Laptop reliability

Question

I have 2 XPS-15 9550 laptops purchased in Jan 2016. Both have had several issues (batteries, wi-fi card, key-board, touch-pad) over the years. Finally, neither will boot. One cannot find the boot device, the other beeps cpu errors codes.

I loved the XPS-15's in every other way, but frankly, I think this kind of reliability is unacceptable.

Do I buy Dell again? In the few analyses of reliability that I could find on the web, Dell never ranks in the top half. It is true that none of the brands have *great* reliability, but clearly Dell is not vying to be near the top. Samsung, Asus, and Toshiba all rate better (not to mention Apple).

I spent some time with a Dell representative trying to get some reliability number out of them, with no luck. Which I guess is a way of admitting that they have nothing to brag about....

Perhaps we all have just been too accepting of this state of affairs, and the Laptop makers feel they can continue making unreliable, short lived products.

ejn63 · Answer

With the exception of Apple and LG, the latest Consumer Reports data has all the others at about the same level of mediocrity in reliability -- hardly surprising since most notebooks are built from the same parts, obtained from the same small pool of manufacturers (components like chips, drives, RAM, etc.) and designed and built by the same contractors.

Apple's ranking probably has more to do with service and support (when you charge 50-100% more for equivalent hardware, you can afford to provide that) and LG is more of a specialist manufacturer that does -- like Samsung -- make some of its own devices rather than contract them out to Wistron, Compal, Quanta, and Pegatron -- which is where all the others come from, regardless of name outside.

The best defense is a 3-year warranty on any system, since the failure rate is not insubstantial, or in the case of Apple, repairs are breathtakingly expensive.

XPS

Laptop reliability

Was this post helpful?