Reliability: Asus and Toshiba on top, Acer and HP trail behind

Measuring the reliability of consumer electronics equipment isn't always easy.   To ensure you get accurate results, you need to ask a representative sample of users for every manufacturer, but the picture becomes even more complicated when you consider the wide range of components in modern equipment.  Laptops are a case in point, but the research agency SquareTrade has analysed a sample of 30 000 products that it provided warranties for.

The survey results are clear: almost a third (31%) of laptops will encounter a problem in the three years after purchase!  Of these issues, around two-thirds are caused by hardware failure, while the rest are a result of accidents (falls, spills, etc.).

20% more problems with notebooks

The failure rate of notebooks will be grist to the mill of those that claim these products run into more problems because of their low-cost approach.  Entry-level machines experience 20% more cases of hardware failure compared to more high-level laptops.  Remember, though, that netbooks are still a relatively young product segment, and that for the purposes of the survey, any computer under $400 (around £250) is considered a netbook, which isn't necessarily the case.  You can even get 15'' laptops for that price, so it's better to think of this figure as referring to low-cost computers, rather than netbooks in particular.


Asus, Toshiba and Sony the three most reliable manufacturers

Another aspect that the study considered was the failure rate for different manufacturers, not including accidents.  Asus, Toshiba and Sony came out on top with fewer than 16% of their computers presenting problems, while Acer and HP close out the list with almost 10% more reported problems than the best of the bunch. 


It's interesting to compare these numbers to the sales figures for the different manufacturers.  Acer and HP, which come last here, actually sell the most laptops: the biggest selling manufacturers have the least reliable products it seems.  That's partly because of the low cost of their hardware, which inevitably encourages manufacturers to choose cheaper, less reliable components.  Netbooks are another example of this tendency, even though it's sill too early to say how they perform over a longer time period.

> Product Survey: Laptops

> Product Survey: Netbooks

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