Tosh on top for laptop reliability

Which?, the UK consumer organisation, has ranked the UK's most reliable laptops.

Top of the reliability list is Sony and Toshiba with 93 per cent of Which? members surveyed saying their laptop had not needed repair. Fujitsu-Siemens got 91 per cent and Apple and Dell scored 87 per cent. Next were Acer and HP with 84 per cent, according to Which? members surveyed. The average score was 87 per cent.

Apple creamed the opposition for customer satisfaction with 93 per cent. Sony scored 77 per cent, Toshiba 76 per cent and Dell 72 per cent. HP got 70 per cent and Acer 68 per cent.

Asus's Eee PC scored highly for customer satisfaction, but not enough respondents had one for it to be included.

The average price of laptops is still falling - from £900 in 2006, £800 in 2007 to £750 in 2008. The survey is based on answers from 7,919 Which? members.

For desktop reliability Apple, Compaq and Dell all came top, followed by Acer, eMachines and Medion, then HP. Below average were Packard-Bell, Evesham and Mesh.

Half of those questioned got their machines from retailers and 84 per cent put John Lewis top of the satisfaction league, while PC World scored just 45 per cent. ®