Top 9 Most Reliable Laptop Brands And Failure Rate Comparison

geckoandfly.com ^ | June 9, 2019 | Ngan Tengyuen

[fireman15]

Planned obsolescence, or built-in obsolescence, in industrial design and economics is a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life, so it will become obsolete (that is, unfashionable or no longer functional) after a certain period of time.

No company will admit they have this policy, but we can observe this from a products’ average failure rate and the company’s sincerity in fixing it by making available parts required to fix it. This is why I am a huge fan of Japanese products and also Apple. Products are not merely hardware, Apple on the other hand is known for updating their 4 or 5 years old iPhone with the latest OS. As for parts, it is easy to find spare parts for most Japanese brands.

[Ted Grant]

I’m actually inspired now to upgrade my laptop with a ssd drive. The whole operation will cost me about $110 and I may be able to sell the old drive for $10 or so on ebay. Improved performance is worth it! Thanks for the inspiration!

[Swordmaker]

I thought the "upgraded" OS slowed the phones down to restrict battery use of their non-replacement batteries that were dying...i.e. planned obsolescence.

You thought wrong. Most upgrades speed up the operation of the iPhone. What slows them down is the dying battery which can be easily replaced by Apple or many third-party companies, or even the user themselves with kits including tools bought through Amazon. For some models, it can take less than five minutes. Instructions are available on YouTube. Apple does slow down the older phones with chemically depleted batteries to prevent the batteries themselves from automatically shutting down through internal battery safety circuitry which is present to prevent overheating or fires due to the fact that older lithium ion batteries will continue to provide the same voltage by pushing higher and higher amperage and HEAT as the chemicals get depleted as the device tries to draw the same requirements.

Apple opted to slow down the clock speed as the battery gets to the point it cannot provide what is demanded to spread that demand out over a longer period of time so as to maintain the operation of the device for emergency communications at the expense of less necessary apps such as games. Replace the depleted battery with a new one and the phone returns to normal speeds.

Replacement battery kits can be purchased for as little as $12 on Amazon. Some third-party replacement locations such as Batteries+ will do it for you while you wait for as little as $50 - $60.

[Ozark Tom]

September of 2019 will make six years since the product release date. The phone’s hardware did manage a transition from the original iOS7 to iOS10. A good run for the plastic 5C option versus the aluminum 5S, yes?

Disclosure—bought the first Apple product (iPad Pro) this month for the wife—initially with her artistic pursuits in mind. Still trying to tax it’s speedy visual capabilities and create a stutter. When the new iPadOS beta bugs are sorted out, will find out if it can truly replace a laptop.

[Ted Grant]

Cool, I love that tablet! I refuse to quit on it! It has served me well (except for the battery replacement)!

I rooted my tablet the same day I bought it and it had been running Cyanogenmod unil recently, when I upgraded to a new ROM.

I’m now using the most recent Android LineageOS ROM 14.1 and it works great. It’s Android 7.1.2 build, though, so not state of the art, but it works very well for my uses.

Check it out at XDA. I think you’ll like it! Good luck!

[fireman15]

Hunk of Plastic. (HP). I make an effort to never buy HP products - whether scanners, laptops, printers.

I have had laptops from most of the major brands over the years. My first HP Laptop came with Windows 95. I had a docking station, a bunch of batteries and just about every available accessory. It was a business class laptop and I used it for many years with Windows 98 2nd edition. It is still around somewhere and nothing on it ever broke. I believe that it had a metal skeleton. It still works.

I had a Compaq laptop after HP bought them out that came with Windows XP. Nothing physically ever broke on that laptop, but I had to replace the motherboard twice, partially because it had a socket and took desktop CPUs and I used a more powerful CPU in it than what it came with which sometimes caused heating issues. So I really can't complain.

I replaced that laptop with a Lenovo that also came with Windows 7 after I didn't feel like replacing another motherboard on the Compaq. It gave me a good several years as well. I did have to buy a set of replacement hinges and the plastic on that machine comes off in little chunks fairly frequently, but it still works.

So it has just been in the past couple of years that we have started trying to use HP laptops again. And the build quality on the first three was very bad. Fortunately, they all failed under warranty. The screen went bad on one and the hinges failed on the other two. I ended up getting my money back from Costco on two of them and HP replaced one with another that was brand new but had slightly better specs although it was from a cheaper laptop series. The hinges are starting to come loose in that one. It is my wife's and she does not use it very much.

