Laptop Reliability: What Consumer Reports’ Owner Survey Shows

How reliable a laptop will be is one of the hardest things to find out before you buy one. Reviews are written in the first weeks, and manufacturers do not publish failure rates. The best public evidence is Consumer Reports’ survey of its members, which asks what went wrong with laptops they bought. This report sets out what that survey shows, where its public findings stop, and the battery recalls that are on the record. We have deliberately not produced a ranking of brands from worst to best, for reasons explained below. We did not test any laptop.

What the survey measures

Consumer Reports’ 2026 analysis covers 75,923 laptops that its members bought new between 2019 and 2025, drawn from surveys in 2023, 2024 and 2025. From those reports it estimates how often problems are likely to appear by the end of the third year of ownership. It reports owner satisfaction separately, as the share of owners who say they are extremely likely to recommend their laptop.

Two limits are stated by Consumer Reports itself. A brand needs at least three models in its tests to be included, and Chromebooks are left out because the sample is too small. And a brand average is not a verdict on any one model, which is why it points readers to its model-by-model ratings.

What it found

• About one in six laptops had a problem within three years. Sixteen percent of the laptops in the sample broke or stopped working as well as they should.
• Most owners repaired. Nearly six in ten broken laptops were taken in for repair, not replaced.
• Apple leads. Published reports of the 2026 results say Apple was rated the most reliable brand, by a clear margin. That is consistent with an earlier Consumer Reports article, which estimated that 10 percent of Apple laptops fail by the third year against 16 to 19 percent for Windows brands, and found Apple owners far more likely to be completely satisfied with reliability. Those earlier figures are from an older survey and should be read as history, not as today’s numbers.

Why we have not ranked the other brands

Consumer Reports publishes the full brand table for its members, and we could not read it. Several websites have published their own summaries of it, and they do not agree with each other about which brands sit at the bottom. Some also quote precise failure percentages that we could not trace to Consumer Reports at all. Repeating any of that would be passing on a ranking we cannot verify.

If the order of the Windows brands matters to your decision, look at Consumer Reports’ own page, or its rating for the specific model, and check the date on it.

Battery recalls on the record

Reliability surveys count faults of every kind. The laptop recalls in the Consumer Product Safety Commission notices we read are about batteries.

Earlier recalls, including large ones from Dell, HP, Sony and Toshiba, are listed on the CPSC’s laptop page. We did not find a CPSC laptop battery recall from these brands dated 2025 or 2026 in the notices we read, which is not proof that there has been none. Recalls matter most for a second-hand or refurbished laptop: check the serial number with the manufacturer before you buy. Our guide to checking for recalls shows how.

The battery is the part to watch

Dell’s own guidance says the potential for swelling is inherent to the lithium-ion polymer batteries used in thin laptops, and that age, charge cycles and heat all contribute. If a laptop’s case or trackpad starts to lift, stop using it until the battery has been looked at; that description of the signs is ours. Our guide to spotting a failing battery explains what to do, and the lithium battery safety guide covers charging and disposal.

What to check before you buy

• The current rating for the exact model, not just the brand.
• The warranty length, and whether the battery has a shorter one. See what a warranty covers. The same guide explains that a maker generally cannot void a warranty just because you used an independent repairer.
• How the battery is replaced. On many laptops it is a job for a technician, as the HP recall shows.
• The return window, and use the laptop hard inside it.
• The seller, for refurbished and marketplace listings. See how to judge an online listing.

We have looked at TV reliability in the same way.

How we researched this

This report is based on Consumer Reports’ published articles about laptop brand reliability, read as search excerpts because its ratings pages are for members, on one technology site’s report of the 2026 results, on CPSC recall notices, and on Dell’s battery guidance. We did not test or survey anything ourselves. Where we could not confirm a figure from its original source, we left it out.