Best laptop brand(s)

Best laptop brand(s)

  • Total voters
    32
stiggygonzalez

stiggygonzalez

734
England
Manchester
stiggygonzalez
I'm looking for the best brands out there and when I say best,meaning you should take this criteria into consideration:Specs:1.5 GHZ CPU(at least)4GB RAM(at least)250GB HDD or more/SSD/SSHDDisc drive if possible(not essential)At least x2 USB ports,ethernet,VGA,HDMI etc and the following before voting:
*Are they reliable?
*Build quality
*Customer support
*Good all-rounder?
*Good value?
*Good performance?
*User friendly?
*Any outstanding features?/design/functions etc
Finally no more than 400 pounds or 650 dollars.
 
Besides Apple and Alienware (due to price), you'll be able to find a laptop that hist most if not all of your requirements from every one of those brands. For most people, it's going to come down to what they have experience with both good and bad.

Personally, I've had good luck with Dell. This one, for example, looks like it ticks all the right boxes except for price. It's £399 but that's before tax and shipping.

In doing some looking around, this Lenovo doesn't look bad, although I think it looks cheaper than the Dell.
 
Pretty much what TB said, also worth remembering that user capability can affect their experience too.

Personally I've never had an issue with Acer's, but they won't generally be topping laptop brands. Dell's can be good, but they've also had some dross models. TB's Dell model is good value.
 
You could have added Gateway to the list as well. I think @TB pretty much summed it up, but having said that, I'm quite happy with the HP laptop I picked up a couple months ago once I removed Norton from it.
 
TB
Besides Apple and Alienware (due to price), you'll be able to find a laptop that hist most if not all of your requirements from every one of those brands. For most people, it's going to come down to what they have experience with both good and bad.

Personally, I've had good luck with Dell. This one, for example, looks like it ticks all the right boxes except for price. It's £399 but that's before tax and shipping.

In doing some looking around, this Lenovo doesn't look bad, although I think it looks cheaper than the Dell.
Click to expand...
Sureboss
Pretty much what TB said, also worth remembering that user capability can affect their experience too.

Personally I've never had an issue with Acer's, but they won't generally be topping laptop brands. Dell's can be good, but they've also had some dross models. TB's Dell model is good value.
Click to expand...
BobK
You could have added Gateway to the list as well. I think @TB pretty much summed it up, but having said that, I'm quite happy with the HP laptop I picked up a couple months ago once I removed Norton from it.
Click to expand...


Good points.
Great finds TB,I've heard Dell and Lenovo are pretty good.
 
I'd probably but another Dell, my 2 year old XPS-15 hasn't skipped a beat, and still looks new, though it has run on the warm side since new, not hot enough to warrant a re-paste though. I've had a couple toshibas previously and had good luck with them also.

I like the customization you can get with the Dell by ordering online, a few models offer an screen upgrade option which is well worth the 100 bucks. They build exactly what you want and it's built for you, it's not a machine that's been sitting on a shelf for 6 months.
 
Best out of the options you provided would be Apple (imo of course), but you can't go wrong with a Dell or Lenovo for the price range you specified. 👍 Avoid Toshiba though, horrid machines in my experience, my family has had a few and they've always developed some kind of weird fault. Shoddy build quality too.
 
As TB rightly points out, people will gravitate to what they have had good experiences with.

My 2c - I have used Dells for >10 years at work and have never had any issues with them. In my personal capacity I had a Lenovo for 3 years and it was ok, and then one day the right screen hinge decided to seize as I was opening it and ripped itself out of the casing.

My replacement - HP - is doing the job, but not sure I'll go with another when it eventually packs up. Things like loose/ rattly buttons and clumsy bloatware annoy me.
 
I heard Sony laptops apparently are fantastic laptops lately.

Personally I'm an ASUS guy. Loved my ASUS laptop so much I'm going to put my desktop full of ASUS stuff.
 
I had a Dell laptop in college that lasted a long time without problems. Only reason I replaced it is the cd drive quit working.

I replaced it with an HP, always liked HP stuff. Mainly though, it had great features for the price.
 
I use a MacBook Pro and I think it's excellent, especially with BootCamp on it so I can run OSX and Win7 on it. They are overpriced, but it's never failed me and to this day Apple has the best customer service I've dealt with concerning anything electronic. You also have to be willing to put up with ignorance with people believing Apple's are somehow Jesus and those who think they are Satan, if you can get past that, it's a good laptop brand.

