Laptop FAIL: 31% in 3 years, anyway

By Jake Widman
Saturday, 21 November 2009 05:42

Home IT

A study by third-party warranty provider SquareTrade has found that nearly one out of three laptops fail in the first three years, though a third of that total is due to accidents. Overall, Asus laptops have the fewest malfunctions, and HPs have the most.

The study was based on failure rates for more than 30,000 new laptops covered by SquareTrade warranties.

In the first three years of ownership, SquareTrade customers reported 20.4% of their laptops malfunctioning and an estimated 10.6% suffering accidents, for a total failure rate of 31%.

The company also compared the rate of laptop failure to that of netbook failure. Working on only a 12-month timeline -- since netbooks haven't been around that long -- the company found a failure rate of 5.8% compared to 4.7% for "entry-level" laptops (those costing US$400 to $1,000) and 4.2% for "premium" laptops (those costing over $1,000).

That projects out to a 25.1% expected malfunction rate for netbooks over three years, or about a 23% higher rate than regular laptops.

SquareTrade also looked at malfunction rates broken down by nine laptop manufacturers. Based on two years of data, Asus was projected to have a 15.6 malfunction rate over three years; Toshiba, 15.7%; and Sony, 16.8%.

At the other end was HP, at 25.6% expected malfunction rate over three years; Gateway, at 23.5%; Acer, at 23.3%; and Lenovo, at 21.5%.

Between the extremes were Apple, with a malfunction rate of 17.4%, and Dell, with 18.3%.