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Lenovo’s PR department is hard at work rebuking a study that puts Lenovo sixth in reliability among other laptop manufacturers, along with other interesting data points.
Last week a study based on two years of data was released by extended-warranty company SquareTrade, citing laptop reliability rates and ranking Lenovo sixth behind Asus, Toshiba, Sony, Apple and Dell. Lenovo’s PR stormtroopers shot back to Bit-Tech.net claiming the data methodology was shoddy and the conclusions drawn were downright wrong, not to mention that SquareTrade is in the business of selling warranties and are thus open to bias on this topic.
In a tit for tat exchange, SquareTrade fired back on their blog with a lot of good points supporting their research, including that they had a statistically large 30,000 owner sample group with over 3,000 laptops per manufacturer and that their data showed lower overall failure rates than Consumer Reports.
I highly recommend you check out the excellent article by Local Tech Wire summarizing the whole exchange, and SquareTrade’s free study is quite interesting as well. While a manufacturer may lose from the results of this study, in the end the consumer wins.
So do the SquareTrade results change your opinion of Lenovo or any other manufacturer listed?
Sources: [Local Tech Wire] | [SquareTrade Research]
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While I do agree with the stats at a generic level; I’m yet to experience any failures with my Lenovo Thinkpad or my Toshiba to date.
Its an individual comment; but I don’t recall any of my fellow Thinkpad users to have an issue with their machines either.
However; I haven’t owned any of the other Lenovo’s (read ideapad, U series…) so I’m not sure if those numbers add to the stats as well – I guess they do.
I’ve owned a Toshiba Satellite for over 2 years now and its been through a lot (I’ve got a baby boy who thinks he can open/dismantle everything…) and it still works like new. So I’d agree with the stats there.
Ive had bad experiences with an HP though. I recall this one instance where a hardware issue had all the guys in my company stuck without VPN access (I guess the model was HP 6910P) and had them return it (Myself included – thats how I got my ThinkPad
))
I think laptops are inherently unreliable and they fail more often if you use them a lot. I’ve had about a dozen thinkpads over the years, all relatively high end models (starting with a 755cx in the early 1990’s or so), and close to 100% failure rate. Basically I send in-warranty machines in for warranty repair and buy a new one when the old one first fails out-of-warranty. The reason they fail so much is I use them all the time, 8+ hours a day, as a fulltime professional who doesn’t own any desktop computers. I think most home laptop users just have a laptop that they drag out of the closet once in a while, but their primary machines are desktops. I wonder if the higher failure rate of Lenovo vs Gateway in that study is because Lenovo users simply use their machines a lot harder, bang them around during business travel, etc.
I would have to agree on None’s comment about Thinkpads being used a lot harder. I have actually used my laptop as a hammer from time to time because nothing else more solid has been available. I use this laptop 8+ hours myself, I bang it around a lot, I have 2 cats who like to kick things all over the place, and I’ve even dropped this computer right on its screen (it is a Tablet) and I’ve yet to have a single time where it doesn’t work. I’ve seen, had, loads of issues with other computer manufacturers in the past along with apple computers. This Lenovo tablet has been a trooper and I’m only buying Lenovo products in the future.
Part of the problem of the study is that they are talking accidental protection coverage, and a lot of Lenovo’s most purchased products are their higher end products, which also don’t qualify for SquareTrade’s ADH plans. Unlike Toshiba or HP where a large portion of their product is under that $1500 price point, Lenovo’s stuff is just more expensive and well worth the cost. So especially for them you are localizing around their lower end product, which may have more troubles than their higher end stuff, though I’ve never met a Thinkpad that hasn’t endured quite a bit.
A customer of mine was telling me about how they hated their Thinkpad because it wasn’t working anymore. I come to find out that it is a 5 year old business laptop that has flown more times around the world than probably any other computer, it is constantly passed around at work, a main workstation for rendering and a few other things. Basically on 24/7 except when travelling inside luggage instead of its own laptop case. And after 5 years it was running a bit slow. I wish other brands could compete with story after story like that. So, I don’t care what ST says, I’m out here in the field using my laptop, and I see others too, and it is almost always Lenovo/IBM and the computer is almost always working like a charm (except when ancient).
Let’s see 18.1 percent failure rate for the “best” vs. 31% for the worst? And you just spent 600+ large? Let’s not kid around what’s really more important is the warranty and tech support provided.
I buy Dell and HP laptops exclusively for my small business. While I don’t have nearly as high a failure rate as the ST study what really matters is I can pick up the phone 24/7 and get a diagnoses from someone in the US or at least who is coherent and get a part shipped within 24-hours with a tech to install the part the next day. Usually the diagnoses takes 40 minutes or less depending on how tricky a failure is. Let see you get a part shipped with a tech to install the parts the next day on a homeowner/consumer line laptop or desktop from any of those manufactures.
You have to buy business systems with business warranty support or you will be VERY unhappy with the outcome 20 to 31% of the time
. Especially on a laptop. No warranty support for at least 3 years on any PC purchase = pain and misery. With failure rates close to 20% on the “best” brand how could you not consider a long term quality warranty?