Apple: Best and Worst Laptop Brands of 2014

Five years. That’s how long Apple has now finished in first place in our Best & Worst Brands report. Getting a perfect score in our reviews category certainly helped, as did a near-perfect score in tech support, design, keyboard/touchpad, and display and audio. Apple also upped the software ante with OS X Mavericks; it doesn’t represent a huge leap, but the update provides welcome enhancements for power users, while offering more synergy with iOS. Yes, the starting prices for MacBooks are relatively steep, but they’re very much worth it.

Apple doesn’t debut many notebooks per year, but when it does, it gets them right. Earning the company first place in this category, all four MacBooks we reviewed received an Editor’s Choice award. One in particular, the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, garnered a 4.5-star rating, the highest score we bestowed to any notebook all year. That system also happens to be our favorite laptop overall.

MORE: Apple MacBook Air (11-inch) vs. Microsoft Surface Pro 2: Face-Off

It seems a safe bet to assume Apple employees really are geniuses. With a score of 19, the Cupertino-based company ties for first in the Tech Support category, thanks largely to its in-store Genius Bar and online Express Lane for support articles. The company’s live chat and phone service were both quick and efficient, but its lack of social media-based support ultimately held Apple back.

MORE: Apple: Tech Support Showdown Rating

Often imitated, never duplicated. The clean, modern look of Apple’s MacBook has set the standard for portability and power, which is why so many other notebooks look like clones. The company even managed to shave a few ounces and inches off the MacBook Pro 13-inch Retina Display. Still, for such an innovative company, it seems as though Apple has fallen into a rut — a pretty rut, but a rut nonetheless. We’d like to see the company add even a dollop of color to its iconic lineup. 

Apple doesn’t change its keyboards or touchpads much from year to year, because the company knows not to mess with a good thing. The MacBook keyboards continue to offer strong tactile feedback, large keys and good layout. Apple’s touchpads continue to impress, offering completely accurate navigation and flawless support for multitouch gestures, without a hint of the jumpiness we still encounter on other button-less designs. 

Apple continues to impress with its lineup of Retina Display MacBook Pro models. Both the 15-inch MacBook Pro’s 2880 x 1800 display and the 13-inch version’s 2560 x 1600 screen dazzled in our reviews. Plus, Apple’s Mac App Store offers 250 Retina-optimized apps to make the most of its gorgeous displays. We only wish Apple would give its MacBook Airs the same Retina treatment. With an average light meter reading of 302 lux, Apple’s 2013 lineup breezed past the 242-lux laptop category average in display brightness.

Apple’s newest MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models produced rich and clear audio during our testing. Even smaller systems such as the 11-inch MacBook Air pumped out sound loud enough to fill a small testing room.

Lacking a complicated operating system like Windows 8, Apple hasn’t had to come up with new ways for users to interact with its laptops. That left the engineers in Cupertino more time to focus on other types of improvements. With the MacBook Air 13-inch, for example, Apple managed to squeeze an impressive 11 hours and 40 minutes of juice out of the laptop using one of Intel’s Haswell processors. That runtime is a lot longer than what you get from similarly sized Windows machines.

MORE: New Apple Products: What to Expect in 2014

Apple keeps it simple, with just the Air and Pro lines of laptops, which are widely available through Apple.com, as well as Best Buy and Newegg. The MacBook Air sells at a hefty starting price of $999. When the average laptop today costs around $500, that’s a big hike. The good news is that you can configure your system online as you see fit, something other brands like ASUS and Samsung don’t offer. And, for the money, Apple’s MacBooks provide a great design and user experience via OS X Mavericks. 

Apple once again reigns supreme in the software department. The free OS X Mavericks upgrade brought iBooks, Maps and an improved Safari to the MacBook. We also love the new tab feature in Finder and the interactive notifications. In many ways, MacBooks deliver a more traditional desktop-like experience than Windows 8 machines provide. Now, both MacBook Pro and Air users have free access to Apple’s iWork and iLife app suites, which allow for both productivity and creativity. And thanks to iCloud keychain, you can store your password and payment info for instant logins and purchases across your Apple devices.

