We want to help you make a great choice, no matter which laptop you’re considering. That’s why CR has created overall brand scores for laptops. This analysis identifies the brands that consistently deliver high-performing and well-featured products that offer a good value. It’s designed to give you a high-level view of which brands you can trust to deliver a quality product. ]
You can first check our laptop ratings to see whether we have test results for a given model. Those results will give you a very detailed picture of that laptop’s performance in areas like speed, display quality, and battery life.
If you can’t find test results for a specific model, you’ll want to check the brand scores. These will give you an idea of how a brand’s laptops perform on average. They’re based on a statistical model that incorporates CR’s lab test results and also takes into account factors like price, the number of available ports, and other key features such as a touchscreen, fingerprint reader, or facial recognition.
A brand must have at least three models tested by CR to be included in the analysis, and earn good to great scores for brand reliability to be included. This analysis focuses exclusively on laptops because the sample size for Chromebooks is currently too small to draw statistical conclusions. Note that a brand with a high Overall Score may still produce some lower-quality laptops. And a low-scoring brand may sell a high-quality product. That’s why CR’s model-specific ratings still provide the best guidance.
You can also check CR’s guide to the most and least reliable laptop brands, which will give you an estimate of how a laptop should last before encountering problems.
