[neuromancer2600]

I had a Dell XPS 9310 until about 3 months ago when suddenly one of the fans died on me for no obvious reasons while I was in quarantine. Given that the fans are now soldered onto the mainboard, Dell was offering me to repair this for almost the same amount I paid for the whole laptop 2 years earlier. Needless to say that this was the last time I will buy a Dell.

Since I am located in Asia, I also went to one of the unauthorized repair shops to see if they could offer a cheaper way to get this done. When I walked in, I saw two customers in front of me with Dells. When it was my turn, I also asked which laptop brands are having the most and least issues. Not surprisingly, Lenovo and Dell rank very high. The Taiwanese (Asus, Acer) as well as Razer and hp were considered of higher quality.

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Apple as well. I have a 2018 15" Macbook Pro with problems:

  - The battery is dying
  - The touchbar flickers whenever it is 'off' - a hardware fault that requires the full top case to replaced[1] - Quotes of $400-1200.

And things that aren't technically problems but still have the same, can't do anything about it stuck with the problem vibe:

  - I keep running out of space, but it's soldered to the logic board 
  - Keyboard is one of those shitty butterfly keyboards
  - It's always heat throttling

Granted, I might be able to get some of them fixed, but not without major inconvenience of being without my laptop for some period of time.

I've used Macs since the Apple Mac IIx, but I really hate the can't fix your own computer thing that has taken over in the last few years, for both Apple and others.

If Framework[2] offered a 15" or 17" version, I would be there in a heartbeat, but the 13" is just too small considering I don't use an external monitor.

[1]: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2017-mbp-touchbar-flash... [2]: https://frame.work

[avianlyric]

With the M1 Macs Apple have done quite a lot to address these issues.

The M1 MacBook Air I’m using feels as reliable and cool as mid 2000 MacBook. Complete night and day difference to the hot mess which was my previous 2018 MacBook Pro.

I still wish Framework would scale faster and start selling the the EU today. But building a hardware company is slow and hard.

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My GF has a M1 mac and is quite happy with it. I have a problem rewarding Apple with another purchase, given the dismal performance of this machine.

The 2018 mac was a top of the line purchase. I think it came to about $5000 AUD if memory serves. It's essentially worthless now because I can't sell it in it's current state.

I might cave when they update the 16in to M1X sometime soon, but I won't be happy about it.

[michaelanckaert]

I've been using my MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014) for the last 7 years, fortunately without any issues! I've never had to have any repairs or replacement done to it.

A small dent and some scratches in the lid are the worst problems I have.

I have been holding out over the entire touchbar, keyboard and other debacles and will probably go for the new updated Pro model by the end of the year.

Let's hope my next purchase lasts as long as this machine has :)

[rootusrootus]

There was a period of time when Apple really seemed to have lost their way with the MacBooks. I had a 2013 that was flawless. Then the lease was up and my company sent me a 2017 model to replace it. That machine was never much good. Randomly slow, awful keyboard, etc. Luckily the battery decided to become a balloon, and so my replacement is a newer 16-inch MBP. The new MBP seems to have addressed all of the stupidity that was going on in 2017 and 2018. And I bought a 2020 M1 MBP for myself, and it has also been quite solid. I don't want to say that Apple necessarily fixed all of their stupidity or really learned anything, but someone there still appears to give a shit.

[stevewodil]

My laptop battery and full top case (potentially including the touch bar - I'm not sure) were replaced when the keyboard was replaced under the keyboard service program: https://support.apple.com/keyboard-service-program-for-mac-n...

Go into an Apple store and say a few of your keys are double-pressing sometimes.

[barrkel]

You have to weight brands with the most issues vs market dominance vs likelihood of being seen by someone who observes the problem.

If most laptops are Dells, then most problems will be on Dell machines, even if a niche brand is lower reliability.

If most Apple laptops are taken to an Apple store, then a PC laptop repair shop won't see problems with Apple laptops.

And so on.

[neuromancer2600]

That is correct. However, according to a quick Google search, each hp, Lenovo, and Dell produce roughly the same number of laptops each year. Therefore the technician's statement about hp's being of better quality should weigh heavier.

[barrkel]

Does that presumably global production match the local distribution where the anecdote was relayed?

What proportion are on business contracts vs privately owned, where business laptop problems would go through the IT department?

What are the historical distributions, assuming that older laptops are more likely to be brought to a third party rather than OEM for repair?

What if less reliable laptops bricked very soon after going out of warranty, and more reliable laptops limped into a long tail?

[senkora]

Anecdotally, I know three people including myself who’ve had ASUS machines die on them right out of warranty protection, and I do not recommend them at all.

[lucb1e]

And here I just posted a comment in an unrelated thread about my Asus laptop from a decade ago still going strong: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28648872

For me it's Acer users that always have defects on their laptops. Someone else I know swears by Toshiba. Given how many different opinions there are out there, I feel like we just can't tell which brands are good without doing actual research, and probably we'd have to segregate by things like price band or series and perhaps even by year as teams or executives come and go.

[bluedino]

I'm trying to think back to when Dell made a 'good' laptop. Maybe the D630? Lenovo was still better, but what Dell sells now is just terrible.