As far as Windows based laptops go, I have a Lenovo ThinkPad for work and the thing is a beast. I have a super extended battery on it and I can use it for 9+ hours and still have juice left. It's rather durable too since it's been dropped countless times and survived being in a hospital environment without any issue.

I've had the worse experience with Acer since their customer service is horrid, same thing with Sony too. I'm sure they make a decent produce, although Sony's are as overpriced as Apple's are, but I can't stand talking to them when something goes wrong.
 
I think it's somewhat of a misnomer to group Dell and Alienware together, since they still pretty much function as separate companies in terms of design/engineering and customer service.
 
I've had, in the past, two HP Pavilions that put me off the brand. The first one fried within six months. It would overheat and shut down constantly. Until the point where it wouldn't restart anymore. There were three of us with the same laptop in our group... and they all broke down. I was the only one who got a replacement under warranty.

That new one, to be fair, didn't break. It would just slow down to x86 speeds when it got hot. That one was replaced by a Compaq. But since Compaq at that time was under HP, already, it wasn't very good, either.

This may have no relation to how good their laptops are now. Though I've a friend who had his HP Ultrabook's HDD go out in just two or three months.

-

For modern laptops, that's the one sore point... HDDs that are tightly packaged and run hot. They're the one part that fails with regularity (both my Acers blew HDDs. One took a few years, another went after a particularly tough week of transferring gigabytes worth of files and doing 500mb+ billboard layouts. A friend is of the opinion it's the Hitachi drives many laptops (here) use, so one thing I'd do is make sure that whatever I bought has an easily accessible HDD mount, so you can swap a better one in when it eventually fails.
 
My HP Pavilion g6 has been around for almost 6 months, and the only problem I've had was occasionally getting dog hair stuck in the fan and making a lot of noise. Though it was easily dislodged and has only happened twice. I got it pretty cheap, a bit less than $500, I think it was normally around $700. For the price it performs pretty well- 6GB of ram, 2.4 Ghz processor, and 444 GB of hard drive space. It has 3 USB ports, an ethernet port, an HDMI port and VGA port. it's served me well during its time here, and I'm glad I bought it. I probably wouldn't have bought it though if I had read all of the stories of problems with this model and the rest of the Pavilion line- like Niky's.

As people have said though, all of these companies, other than Apple and Alienware, should offer something that will fit your criteria, just look around.
 
Robin.
Lenovo, probably wouldn't buy anything else.

Fujitsu Siemens have an excellent reputation plus some are made in Japan, but pricey.
Click to expand...

I agree mostly with this Lenovo has been making a good effort to do better and better, I would stay away from all Taiwan made laptops/desktops at this point. I've heard some bad things and seen a couple with Asus hardware.
 
Using an Alienware M15x (4 years). Supports the MXM 3.0 standard, so it is upgradable (no integrated BGA components). Solid build quality. No locked bios (locked to a much less extent). Extreme edition processors are overclockable. Software included allows you to customize the lighting + touch pad in a quantitative fashion. Audio IC provides great/moderate audio quality with the lows. I've had nothing but a great experience thus far. I can still buy a GTX 780m and make it last another year or buy a newer model and retire this one to a server.
 
I have a HP laptop Pavilion DV6 7035TX 2012 model bought from last year. No overheating or any malfunction so far, though it tends to heat up while playing games.
 
TB
And with him not being in the US, and with BF being mostly over, that's not a likely option, either.
Click to expand...

So you're saying he can't buy from US, retailers and have it shipped. I'm talking about online BF deals that last through the weekend. Also if he wants a comp like that, watching for sales is the best option he has if strapped for cash. I'd say go with Lenovo or an HP if you want something at any time of the year that isn't going to be super expensive.
 
If he's comfortable buying a US laptop that is already at the top end of his budget, paying to ship it to the UK, and then hunting down a power adapter that works there, have at it.
 

Similar threads

GilesGuthrie
Build Log: Photomonster. Now with build pics and description
2
Replies
57
Views
4K
GilesGuthrie
GilesGuthrie
George Jakob
Gran Turismo 7 Rewiew 1,05-1.25 (A miss-shift to 8th gear) .
Replies
13
Views
6K
George Jakob
George Jakob
Joey D
SEMA News (56K Warning)
2
Replies
31
Views
20K
nosturbo
nosturbo
Sauc3
The reasons why Bush's government is corrupt
2
Replies
38
Views
2K
Solid Fro
Solid Fro

Latest Posts

Back