Study Finds Asus and Toshiba Make Most Reliable Laptops

When we decide to ignore the global recession by buying a brand new laptop, we can compare memory, screen size and battery life, but we can't usually compare lifetime reliability. Until now.

Thanks to a recent survey comparing three year malfunction rates by manufacturers, smaller laptop companies like Asus, Toshiba and Sony lead the way in laptop reliability.

According to the report published by warranty firm SquareTrade, larger companies Acer, Gateway and HP produced laptops more prone to failure, with HP yielding a dismal 1 in 4 laptops with malfunctioning issues.

The report also concluded that cheap laptops are at higher risk of failing than more expensive models, which is at least one piece of good news for people still paying off their credit card debt.

SquareTrade also found that failure rates increase as years go by, estimating that nearly one in three laptops fail in the first three years of ownership. Of these failures, two-thirds were due to hardware malfunctions.

Overall the average total failure rate of laptops was 31 per cent over three years, which is higher than most consumer electronics. This isn't much of a surprise though given the heavy use and mobility of laptops.

The report was collated using a random selection of over 30,000 laptops and netbooks. Acer, Apple, Asus, Dell, Gateway, HP, Lenovo, Sony and Toshiba each had a minimum of 1,000 laptops tested.