Last year, Laptop manufacturers shipped over 154 million laptops, and experts predict that the figure will have risen to 170 by the end of this year. A quick look at Amazon’s inventory reveals just how many different laptop brands there are. It may then surprise you that almost 70 percent of all laptops shipped in 2016 came from just 5 laptop brands: Dell, Apple, Asus, Lenovo, and HP. These top 5 brands release the most innovative products, constantly pushing the boundaries of laptop computing. In this article, we’re taking a a brief look at what these brands have to offer in 2017 to help you select your next laptop.
Product | Brand | Name | Price |
---|---|---|---|
ASUS | ASUS C302CA-DHM4 Chromebook Flip 12.5-inch | Check Price on Amazon | |
Dell | Dell XPS 9350-1340SLV 13.3 inch Laptop | Check Price on Amazon | |
HP | HP Spectre Pro x360 G2 2-in-1 Laptop - 13.3" FHD (1920x1080) Touchscreen | Core i5-6300U | 128GB SSD | 8GB | Webcam | Windows 10 Professional 64 bit | Silver | Check Price on Amazon |
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Best Laptop Brands
1. Dell
This multinational computer technology company based in Texas has successfully established itself as the most reputable manufacturer of business-oriented hardware. In the recent years, Dell has shown the entire world that they can not only work hard but also play hard.
Dell’s gaming computer hardware subsidiary, Alienware, never fails to impress with its offering of cutting-edge laptops designed to never dip below 60 frames per second. Currently, Alienware’s lineup of gaming laptops consists of three similar models—one for each popular display size. The top model features the latest NVIDIA graphics card, a 7th generation Intel processor, up to 32 GB of memory, and up to 1TB PCIe SSD.
If there’s one thing that many consumers used to dislike about Dell in the past, it has to be its corporate image. While extremely popular thanks to the great balance of price and performance, laptops like the Dell Latitude E6420 were huge eyesores—not to mention the leading cause of back pain around the world. Fortunately, Dell’s design sensibility has grown astronomically in the second decade of the 21st century. The Dell XPS 13 makes MacBooks look like overpriced toys and ordinary laptops like clunky electronic contraptions from a bygone era.
With a market share of 15.9 percent in the first quarter of 2017 and over 100,000 employees in all parts of the world, the future is looking very bright for Dell.
Buy it now: here
2. Asus
The Taiwanese multinational computer hardware and electronics company headquartered in Taipei understands what customers want. After you spend a short while reading various laptop reviews, you’ll begin to think that some laptop manufacturers purposefully sabotage their products. It’s almost mind-boggling how often they ruin what would otherwise be great machines just by including sluggish hard drives, low-res screens, or laughable batteries.
The latest generation of Asus Zenbook laptops is a prime example of quality at affordable prices. The company compromises in places customers care about the least and spend money on features that really make a difference. The ZenBook UX303UA is a sleek laptop with a Full HD screen, 256 GB SSD drive, and a powerful Skylake processor with plenty of processing power to spare. You might expect a laptop like this to cost upwards of $1,000, but this metallic beauty retails for just around $800 with the 64-bit version of Windows included.
Asus also makes one of the most popular Chromebooks on the market, the Chromebook Flip C302CA. For just $499, you get a convertible laptop with a flexible 360-degree hinge, lightweight aluminum body, long battery life of up to 10 hours, Intel Core processor with 64GB storage and 4GB RAM, and a comfortable keyboard with 1.4mm of key travel. A laptop like this is perfect for casual computer users who spend most time in the web browser.
Buy it now: here
3. HP
No wonder that this American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto is the number one choice of American customers. Since Packard and Hewlett established Hewlett-Packard (HP) in Packard’s garage in 1939, HP has emerged as a successful developer and provider of a wide variety of hardware components as well as software and related services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses, and large enterprises.
This year, HP has captured the imagination of many customers when they released the HP Spectre x360, a stunning 2.8 pounds heavy convertible laptop that’s both versatile and powerful. It starts at just over $700 and comes with a 13.3-inch touchscreen display with the Full HD resolution, the Intel Dual Core i5-6300U processor, 128 GB M.2 SATA SSD, Intel HD 520 GPU, and windows 10 Professional 64-bit.
HP also sells excellent low-end laptops, like this 15.6-incher with the AMD A6-7310 Quad-Core APU and 4 GB DDR3L SDRAM memory. This laptop is great for email, web, light office work, instant messaging, or as a reliable backup device.
Buy it now: here
4. Lenovo
Lenovo is leading the sales charts as the number one laptop manufacturer in the world in market share. Their laptops are synonymous with productivity, but some newer models, such as the Lenovo Yoga 910 and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, have come far from the barebones, utilitarian design of the Lenovo ThinkPad T560 and other decisively business-oriented laptops from Lenovo.
Owners often say that Lenovo machines are built like tanks, and we can’t but agree. While the extra durability often adds a few hundred grams here and there, professionals working in poor conditions are more than happy to accept this trade-off.
One of the most popular laptops from this Chinese multinational technology company with headquarters in Beijing is the Lenovo ThinkPad T470. This 14-inch laptop comes with the Intel Core i5-7300U processor, 8 GB of memory, Intel HD Graphics 620, a backlit keyboard with an integrated fingerprint reader, and all the ports and slots you might ever need. The laptop suffered from some stability issues after its launch, but Lenovo has already sorted everything out, which goes to show that this laptop manufacturer really stands behind its products.
5. Apple
Shaped by the visionary ability of Steve Jobs and the technical wizardry of Steve Wozniak, Apple is perhaps the most polarizing laptop manufacturer in the world. As the world’s most valuable brand for 4 years in a row, with a valuation in 2016 of $178.1 billion, Apple’s success is undeniable. Critics and haters like to point out controversies surrounding Apple’s labor and tax practices, steep pricing, and limited serviceability.
These issues aren’t enough to convince small armies of coders, designers, writers, and other professionals to stay away from Apple’s beautifully crafted laptops. The list of celebrities who use Macs includes Tom Cruise, Tim Allen, Douglas Adams, Mark Zuckerberg, Bjork, Bill Clinton, or the Czech ex-president Vaclav Havel.
Apple laptops are crafted from high-end materials, featuring capable hardware and modern technologies. Designers love them because they come with some of the best laptop screens out there, writers enjoy the refined typing experience, coders value the stability of the operating system, and casual users appreciate the fantastic usability that characterizes all Apple products.
The most affordable Apple laptop is the Apple MacBook Pro with an LED-backlit display with the resolution of 1280×800 pixels. It’s powered by a dual-core Intel Core i5 processor and Intel HD Graphics 4000. Even though the specifications of the laptop are a far cry from the offering of other laptop manufacturers, especially considering the price, the build and design more than make up for the performance.
Product | Brand | Name | Price |
---|---|---|---|
ASUS | ASUS C302CA-DHM4 Chromebook Flip 12.5-inch | Check Price on Amazon | |
Dell | Dell XPS 9350-1340SLV 13.3 inch Laptop | Check Price on Amazon | |
HP | HP Spectre Pro x360 G2 2-in-1 Laptop - 13.3" FHD (1920x1080) Touchscreen | Core i5-6300U | 128GB SSD | 8GB | Webcam | Windows 10 Professional 64 bit | Silver | Check Price on Amazon |
* If you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. For more details, please visit our Privacy policy page.