how many times did you open & close your laptop before the hinges broke?

hardboner

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 23, 2016
Messages
235
if you had to estimate, how many times did you open/close your laptop before the hinges broke off the case?

notebook makers can't seem to ever get this right.
The hinges are still good, but your shell is cracked.
 
I open mine once a year and retighten. never had one break yet. One laptop is from 2008, another is from 2010 and the current one is from 2011
 
It's never happened to me so I can't answer your question. I've owned at least 10 laptops and the hinges held up fine over the years.
 
Yeah.. never had one break either. My current one is "what hinges?" as it's a tablet w/ attachable keyboard.
 
Like others have expressed, this simply has never been a problem with any of the dozen or so laptops I've have in the last decade, even cheaper ones.
 
I've never had the hinges break on a laptop. I don't know of any breaking that haven't been dropped.
 
I've never managed to break a hinge either over a span of 20-odd years.
 
HP DV7 17.3" laptops are notorious for the lower shell cracking at the hinge.
 
The only laptop hinge I've ever had break was on a 2002-era PowerBook G4. Get a high-quality laptop with a smart hinge design and it probably won't be an issue.
 
I made a damn fortune replacing hinges and plastics on Apple PowerBook 500's over this issue.
 
I was going to replace the lower case of my DV7 but some of the shells I saw on ebay were well over $100. I just open it carefully so it doesn't pop the corner up.
 
The main reason you get cracked plastics is when the hinges start to get out of sync with one another. One gets looser than the other (by either the spring or the screws changing). That causes a twisting force on the plastics when the lid is moved, thus the broken plastics.

Keep them tight, and always open the lid with both hands, one at each corner, and youll never have a hinge failure.

I think the HP Spectre x360 hinge is brilliant. It has a Torsion Rod between the two that keeps the pressure identical on each hinge, solving many of these issues.
 
The main reason you get cracked plastics is when the hinges start to get out of sync with one another. One gets looser than the other (by either the spring or the screws changing). That causes a twisting force on the plastics when the lid is moved, thus the broken plastics.

Keep them tight, and always open the lid with both hands, one at each corner, and youll never have a hinge failure.

I think the HP Spectre x360 hinge is brilliant. It has a Torsion Rod between the two that keeps the pressure identical on each hinge, solving many of these issues.

the hinges are tight and if you grab the lid with both hands, the laptop won't open, it will just lift up off the table.
I use one hand to hold the base while I lift with the other hand.
 
I used to refurb laptops and I can tell you that this is definitely an issue. the hp dv7 series mentioned above was especially bad. ive seen most brands with this issue, some are better than others. it was usually to do with the screw barrels being mounted in ceap plastics! only exception I can think of would be ibm/lenovos and hp business class units. i cannot recall seeing those with this issue. but, like also mentioned above, if you take care of the unit and tighten the hinges if they start to come loose you wont have the issue.
 
Keep them tight, and always open the lid with both hands, one at each corner, and youll never have a hinge failure. I think the HP Spectre x360 hinge is brilliant.

This. Fixed probably close to 1000 laptops. Only times I saw hinges break: very few times they were overtight/not greased from factory perhaps and failed in short time. That was fraction of a percent - hinges are not hard to make well. The only other time was majority - when they were dropped. Overall less than 1% failure rate for hinges. Usually it would be loose screws that made it feel like they were broken or sticky - the additional flex makes it feel broken.
edit: most models I worked on were toshiba but also plenty of everything else from all manufacturers. Typically hinge quality was okay.

These days with 300 dollar netbooks and 800-1k laptops, they probably cheaped out on shit..

You do get what you pay for.
 
Keep them tight, and always open the lid with both hands, one at each corner, and youll never have a hinge failure. I think the HP Spectre x360 hinge is brilliant.
How do you use 2 hands to open the lid? do you put your pinkies on the edge of the base and use your thumbs to lift the screen and slide them down the sides to open?

All the laptops I have sitting here, except for my MacBook Air, have really tight hinges and if you lift the lid with both hands, the base comes up and it doesn't open.
I have 8 old Windows Laptops here, newest one is from 2010, a Gateway, Lenovo, Toshiba, Dell, and a few HP's (the only one with a broken hinge is my 17.3" DV7)

EDIT:
I take that back, the Toshiba can be opened by holding both corners of the screen and lifting. It's an old dual Nvidia GPU laptop that weighs a ton. The PSU for it weighs more than some laptops, lol.
 
