Laptop reviews: Reliability
To find out which tech brands are the UK’s favourites, every year we ask almost 10,000 Which? members to tell us about the technology products they own – from how happy they are to recommend a brand, to how reliable the products are once they’re home.
Read our expert Which? reviews of the best laptops
Best laptops for reliability
Your laptop might be the only computer you own, or maybe you use it just for work. In either case, a problem with your laptop can be more than a mere inconvenience. That's why we survey thousands of Which? members every year to find out which brands of laptop are least likely to leave you in the lurch.
Our survey provides reliability data for big laptop brands including Apple, Samsung, Asus, Sony and Acer. Our survey results show which laptop brands you can really trust, and highlight the most common laptop problems.
Which? members can log in to see the full results. Or you can try Which? today for just £1.
| Laptop Which? reliability index | |
|---|---|
| Brand | Score |
| Acer |  |
| Apple | |
| Asus | |
| Compaq | |
| Dell | |
| Fujitsu-Siemens | |
| Hewlett-Packard | |
| Lenovo | |
| Medion | |
| Packard-Bell | |
| Samsung | |
| Sony | |
| Toshiba | |
| Overall reliability | |
Common laptop problems
- Battery life shortened significantly 7% - a degraded battery life can make a laptop useless if you need to use it on the move.
- Screen started freezing 6% - a number of survey respondents experienced problems with their laptop screens freezing up.
- Horizontal/vertical lines appearing on the screen 6% - your laptop could still be usable, but having to look around blank lines on the screen can quickly become frustrating.
Laptop reviews
Our reliability survey highlights common problems with laptops. However, 35% of respondents to our survey said they bought their laptop as an upgrade - their old model was still working.
If you're looking to upgrade to a newer, quicker model our Which? laptop reviews can help you find the best laptop for your money. We test every laptop to see how well the processor and Ram work together, so you can find a laptop that won't keel over if you start to do a bit of photo-editing or run more than one program at a time.
We test laptops not only for how quickly they start up, but we also time how quickly they can copy files from USB sticks, disks and over wi-fi. We've seen differences of longer than a minute in some cases.
Which? is independent - we work for you, the consumer, so you can be sure that our product recommendations are influenced only by our test results. We don't take advertising and we buy all the products that we test, so our advice helps you to make the right choice and avoid costly mistakes.
- Best Buy laptops - find out which laptops we rate above all others
- How we test laptops- what makes a Best buy laptop
- How to buy the best laptop - an essential guide on how to choose the right laptop