I could not get a laptop with specs as good as the one that I just replaced with the money that I got back because it had been on a good sale. I actually purchased another HP with 2 in 1 higes that looked a little more robust.

[Swordmaker]

I don’t see any value in buying Apple’s grossly over priced hardware in order to run Win or Linux.

If you compare it to Dell, HP, Lenovo, or Sony and many other name brand Windows hardware in the same markets, you’ll find that Apple’s hardware is competitive and often less expensive, and when compared over the life of the products, has a lower total cost of ownership. . . by a long shot.

I just ran a comparison of the new Apple Mac Pro and found that to match the $5995 Mac Pro specs in an HP workstation, using what they had available, which unfortunately could only use their currently available 2018 Intel Xeon chip instead of the 2019 one Apple would be including, came to almost $9,700. Dell only had a lesser specced 2018 Intel Xeon processor available and the workstation came up with fewer of the components the Apple included, but their workstation priced out at $6,400. Neither of the two company’s workstations came with anything close to the suite of software that comes free with the Apple Mac Pro.

In addition, Apple just announced their new Apple Pro XHD 32” Reference Master Monitor which sells for $4,995, or $5,995 with etched screen. This competes with several other 31”— 32” Reference Monitors that retail for upwards of $30,000 — $43,000 . . . Such as the Sony 31” SVM-310 Master Monitor which retails for ~$33,250. . . Yet the Apple has more features. That one certainly is not “grossly overpriced.”

IBM, as a company, switched the workforce over to Apple products and are saving millions of dollars in IT support and even in hardware costs over the long run. Yearly IT costs are lower by $41 million and the number of trouble tickets are down almost 70% across 400,000 employees. Useable life of the hardware has increased and EOL value of the hardware has increased.

[Swordmaker]

(comparable very high end boxes will cost $160K and still not be identical nor will any other box drive 6 6k monitors simultaneously with no lag)

I wouldn’t go quite that high. . . Some MIGHT reach $160,000 if fully populated with all the stuff required that will fit in a fully populated Mac Pro. . . But then that Mac Pro would be in the $40,000 range itself. Of course you can add 36 devices onto the Mac Pro through daisy-chaining the Thunderbolt 3 ports at 40Gb speeds, and not lose anything. . . Including storage, more graphics cards, more monitors, even more Mac Pros. There are rack-mounted Mac Pros that can be chained together to create a Supercomputer of any size, if you desire. . . But then the 56 teraflops of the fully populated single Mac Pro is no slouch in computing power.

[mabarker1]

Try a Wireless Mouse. It brings a LT to a whole new World of functionality !

[PIF]

I saw the 160K figure in some MP review so I just repeated it. I forget which review - thanks for hopping in.

[free_life]

Thanks I will check it out. I have thought maybe putting Linux on it.

[Swordmaker]

I don’t think you know who Louis Rossmann is, or what he’s been doing (low-level, component-level SMD board repair on Apple product) for the last - decade or so ...

I THINK he has basis for his complaints.

I do know who he is. . . but he is talking about a very few MINOR issues on production of MILLIONS of devices. I’ve recommended clients send expensive boards to him that were not replaceable for repair. He is NOT an engineer, and certainly not a production engineer. He is a guy who repairs circuit boards at the component level which is never a warranty worthwhile profitable prospect to do for a major corporation to do.

A large corporation will either replace the device or the logicboard or the circuit board. Such repair is not waste of the labor to locate, desolder, and then solder a replacement component on a circuit board. It is not economical to do so. They will either scrap the circuit board, send it to a third-party to recondition, or recycle it into a repaired part to replace in another part later.

Warranty is about sheer numbers. Rossmann is talking about a few Apple Mac Pros that have crossed his workbench. . . and I have owned a cross-platform computer support business for FORTY YEARS. Looking at his age, I have probably as much, if not more experience with failure rates of various hardware than he has. It is MY experience that Apple Mac Pros are far better engineered than any Windows machines expect those that are in the same price/product market that Apple competes in. . . And even then, the Apple excels. Statistically, you will find the companies who compare repair rates find the same facts. Apple excels in lowest repair rates and longevity of their products, compared to the others, year after year.

Rossmann’s flat statement that Apple products fail after two to three years of use is flat out WRONG by my own experience of forty years of use, both owning and managing a large number of their products. . . And assisting many clients who owned products made by competitors using Windows operating systems. That is a fact.

