think of high quality as a luxury rather than the mandatory feature it should be.
 
Lenovo is an all-around better value than Apple Notebooks. I have a budget Lenovo, and it's still one of the best notebooks I have ever used.
 
I don't see how anyone gave a full score for apple keyboards.. Who in their right mind sets a power button next to the f12 and above delete key as a regular button? One slight slip of your finger, boom. laptop is asleep/off...
 
It's not really that Apple is so good it's that the other are very often SO BAD. Even the business class HP laptops (supposedly their good ones) I used over the years have had totally crap screens, annoying touchpads (their side scroll thing works just enough so you want to use it but fails enough to drive you nuts) crappy battery life, frequent wireless connection failures and usually one or two other random problems depending on the model. With just a bit more attention to detail it really wouldn't be that hard for the others to catch up.
 
Apple Macbook Pro/Air, Lenovo Thinkpad T/X, Dell Latitude (the non low-end, crap models) are pretty much the only laptops I'd recommend anyone buying.

Need something cheap? Buy a used last (or few) gen Thinkpad, throw in a SSD + fresh copy of 7 maybe a new extended battery and you're good to go.

Need AWESOMEGAMINGGRAPPHICSPORTABLE...? there's a thing called a desktop... build one and deal with it not being an oh-so-portable 20lb laptop that runs hot and has a 15min UPS strapped to the bottom of it. I do not understand desktop replacements.
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
My plant has been using Lenovo laptops/desktops for the last 6+ years and it's really changed my opinion of Lenovo laptops. During that time I've ordered and maintained at least two dozen laptops, ranging from the older T-61s to the newer T430s and the only issue I had with any of them was a couple of the T-61s having fan issues after almost 6 years of use.
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We've been buying lenovo T series laptops, and IBM T series before that, for many years. We probably had 170 of the T6x series, and still have some in service for interfacing to machine tools around our shop floor... My kids have old T61 hand-me-downs that they use for minecraft (when they want to play over their friend's houses) and schoolwork. The fan "failures" are the most common problem with the T6x series. However, with about half an hour of work, you can pull the machine apart (all screws, no bastard plastic clips to break), and you can dismount the fan from the CPU. Then just bend the copper tabs holding the top of the HSF module to pull it apart. The fan comes right off the spindle. Clean out the built up gunk, put a little drop of light oil on the spindle and put it back together. Good for another 5+ years. Nice design, really.
 
I shelled out big money (for me, anyway) on a Dell Inspiron 9100 back in the day. It quickly stopped charging from the charger, and I sent it back. The replacement worked about a month before developing the same problem, and I sent it back again. The second time, they said that it wasn't under warranty because someone spilled soda on it... and they wanted $400.

I knew damn well that there wasn't any soda in my house (I don't drink the stuff) and said damage could only have occurred at their facility or during shipping. It took me a while to convince them, but I did manage to... and the machine worked for about another month :mad:

Now out of warranty, I took it to a third party, and guess what! It went bad again, after about a month.


...No way in hell am I ever going to Dell again.
 
yourgrandma said:
I feel i can give a much better opinion than this article having to deal with the after math of hundreds of defective laptops. Never buy a hp/compaq or toshiba laptop.... ever. So many outright poorly designed laptops over the years from their top end to the low end that are failure prone and they simply aren't getting any better. If i had to rank reliability them i would say.
1.apple
2.dell
3.lenovo
4.acer
5.sony (decent quality but overpriced)
Don't get enough asus or samsung to make a accurate opinion on those.
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Not just no, but HELL no. Sure, Sony's machines themselves are slick enough, but the support...dear god, the support...

I've never had them not completely screw the pooch on a repair. Don't bother with an on-site support contract; the stoner chucklehead they send out will either claim it can't be fixed outside of a depot, or just strip out the casing screws and claim it was like that when he got there. And when you box it up to ship to a depot, make sure to give it a kiss goodbye, because you won't be seeing it again for a month or more -- even if it's just for a hard drive swap and reimage.

Needless to say, I've got a bit of a mad-on for Sony's computing division...
 
I gave my wife (then just gf) a hard time when she spent a ton of money on a MBP about 4 years ago. Considering the thing is still going strong to this day without a single issue, I have to eat crow. That laptop has been a tank. It still even holds a charge for several hours of use on it's original battery. I doubt we go the laptop route again when it finally kicks the bucket (tablet makes more sense for her use now), but if we do, I'll definitely be looking at the MBP line again.
 
Dell below sony and rated 5 in tech support?

lol they just made that entire thing un-credible
 
Comparing a $2000 Apple or Lenovo to a laptop 1/3 the price doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. It's kind of like comparing a Lexus with a Dodge. Sure, they both make cars.
 
Are we talking consumer or business laptops? Big difference. If we're talking business laptops, HP tops my list. My old laptop was an HP and I had left it on top of my car twice, in the laptop bag, and drove off. The laptop lasted until I wanted an upgrade to specs. For years, we ordered HPs and they have been awesome aside from a generation where they had some issues with defective hard drives. I'm currently using a Dell, at work, and it's not too bad but we just started ordering them. Too soon to say for Dell. We had ordered Lenovo laptops for over a year and no one liked them.
 
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