1. Razer 2. Asus 3. Microsoft 4. Dell 5. Lenovo 6. HP 7. Acer 8. Sony (?) 9. Samsung Apple (?) Clevo (?) Toshiba (?) system76 (?) alienware (?)
Quanta is probably the biggest notebook manufacturer, followed by Compal and Pegatron. Compal and Pegatron probably have the best quality overall.
Most PC suppliers use several manufacturers, sometimes as many as five (Dell, I think). Asus currently uses Pegatron, Compal and Wistron, so it's average quality should be pretty good.
It's a tough business because the number of viable contract manufacturers is growing while the number of viable PC OEMs is shrinking. (No more Gateway, Compaq, TI, IBM etc, except as brands.)
In addition, companies with large volume sales can afford to offer several product ranges aimed at different markets. Dell, for example, has different ranges for consumers (Inspiron is low end, XPS is high end) and for businesses (Latitude, Optiplex, Precision), plus Vostro for the SO/HO market.
So, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to compare, for example, Dell with HP with Lenovo. They all have multiple ranges made in different factories -- and they could all be using the same factories!
You'd really need to compare the same types of laptop (low-end, mid-range, high-end / consumer, business, enterprise) across different PC manufacturers.
If you don't do this, the "worst" brand is likely to be whichever company makes the biggest volumes of really cheap consumer laptops, especially if they don't support them particularly well. This used to be Acer. Today, it's probably Lenovo.
Conversely, the "best" brand is likely to be whichever company makes the smallest volumes of really expensive laptops ;-)
Last laptop I bought was maybe 3 years ago. I was comparing everything at the local Microcenter and wanted something fairly powerful but not to the point that I was paying a hefty premium for that last "tier" of polish and quality. By sorting the options to include only i7, at least 16GB RAM, dedicated GPU, and at least 1920x1080 display, I was left with some silly Asus that looked like a Michael Bay Transformer, another Asus with a tasteful aluminum chassis, and a Macbook Pro.
The black thing with red LED lighting was out because I guess I am still a bit shallow and superficial. The other Asus had a better GPU, lower quality TN display, and spinning HDD in comparison to the lower-end GPU, nicer IPS display and SSD on the MBP. But the aluminum Asus cost $999 and the MBP was $2399.
I wouldn't have minded buying an Apple notebook if there had been a more affordable option with similar tradeoffs but as you say, they don't make ones like that. And I'd certainly like a nicer screen but not for more than double the price. A SSD was easy enough to swap into the Asus and when I upgraded the one in my desktop, I passed that older SSD down to the laptop.
I guess the main point is that these other OEMs like Asus still do decent sales and produce options with less-than-top-tier parts because there's a real market for those who are fine buying an Accord instead of a Mercedes even if the Mercedes has some superior features or build. Not sure how much of it is artificial (as far as intentionally targeting different price brackets with parts that may only cost the OEM $100-200 less to include).
Either way, as my current budget stands, I'll continue to gravitate toward whatever company can sell me "not quite the best" for half the cost of the top tier.
For quality and reliability. This is astonishingly subjective and quite probably wrong :p
1. Thinkpad. Not as good as they were, but appear to be trying to improve again. Usually a fairly safe bet for BSD & Linux drivers. Support (UK) have been excellent.
2. Dell 2. HP (Like with Lenovo separate the cheap consumer crap, and the well made professional ranges)
3. The rest
4. Apple. Well made, hopeless for upgrade, now very overpriced. New keyboard seems to be disliked on reviews so far.
99. Acer - Pet hate brand that always seems to have far more than fair share of issues, and support (UK) terrible.
No experience of clevo or system76. Not sure MS have been around long enough with Surface to judge well yet. Personally I would be wary of Razer, though I've not owned a laptop of theirs, which might be superb. None of their mice and keyboards seem to last 5 minutes. Santa will bring the kids no more Razer Nagas.
As long as you're willing to put in a tiny bit of effort, you can know that all the software on your machine is coming from known people and companies, that you chose to trust.
Apple is the only company I would trust [at this time] to put only Apple software on retail Apple hardware. But that is because even if anybody was willing to comply with the inevitable list of strict requirements, Apple would almost certainly try to charge the third-parties so much to bundle their software, that no one would reasonably be able to justify the cost.
Microsoft, I could see making a deal with some third-party to put into certain models of the Surface. It might just be something like hardware drivers with a Windows GUI to change some settings, but they would do it.
They seem to act like they're separate. Hardware build and installed software is entirely different. I was under the impression they still operated as separate divisions. UK Support was even on separate numbers until fairly recently - now it separates at top level.