Rossmann is not just an Apple device repairman. . . He is obviously prejudiced and I caught him distorting facts and lying to my absolute knowledge of the actual facts. That means he has an agenda. His view is distorted by only seeing a few out-of-warranty devices that he repairs. . . And then he regurgitates competitors’ propaganda without evidence that Apple made zero changes in a model that went on to be the best selling phone in the world with ZERO ANTENNA or ATTENUATION PROBLEMS, a product which in fact had better reception than any other phone in the world at the time, and went on to be sold in the world for three more years (still with zero antenna problems), or that you could attenuate the signals of every other cellular phone by where you placed your hands in reference to where the antennas were located.

Incidentally, I posted demonstrations as much or more attenuation of other major brand phones at the time by major IEEE laboratories on FreeRepublic. The claims of attenuation came from Consumer Reports, who had no idea what they were doing, having never tested cellular phones for such a thing before. . . and used the various phones’ own display bar scales for their tests, not a real s-meter test, just as Rossmann erroneously does in his YouTube.

_Jim, Rossmann posted about a supposed class action lawsuit . . . But he doesn’t tell you it was tossed out of court. It failed to achieve class status. It failed to show that all Mac Pro users were afflicted by the issue the plaintiff’s were complaining about, and also Apple had already addressed their issue.

He then doesn’t like the design of the 2013 Mac Pro, claiming they were, according to him design after an air filter, as if he somehow lives in the mind of the engineers who designed it. . . I own TWO of these Mac Pro and they work fine. The failure rate of the 2013 Mac Pro is far lower than any other Mac ever made. They run quietly under full load, they can be upgraded for the Xeon Processor (in fact the last one we bought had a latest upgraded SSD and 2017 speed, cache, and function Xeon and ECC RAM in it, EVEN THOUGH THE PRICE REMAINED THE SAME, although Rossmann snidely implies Apple was still selling it with 2013 components, which Apple was NOT but was upgrading the processor and RAM and graphics each year without fanfare, keeping it competitive), and easy access for all parts.

Expandability of the 2013 Mac Pro is through two gigabit Ethernet ports, four USB-3 ports, six Thunderbolt 2 20Gb per second ports to powered PCIe cages with their own power supplies and cooling. Up to thirty-six Thunderbolt devices can be daisy-chained from those Thunderbolt ports. These can have additional graphics cards as needed. HE doesn’t like it. . . But plenty of users did. HE calls it an engineering failure.

Certain 2013 Mac Pro internal graphics cards, which had been working fine, made between February 8, 2015 thru April 11, 2015 by an American third-party had a problem due to not meeting specifications which Rossmann attributes to heat. They were SIMPLE to replace (and were replaced under warranty BY THE MANUFACTURER — not Apple). . . the manufacturer’s replacements and all later graphic cards had no “heat problems”. Rossmann claims this two month graphics card problem was a problem with Apple’s 2013 engineering! Absurd!

Then he actually brings up “Bendgate” . . . Another competitor propaganda generated non-issue. Do you know that it took 145 lbs of force to bend the iPhone at issue, but only 110 lbs to 120 lbs of force to bend the next most popular model of Samsung’s phone in the same place??? Fact. Samsung was the backer of the Bendgate campaign.

Other makers’ phones would bend with as low as 90 lbs of pressure. Outside of YouTube bloggers who made money by buying and bending iPhones, the TOTAL number of iPhones returned to Apple for bending was fewer than TEN before the YouTubers started showing how to do it. Afterwards Apple had about 100 returned for warranty replacement. . . Most because of monkey see, monkey do.

Then, Rossmann claims that a chip in “virtually all of the MacBooks” (12 inch model A1534) have to be replaced after just a couple of years. What a LOAD OF BS. We have these MacBooks going on seven years before we retire them. . . Never need replacement of this chip. I personally own two A1534 MacBooks used daily purchased new when they first came out that have never needed replacement of this chip. In my office we have eight MacBooks A1534s that are on 24/7 (under heavy load at least ten hours six days a week) and for going on four years and have not overheated in this chip and have not failed.

He’s spouting BULL MANURE to spread FUD, Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. . . Which he seems to be an expert at spreading, very deep! I’ve had many clients with MacBooks and not a single one of these clients has had a single one of these chips “just die”.