Last edited:
Yeah some lighter laptops will lift up if the hinges are tighter. Use as much width of your finger/hand/forearm to do it and it'll reduce pressure on one hinge, if you have to hold the laptop with the other. As they get looser one hand should be okay but thats usually once your well past 4-6 years or so, use dependent.


Have a a ten year+ old c2d Toshiba that still sees relatively regular use and the hinges are great. Mg chassis has been re-tightened twice.
 
The X360 gets around this with some sort of gear/torque rod systrem that distributes force equally no matter how opened.
 
I have used dozens of laptops over the years - most mine, a handful from my office - and the only time I have had a hinge problem was with an old Dell XPS 1210 and that was after I stopped using it and gave it to my girlfriend for her to use.
 
if you had to estimate, how many times did you open/close your laptop before the hinges broke off the case?

notebook makers can't seem to ever get this right.
The hinges are still good, but your shell is cracked.


The wife uses an Asus Q550LF laptop daily.. no hinges are broken and its over 2yrs old.
 
if you had to estimate, how many times did you open/close your laptop before the hinges broke off the case?

notebook makers can't seem to ever get this right.
The hinges are still good, but your shell is cracked.
Depends on the laptop. I've had ones that have lasted ages (5 years) with daily uses (4-5 times min open and closing) and perhaps tightening screws once every 2 years It was an old Compaq believe it or not. I've also had an Asus that had a plastic cover over the hinge that broke after 1 and half years of use. Tough to say.
 
The left hinge on my MSI GT70 just made a nice loud crunch and spewed out some plastic fragments last week after just about 5 years of service. The laptop still works fine but I can no longer close the lid and I have to support it via a brace so the screen doesn't fall over backwards.

I had been hoping to replace the laptop soon but sadly my house AC just gave up the ghost and $10k later it isn't 100f in my house any more.
 
Never had that happen but I don't use consumer laptops, only business class stuff: Dell Latitudes/Precisions, HP EliteBooks/ProBooks, and IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads (only the X/T/W) series. Consumer stuff sucks, really, and has been nothing but trouble for so many clients of mine and I keep telling them not to waste their money on consumer plastic shiny bullshit machines but they don't listen. So instead of the spending money on a better machine and not needing my help nearly as much - which of course would be bad for me in terms of income - they don't listen to me, they buy cheap shit consumer machines, and they end up needing my help more than they would if they'd listen to me so that's a win for me in terms of income and a loss for them for having to spend even more money out of pocket.

Some people just don't seem to grasp how that works. :)
 
Never had that happen but I don't use consumer laptops, only business class stuff: Dell Latitudes/Precisions, HP EliteBooks/ProBooks, and IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads (only the X/T/W) series. Consumer stuff sucks, really, and has been nothing but trouble for so many clients of mine and I keep telling them not to waste their money on consumer plastic shiny bullshit machines but they don't listen. So instead of the spending money on a better machine and not needing my help nearly as much - which of course would be bad for me in terms of income - they don't listen to me, they buy cheap shit consumer machines, and they end up needing my help more than they would if they'd listen to me so that's a win for me in terms of income and a loss for them for having to spend even more money out of pocket.

Some people just don't seem to grasp how that works. :)

There's plenty of good consumer laptops out there, put not the cheap plastic stuff as you mention. When you get to $700+, quality tends to be MUCH better than at the lower end these days.
 
Only laptop I've ever owned that had a failed hinge was an HP back in 2004. Don't remember the precise model number, but it was from their business line. Been buying MBPs since 2007. Never had a hinge break.
 
Lenovo z51-70 about 7 months of use there seems significant flop to indicate the top bit of the hinges are loose too.

Toshiba c650d about 2 years abs plastic holding the brass inserts broke repaired with 5 min epoxy filled that corner worked fine ever since.

Imho all laptops should have an alloy skeleton.
 
My Dell is now 30 months young and I open/close it at least 10 times/day. So up to now (9000 actions) it is still as good as the first day. If you buy quality to start with, it will last (Dell XPS 15).
My HP hinges broke at around 10.000 actions and started to become nearly unusable at 5000. (1500$ metal machine with plastic hinges)
Sony with a similar hinge design as my current Dell (10 years old and still in use for remote desktop) still works flawlessly.
 
Back
Top