Laptop Review

Full-featured laptops for office, entertainment and gaming

This report covers full-featured and specialty laptops suitable as a desktop replacement. If you want a laptop that's powerful enough for gaming, those notebook computers are also covered here. If portability matters to you more than features, we cover ultraportable laptops weighing less than 5 pounds in our companion report. If you're looking for a student or budget laptop under $800, see our report on cheap laptops. Netbooks, basic laptops for Web surfing and word processing, are also covered separately. If you are interested in a Macintosh laptop, or can't decide between an Apple or Windows laptop, see our report on Apple computers, most of which are competitive with the laptops covered in this report.

We found great laptop reviews in mainstream computer media like Laptop Magazine, PC World and PCMag.com. These sources offer credible reviews backed by detailed and thorough testing. They also test more laptops than other review sources, and ratings make it easy to determine which laptops stand out from the rest. We also found comprehensive laptop reviews at NotebookCheck.net, ComputerShopper.com and NotebookReview.com. The reviews at NotebookCheck.net are awkwardly translated from German, but incredibly detailed. The notebook computer reviews are augmented by multiple photographs and charts showing detailed benchmark results with comparisons to similar models. ConsumerReports.org and CNET also test some of the latest laptops, but they offer less analysis and commentary than the sources ranked higher.

For most people, a laptop's projected reliability is an important buying consideration. Good brand reliability doesn't guarantee you'll never have a problem, but the support and reliability surveys conducted by PCMag.com, ConsumerReports.org and others can be a helpful indicator. The ConsumerReports.org survey indicates that nearly 40 percent of laptops require a repair or replacement part within four years. However, some brands have a better track record than others.

In PCMag.com's survey, Lenovo, Dell and Sony earn the top reliability ratings according to consumers. Lenovo wins the Readers' Choice award for PC brands, but editors caution that its reliability rankings have slipped slightly since 2007. Gateway earns the dubious distinction of having the worst reliability in this survey -- consumers report that a full 31 percent of Gateway laptops require repairs. Customer service is also important. According to ConsumerReports.org's survey conducted in 2008, Lenovo and Dell have the best customer service among PC brands.

Several new laptops fail to impress reviewers this year. The Samsung P560-54G (*Est. $1,150 and up), a general-purpose laptop for business users, gets lots of hits for being ugly and overpriced. Cisco Cheng at PCMag.com says the "sad-looking design" and "bloated price tag" don't help the Samsung P560 win any fans. In his review for Laptop Magazine, Jamie Bsales says the laptop has some positive aspects, but he acknowledges that it is "dull even by boring business-PC standards." Roger Hibberts at Wired has a similar reaction to the Gateway MD7826u (*Est. $1,000 and up), calling it a "lofty loser" and a "mediocre laptop dressed in a tuxedo t-shirt and Payless shoes." While Hibberts notes that the Gateway laptop does have some muscle, problems with the display and media controls prompt him to give it a rating of four out of 10.