Laptop Mag is out today with its ‘Best & Worst Laptop Brands 2018’ report. While Apple received the highest score of any company for “Support & Warranty” it also scored the lowest in “Innovation” and “Value and Selection,” putting it at the bottom of the pack overall.
Laptop Mag’s ranking scale is based on a 100 point maximum. 40 points are for “Reviews,” 20 for “Support & Warranty,” 15 for “Value & Selection,” 15 for “Design,” and 10 for “Innovation.”
The top three brands were Lenovo with a score of 86, HP with 85, and Dell with 82. Apple came in 7th with its score of 72 after coming in 5th place last year.
Here is the breakdown of Apple’s score:
Laptop Mag says Apple still leads the way with the best support and warranty for laptops, but lacks in three main categories.
Hardware stuck in the sand: The MacBooks are good machines but saw barely any improvement, just minor speed boosts. Where’s the love for touch screens?
Minimal selection: Apple’s sole sub-$1,000 laptop is the company’s super-outdated $999 MacBook Air, and all of Apple’s other laptops start at $1,299, pricing many customers out of the land of the Mac.
Dongles, all the way down: You can’t get USB 3.0 ports on Apple’s modern Type-C-only MacBooks, while the MacBook Air has no Type-C ports, only a Type-A port.
Interesting enough, Tim Cook recently addressed the topic of bringing a touchscreen Mac to market in a new interview. He reiterated that there would be too many compromises, and that it’s an intentional choice to not bring touchscreens to Macs.
We don’t believe in sort of watering down one for the other. Both [The Mac and iPad] are incredible. One of the reasons that both of them are incredible is because we pushed them to do what they do well. And if you begin to merge the two … you begin to make trade offs and compromises.
As for Laptop Mag’s low rating for “minimal selection,” Apple may be addressing that in the near term, with an affordable 13-inch MacBook. On the whole, the company has been offering more and more of its products at lower price points, like its 2017 and 2018 9.7-inch iPad.
Other areas where Apple notebooks scored low seems debatable, like whether needing a dongle or two is an drawback, the butterfly keyboard and design. Particularly subjective is the design ranking, Lenovo scored 13/15 with most of its machine sporting polycarbonate frames compared to Apple’s clean and simple aluminum construction earning just 11/15.
How about you? Do you think a score of 72/100 for Apple’s laptops feels low, or does it seem about right? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Check out the full Best & Worst Laptop brands 2018 review here.
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