Who is the best windows laptop manufacturer?

Posted 2nd Feb 2023

I need to buy two laptops for my kids, and I've seen quite a few offers on here but was wondering more generally which would you consider a good manufacturer? Or makes to avoid.

My budget is £600 per laptop so no Apple Macs.

25 Comments

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2nd Feb
My preference is Lenovo - business machines only and my next choice is ASUS.
All the rest IMHO are around the same level.
2nd Feb
You must have a better spec model than me then. Having just moved away from HP Elitebooks to Lenovo I’d have my HP back any day. Our Lenovos are an underpowered piece of junk that looks like like a kids VTech ‘my first laptop’!!
2nd Feb
Do they play games?
2nd Feb
I'd say Zenbooks are some of the best. If you could stretch your budget for 100 more than this Asus Zenbook would be ideal.
2nd Feb
Depends if your talking about a consumer or business machine. Some of the low to mid range consumer laptops tend to be very plastic, can sometimes creak and generally have lower build quality and limited upgradability (all ram solderd onto the MB and no sockets or just one socket).

Most brands have cheapo models and decent premium models. Some of these branded machines are not even made by the brand. The biggest producer of laptops in the world is a company called quanta who most people will never of heard of. They make machines for most brands.

Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo thinkpads, Panasonic tough books are generally decent. Also, its worth getting next day on site warranty if it's offered or available.
2nd Feb
Apple
2nd Feb
I would recommend Asus. I've had two before and both had decent build quality and lasted a long time before I decided to upgrade.
2nd Feb
i would go with tablets windows os is bloated and uses resources not needed.
2nd Feb
We've got 4 HP's like the build(not an expert), hated Ms Surface pro & Dell(bloatware)
2nd Feb
I like Asus. Dell used to be really good but haven't had one for ages so not sure what they are like now. I wouldn't recommend Lenovo.
Author
2nd Feb
Looks like Asus leading with two recommendations. What is their post Sales support like?
2nd Feb
Probably more productive to consider the merchant that is shifting the hardware as it is the merchant that holds the statutory quality and durability obligations for up to 6 years, unless you live in Scotland.
Pay that merchant directly using any form of UK-regulated credit to effectively force the credit provider to inherit joint and several obligations as the merchant.
2nd Feb
Lenovo aftercare was awful for me. Getting them replace a faulty monitor was traumatic experience and felt like they were trying to catch me out. Never again!
Good that you are asking about aftercare because no point getting a deal if company screw you over later...
2nd Feb
Got to say that the 2 asus zenbook that I bought for the family have taken extreme abuse around the world and continue to perform.
That said the Acer I'm typing on now is 10yr old and still going strong with a new ssd and a replacement screen. And I don't think Acer have a great reputation.
My old Dell Inspiron got lugged around the world too for quite a few years without complaint. Still happily boots up on WinXP with a cheap ssd upgrade.
None of this means much more than modern electronics are pretty durable.
3rd Feb
In all honesty, from my perspective (working in IT and dealing with hundreds of machines), it really depends on the model(s) in question. To an extent, they all make 'cheap and compromised' and all offer more 'premium with better durability'.

Feedback re. aftersales and availability of repair parts is more useful.

As a rule of thumb, stick to established brands.
Anonymous User
3rd Feb
This definitely.

We use HP Elitebooks at work, but I have seen plenty of HP laptops for business and personal use in particular with battery swelling.

We've also had Asus, Acer, Lenovo anf Huawei machines at home, and depending on the model, some have been decent, and some cheap and nasty. One thing we have seen in some of the Asus Ryzen Vivobooks (3500u, 3300u vintage), is an issue where the clock speed of the CPU drops to 400MHz, which then will force either a Windows reboot, or need a physical power cycle. Seems to be a specific issue to one subset machine model and can't be solved by firmware updates.