If Lenovo get a strike, Sony probably should for the rootkit.
If you're not comfortable ignore my "probably wrong" suggestions! :)
First thing I do with any Win machine is remove the crap and demos or clean install and add drivers. Or occasionally start immediately with !Windows.
Also one mustn't discount post sale service in evaluating options. The value of a particular laptop is more than the box itself. What happens if you have problems? How easy is it to get it fixed? How long will you be without it for in the meantime?
Had several Thinkpads, only one needed repair, was handled quickly and smoothly. Repaired first time.
HP and Dell have been OK, for me, with support.
I've had issue with individual products of theirs, but not laptops.
I didn't like how Dell handled a faulty monitor, but is it relevant to their pro laptop experience?
They're both harder to deal with than Thinkpad, in my experience, in my country.
EDIT: Oh I forgot about the absolute ton of crapware on the machine out of box.
Don't like the 6 row chiclet keyboard, sound is garbage on recent machines I've had, don't seem as resilient, and not the same attention to detail.
Crapware? Access Connections (Adobe Air made it slow junk), warranty/help/update thing. No Norton any more. They started adding other junk?
As for crapware: my T450s came with a bunch of Lenovo-branded garbage, like a settings app, a power management app, and an update app. That leaves you with, e.g. two different ways to configure your power management settings, and three different ways to configure things like mouse settings (the Windows modern app, the lenovo app, and the Windows app). For $1,000, a machine should just come with Microsoft software.
I forgot a few. I killed them too.
Except I kept update for TP drivers. Win Update has got them wrong in the past. 'apt-get upgrade' starts to look quite advanced! :D
The default shipped screens are okay-ish.
The IPS displays have a reputation of good quality but you gotta pay extra.
As for Razer, I hear their products are excellent (laptop wise).
As for their peripherals, please guys, there's Roccat just down the road and it's cheaper and better.
With Clevo resellers, you get excellent components for the money, but the chassis is usuallt not the 'sexiest'. I'de go with a clevo reseller purely because you can get a rediculous spec for little money (1TB SSD, i7, 8-16GB RAM in clevo world is like 256GB SSD, i5, 8GB RAM in the 'branded' world)
As for Samsung, I've owned one for 5 years and it's still going strong. Flexy chassis though.
HP...sticky keyboard I've heard from friends and wider.
Lenovo...still not forgotten SilverFish crap. As for hardware though, I've heard their business line up is tough and rugged as fck. Suits the frequent traveller I suppose.
Don't talk to me about Apple...planned obselence, bribing developers to not developer for Linux and only MacOS (even though they are 99% the same fcking thing), rip off, etc. Battery is good and heard the frame is rugged enough though. MacOS is obviously stable as hell, depending on release (lol Sierra tho).
As for the others, can't say.
As a preliminary list, i'de say:
1) Clevo reseller (think SCAN, PCS, XMG, etc.)
2) Razer
3) Lenovo
4) Samsung
> Don't talk to me about Apple...planned obsolescence, bribing developers.
I also read somewhere in the comment that they blacklist all those news websites which does bad review of their product.
I don't know enough about what is entailed after black listing but I guess they stop giving them news or prereleased products in advance.
Ahhhh, Roccat, the makers of the least reliable keyboard I have ever owned in 30+ years. Email support is terrible. Amazon refunded after the 4th broke.
The Kone mouse I bought at the same time has been lovely and is still going.
Here too.
ps: and only when using the touchpad.
And the same probably goes for a lot of other brands (IdeaPad vs Thinkpad for example)
Maybe the only exceptions to that are Razer and Microsoft who don't do low-end crap.
Not all ideapads are as crappy as they're believed to be.
This laptop will probably outlive me, not even using it as a hammer managed to kill it...
Finally gave up and now use it as a home computer (still running fine after some cleaning and hard-drive change)
MS actually did Surface RT once. But I understand it was a test phase.
You want the enterprise lines: focus on reliability and backwards compatibility rather than price or whiz-bang features. Just a year or two ago one of the best signs that you were getting one of those would have been the presence of a VGA port.
The thing is that most manufacturers have significantly raised the quality of their products especially in the high end range. We probably have to thank Apple for that which showed that is a huge market for high end laptops. Even HP builds quality machines these days.
As I own a mac I have some bitter experience with it when it comes to keyboard shortcuts. For example:
If you cmd+M to minimize an app, how would you bring it back.
Navigating in application windows in Mission control using arrow keys.
I use MacBook Pros at work a lot and they are fine, but they seem very overpriced.