According to the latest research conducted by the analytical department of the SquareTrade company, Asus laptops are the most reliable among other popular brands. It is a real surprise for many Apple fans that mobile computers from their favorite company are only on the fourth place, yielding to Toshiba and Sony laptops in reliability characteristics. SquareTrade provides after-sales warranty services for consumer electronics. The company based its new study of notebooks / netbooks reliability on the analysis of more than 30 thousand mobile computers from different manufacturers.

Result #1: HP, Gateway and Acer are the least reliable laptops

The results show that almost one of three laptops fails during the first three years of use. It’s difficult to imagine a more fragile electronic gizmo than a laptop (just imagine that every third TV set or car breaks down in 3 years after the purchase).

So the 1^st place has been given to Asus laptops, problems with them occur during the first three years in 15.6% of cases. It may not sound too good, but it’s the lowest failure rate among 9 largest producers which laptops were used for the research.

Toshiba with the rate of 15.7% has taken the 2^nd place, Sony laptops with 16.8% has become the 3^rd.  The failure rate for Apple (17.4% and the 4^th place) was calculated for two popular models — MacBook and MacBook Pro.

Vince Tseng (VP of Marketing at SquareTrade) said that analytics were not surprised that Apple laptops had appeared in the middle of the list, but the victory of Asus had come as a real surprise.

Hewlett-Packard, the company, which production volume of notebooks was the biggest in the world last year, was pronounced as the most risky brand (more than a quarter of HP laptops is in danger). It may be not so bad taking into account that this company offers a 3-year guarantee for its products, it even started selling of HP laptop batteries that had a guarantee of 36 months.

Result #2: laptop users have only one year without worries and problems

The report also states that the risk of any problems with the laptop is growing rapidly after one year of usage:

• 4.7% — failure rate after the 1^st year;
• 12.7% — after the 2^nd year;
• 20.4% — after the 3^rd year.

Mr. Tseng explained that mobile computers have high rates of usage. People often leave them running, laptops components are shock-sensitive. At the same time they are portable, and it often leads to falls and blows. And moreover, it is one of the most complex devices compared to other customer electronics.

Result #3: netbooks are characterized by a low price and a high rate of failure

The researchers also has found that netbooks break down more often than notebooks. The average rate is 23% higher than similar data for entry-level notebooks (with price from $ 400 to $ 1 000) and 38% higher than premium portable gadgets (more than $ 1 000).

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