Asus Tops Laptop Reliability Study

According to research by warranty firm SquareTrade, you really get what you pay for, with premium-priced laptops lasting longer than their cheaper counterparts on average. Good news for those who’ve spent money for specs, bad for buyers trying to eke by on affordable netbooks; from the survey of 30,000 portables, netbooks have a 5.8% chance of failing within the first year.

Another notable trend becomes clear when comparing brands. Here’s the list of nine different brands, ranked from most reliable to least, in terms of malfunction rate:

1. Asus
2. Toshiba
3. Sony
4. Apple
5. Dell
6. Lenovo
7. Acer
8. Gateway
9. HP

Looks like Asus‘ marketing department have a new talking point to advertise, while Apple has another reason to stick its nose up at Dell. I’m also sure Sony would like to mention being second in reliability while pimping its stylish VAIO lines.

The most depressing trend noted, while somewhat obvious, is still a bit depressing: From an average of 7.2% after 12 months of ownership, the average rate of “total failure” rises to 19.7% after 24 months, and steadily rises to 31% by the third year.

Great info from Squaretrade, relevant to makers and consumers alike. What I’d like to see though is a survey on the reliability of desktops. In any case, do you own a laptop? How reliable (or not) has it proven to be?