The one area I agree with him is the keyboard issues on the later laptops, but they are covered for free replacements, which he does not bother to mention. He even cites the date of 2018 for a quote for repair of a keyboard issue when that extended warranty was fully in place from Apple. There had to be another issue for that quotation to be made. Most likely because he is not an Apple authorized repair location. . . And he likely has already attempted a repair.

Then he finishes with “failing SATA cables” one of the most minor issues one could ever hear about. Ridiculous. He’s been in the business 10 years. . . and he hasn’t heard about failing cables, he says. I have. I’ve run into a lot of failed cables and thrown out a lot. If someone has a failing SATA cable on a Mac laptop, it’s likely user failure because they attempted to replace a HD themselves. That I’ve seen. There really is no movement in them otherwise.

[Valk Rider]

The cost of SATA 3 SSD’s has dropped BIG TIME. I remember when a Samsung 1 TB SSD’s were close to $1,000. Now, you can get a Western Digital 1 TB SSD for around $110.

The link below is a 240GB Crucial SSD for $29 to your front door. Times sure have changed.

https://www.newegg.com/crucial-bx500-240gb/p/N82E16820156187?Item=N82E16820156187

[LongWayHome]

Same. Acer Chromebook. Just retired my 6-year-old (still working) Chromebook & purchased a new Acer. Not one problem, ever.

[CodeToad]

2009 data?

[itsahoot]

I don’t see any value in buying Apple’s grossly over priced hardware in order to run Win or Linux.

There is no value in it, you buy Apple products in order to run Apple OS and in some cases a buyer may actually be forced for business or other reasons to have Windows or Linux available. If so you can just have it all in one package.

[_Jim]

I’m going to say that you’re dancing around the important issues Rossmann brings to the fore, and which he has spent his own time, energy and money on making people and aware of. To wit:

1) Lack of documentation in the way of schematics and parts placement diagrams that permit repair by either the owners of Apple products or third parties such as Rossmann who have shown qualifications in that area.

2) Lack of access to Apple replacement parts, such as certain Apple-specific ICs and ‘chips’ that receive programming making them unique to Apple production, and unavailable to either owners of their product or third party repair services.

I don’t know if you’re aware of the practice by manufacturers before ‘computers’ got big, but there used to be documentation sets available to consumers and repair houses alike for a whole host of product like TeeVees, stereos, and other household appliances ... I was a bit perturbed at one point not being able to obtain schematics and the like for ‘computer’ equipment (NOT that it stops me, or others, from troubleshooting BUT its nice to have the docs!)

For decades Motorola in the sales and service of their 2-way radio lines sold documentation packages, and also sold replacement parts for their equipment as well. Apple does nothing of the kind - bring it into their “genius bar” and MAYBE you can get satisfaction.

Now, I happen to know a thing about the ‘repair’ depot process as practiced by a few of the bigger manufacturers in the DFW are by benefit of having had friends involved in that field, and the practices vary between facility as to the level of repair.

The biggest issues is, the capability and competency of technicians. We used to employ rework operators separate from technicians, for the purpose specialization, but, we were a manufacturer, and not predominantly a repair facility.

[Swordmaker]

You manage, Rossmann and his repair shop REPAIR units sent him by the public, in a lot cases AFTER Apple has quoted an unsuitable repair action or price.

On the contrary, I also service and repaired. I owned and operated a cross platform support business for forty years. I will put my 40 years up against Rossmann’s 10 years any time. . . And it was my profit bottom line I worried about. I assure you IBM knows what they are doing switching from Windows to Apple for 400,000 employees worldwide.

IBM said Wednesday at the Jamf Nation User Conference that it’s actually saving money on each Mac: $273 to $543 per Mac over four years, compared to a Windows PC over the same time period. IBM said Wednesday at the Jamf Nation User Conference that it’s actually saving money on each Mac: $273 to $543 per Mac over four years, compared to a Windows PC over the same time period. And no, that’s not because Microsoft is charging more. Fletcher Previn, IBM’s vice president of workplace as a service (yeah, that’s a real title), said Microsoft is giving IBM its best pricing ever. But Macs are still cheaper over their lifetime, and using them results in fewer service calls.

Previn said just 5 percent of IBM’s Mac users needed to call the help desk; In contrast, an astonishing 40 percent of PC staff request tech support help.

