Most reliable laptop brands?

[KCETech1]

You can not really go by brands, but by models and designed function.

in 90% of cases a Business class will beat out any consumer/ prosumer laptop AND have the warranty to back it up.
now if we expand further industrial laptops such as the fully rugged toughbooks and getac's will even beat a business class unit.

Ok from both personal experience and surveys that break machines by models and failure rate over 3 years

1 Industrial laptops, for example the CF-18 and CF-29 less than 3% failed OR had repairs in 36 months and these are most abused laptops on the planet. numbers are from panasonic and heartland ( Panasonics north american major repair center) 5 year warranties available

2: workstation class laptops such as Dell Precision m's , Elitebook W and Thinkpad W from all the reading it seems to be around the 5-10% over 3 years fail. again up to 5 year warranties with NBD and accidental are common for very minimal cost ( $150-300 )

3: most of your business class units but there are always exceptions such as the D620 with the quadro GPU with a high fail rate. estimated average failure rate is 10-15% in 3 years again long NBD warranties are common

4: I have no hard information at all on AW and Clevo. I suspect the AW can do 3 years easily enough just because of the 3 year warranty available

5: ALL normal consumer models. It does not matter. if you look at service charts from squaretrade or elsewhere its 15-25% dead in 3 years. Yes ASUS and Toshiba seem to have lowest numbers. but its still luck of the draw big downside except for some ASUS models none have any form of accidental protection and excluding apple tend to have slow depot warranties. (although Apple is good for sticking you with parts cost in many countries )

Laptop reliability survey: ASUS and Toshiba win, HP fails -- Engadget

[STIMjim]

Pianowizard has a point, it depends on personal taste. For me, personally, I've only owned Sony laptops because of their sleek and attractive designs, but its best to get them on deal since they're way over priced. Lenovo seems very durable, my friend is still using his after 5 years! IMO you just have to do the research and know what you want in a laptop, don't trade personal preferences for brand names. Unless its toshiba X{P

[Colpolite]

Lenovo Thinkpad, N and G series Asus, Some Alienware, Sony Vaio Z and S and some Clevo Shells.

[nipsen]

Agree with jarhead. The thing about asus tops is that they are consistently good -- for being low-quality plastic laptops. Lots of brands have for example a business-model that lasts, that you can kill an elephant with, and has support, etc. And then the non-flagship versions are cheap plastic, has gaps in the assembly, not the same care for the internal components, that sort of thing.

Lenovo still makes the best laptops in my head, though. Specially the smaller variants - I've been very happy with those, and have seen a lot of examples of people being very happy with them for a long time after they bought them. HP toughbooks don't compete with that, and still give off the impression - at least to me - of being a scaled down desktop computer with a screen forced onto the back with 5 inch phillips screws. In the sense that you worry it's going to crack down the middle when the materials give in one day.

Because, I mean, plastic and lightweight material is kind of neat. When it works.

[KCETech1]

HP toughbooks don't compete with that, and still give off the impression - at least to me - of being a scaled down desktop computer with a screen forced onto the back with 5 inch phillips screws. In the sense that you worry it's going to crack down the middle when the materials give in one day.

Panasonic not hp

[Kuroi-Tsubasa]

Depending on the laptop, plastic + metal is better than straight metal. Thinkpads have the ABS plastic on the outside: doesn't scratch easily, will not dent easily (expect when I dropped my 170W brick from a few feet up on the palm rest... <1cm-long dent), and magnesium skeleton (think of a roll cage on an off-road Jeep). Dell and HP do the metal-only laptop right (Latitude, Precision, Elitebooks, Probooks(?)), but the comsuner brands don't. Stereotypical example: drop a MBP on the floor and at *best* you will have a nice big dent and/or scratches. At worst, you just broke the whole thing. Now, plastic-only laptops won't be any better (like my Satellite); they hold up okay iff you treat them well, but they aren't very durable and will fail with moderate abuse.

[nipsen]

Yeah, really depends on the specific model as well. ..not going to promote someone here. But you notice generally on all models from particular brands that some of them are always packing the components well, balancing them out, don't anchor the heatsinks to the mainboard (but have a bracket at the middle of the mainboard that both the heatsink and the mainboard is connected to at the same spot), that sort of thing. That survives a drop, and you have the connectors and components on the same place three years after you bought the laptop. Not all brands are always as careful with that.

Panasonic not hp

>_<

..what were the HP ones called again? Bedpanbook? ..no. Strongbook?

[Kuroi-Tsubasa]

Elitebook. Because nobody taught HP humility.

[Bronsky]

Acer Timeline series is very well built and durable. I would forget about the Sandybridge models (x830TG) and look at the M4 Ultrabooks if you want something with a powerful GPU at $800 or less. My old Timeline has held up remarkably well over the past two years of daily work use.

[cognus]

imho - having worked inside the biz and sat through a heckuva lot of quality meetings, grillings, design-values, build decisions etc... it is true that 'business lines' among the majors get far more quality scrutiny, but it is also true that the most abusive users are not the business crowd but the gamers. doesn't require a lot of thinking to see that. other than that, I think the whole question of "which brand" is a non sequitur
if you want to roll dice on quality, pick one that has been out awhile, has a big following with lots of reviews, and let the reviews be at least an indicator to you.
and I don't think price has so much to do with it. cheap ones are cheap for a reason but some turn out to be solid. business lines cost more, but the range from bottom to top is huge. I've worked on a lot of expensive boat anchors.