Previn added. . . 27 percent of PC-related issues require in-person assistance versus 5 percent for Macs. Those factors mean PCs are three times more expensive to manage than Macs at IBM, he said.

(Just about 50 IT specialists at IBM service IBM’s Apple installed base of over 200,000 Macs and iOS devices worldwide at the end of 2016 compared to over 600 IT specialists for their remaining PCs. At that time IBM was deploying 1,300 Macs per week.).

This graphic from the original article posting puts the lie to Rossmann’s claims. Notice which laptop brand is at the top of the chart with the least breakage problems:

A bit dated but, from Consumers Reports:

Survey Results: The Most Reliable Laptops Apple laptops experience the fewest breakdowns, according to the new Consumer Reports study on computer reliability
By Donna Tapellini
Last updated: October 07, 2015

Apple’s laptops rank highest in reliability, according to the latest Consumer Reports survey, as they have in previous years. Our latest survey of more than 58,000 laptop owners also revealed how laptops tend to fail and what it costs to fix them.

Apple is still No. 1. We estimate that only 10 percent of Apple laptops fail by the third year of ownership. The numbers for Windows laptop brands range from 16 percent to 19 percent. In addition, Apple laptops break down less often than laptops from other brands. Among laptops that fail, only 42 percent of Apples break down more than once, while more than half (55 percent) of non-Apple laptops break down on multiple occasions.

[fireman15]

2009 data?

Congratulations you are the 5th person in the thread who parroted someone from the comments section of the article. I saw that in the comments from the article also, but didn't see any explanation given. It seems like something that came completely from out of left field. An interesting trolling method to be sure. Maybe you can explain what the guy was talking about?

There were two graphs in the article. The first graph was from the 2017 Winter Product Reliability Survey Consumer Reports National Research Center. The second graph was from PC Magazine in 2016. I tried to find more recent failure reports myself and so far have not been able to.

[Swordmaker]

I saw the 160K figure in some MP review so I just repeated it. I forget which review - thanks for hopping in.

I’ll have to look for that review and see what kitchen sinks and other accessories they might be tossing in to get there. Perhaps they are including a few of the $43,000 monitors?

[Swordmaker]

1) Lack of documentation in the way of schematics and parts placement diagrams that permit repair by either the owners of Apple products or third parties such as Rossmann who have shown qualifications in that area.

2) Lack of access to Apple replacement parts, such as certain Apple-specific ICs and ‘chips’ that receive programming making them unique to Apple production, and unavailable to either owners of their product or third party repair services.

No, I’m not unaware of those schematics. What part of my owning and operating a cross platform computer support business for 40 years do you keep failing to grasp and attributing total stupidity about the business to me?

Rossmann is a technician, and probably very talented at de-soldering parts from multi-level circuit boards, but he is not an Apple Authorized Repair station. He has a small business. . . Limited to what he does, and a Right To Repair Advocate. If he wants to repair something, fine, have at it. He has no right to force has opinion of what a company does want to sell on that company. He does NOT own their intellectual property. He does not own their software, only a license to use it as per a contract he agreed to. He does not seem to grasp those legal concepts.

Apple is NOT in the business of selling its proprietary ICs or SoCs for other businesses to make boards or even other computers with or even to do repairs. That is NOT their business model and they are not required to make it their business model. Rossmann doesn’t like their business decisions and their engineering decisions. That’s his prerogative.

The specific design and programming that makes those chips proprietary to Apple have a lot to do with security, encryption, and keeping the devices inviolate from being unlocked by people who want to unlock them after stealing them. That is why only Apple Authorized Repair stations have access to these parts. It is a legitimate reason why certain Intellectual Property is limited in access and not sent out to third-party repair shops.

There are now five specific IC chips that are so limited because they have to be inter-registered to lock each device to the device by Apple. If they could be installed by just any John Doe repair shop, thieves could steal Apple devices like they could before the introduction of the iPhone 5S, and resell them on the black market unlocked. Now they cannot do that, making them much less the target of snatch and grab muggers. Before the introduction of the Apple 5S, the iPhone was the prime target of 95% of the mugging in New York City. Afterwards, only 5% of muggers even bothered to steal them.

Do you grasp the concept now???? There is a legitimate reason for it.

If Louis Rossmann wants to build a company such as Apple that operates under his rules, then he is free to try to do so. More power to him. Until then, he has to work with the companies and the laws that exist as they are.