From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Lenovo: Best and Worst Laptop Brands of 2014

The world’s biggest PC maker once again turned in a very impressive performance in our report, finishing second out of nine brands. As expected, Lenovo continued to rock the keyboard and touchpad category, but it also fared well in the design, value and selection, and software categories. Lenovo fell a bit flat in tech support compared with the previous year, but overall, we highly recommend this brand for PC buyers, whether you’re looking for a consumer or business laptop — or a notebook-tablet hybrid.

In our reviews, 11 Lenovo laptops received a 4-star rating, and five of those received an Editors’ Choice award. The highest marks generally went to the brand’s business-minded systems, such as the ThinkPad X240 and T440s. But we also praised the gaming- and budget-friendly IdeaPad Y510P and the innovative IdeaCentre Horizon 27.

MORE: 9 Best Lenovo Laptops

By our count, Lenovo’s tech support has grown steadily worse over the past three years. The company’s website is cluttered, its Community Knowledge Base is too specific to be helpful in general cases and its new social media support is inconsistent. Phone-call service is particularly frustrating and time-consuming: Our average call time with Lenovo was a whopping 49 minutes and 18 seconds, almost twice as long as for any other brand.

MORE: Lenovo: Tech Support Showdown Rating

All hail Lenovo, king of the hybrid. Just look at the IdeaPad Yoga 11, Yoga 11s, Yoga Pro 2 and ThinkPad Yoga to see the right way to create a lightweight, portable tablet-notebook. However, the company dropped to the No. 3 spot in design because of the Flex 14; it’s the boxy, chintzy, less-flexible cousin of the Yoga. Lenovo also lost the fun splash of color we’ve come to expect from the IdeaPad line. Instead, the company has been serving up plastic gray (s400 and s405), with a heaping side portion of dark brown (z400 Touch and G580). At least the Y510 boasts intense red keyboard backlighting.

Thanks to their strong tactile feedback, wide key spacing and curved key shape, Lenovo’s keyboards — on both its business and consumer laptops — continue to set the gold standard. The company’s touchpads offer smooth, accurate navigation, and its TrackPoint pointing sticks are the most precise pointing devices you’ll find anywhere, even though the company compromised the TrackPoint experience slightly by eliminating the stick’s dedicated buttons, and building left and right click into the stiff top of the touchpad. 

While Lenovo’s notebooks offer generally pleasant audio and visuals, there are few instances in which its devices stand out from the competition. For example, the IdeaPad S405 was brighter than some competitors, but its viewing angles were poor. The IdeaPad Flex 14's 1366 x 768-pixel display boasted colorful visuals but was dimmer than the average notebook. In general, Lenovo’s laptop displays, which averaged 267 lux, were more luminous than the average notebook (242 lux).

The business-minded ThinkPad T440s suffered from muffled audio, but more multimedia-minded machines, like the IdeaPad Y510p, boasted booming JBL speakers. Lenovo’s laptops matched the 85-decibel category average during our testing.

Lenovo’s innovation score dropped from 10 points last year to 7 this year, but the company is still doing some interesting things. For instance, the ThinkPad Yoga has a keyboard deck that raises to hide the keys when you’re using the hybrid in tablet mode. We are also pleased to see the voice and motion control features in such devices as the IdeaPad U430 Touch.

From business laptops to Ultrabooks, Lenovo has one of the broadest range of laptops of any brand. Within its three main lines — the G Essentials, ThinkPads and IdeaPads — you’ll find good options at a variety of price points. For instance, the ThinkPad line ranges from the rugged X140e ($489) to the $1,343 Helix Ultrabook. You can also customize your laptop via Lenovo’s website. Plus, fans of the traditional Start button will be glad to find a Windows 7 option on many of the company’s laptops.

MORE: Best Windows 7 Laptops Still Available For Sale

Lenovo continues to impress with its software selection, providing handy utilities across flagship notebook lines. IdeaPads, like the Flex 14, feature One Key Recovery for instant backup, a stylish Energy Manager and Lenovo Companion for quick app discovery. Business-minded Lenovo laptops, such as the ThinkPad T440s, pack QuickConnect for controlling your notebook with your Android phone, as well as QuickCast for transferring data between machines on the same network.

From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

HP: Best and Worst Laptop Brands of 2014

HP finished in a solid fourth place in our report — the same position it earned in 2013. The brand fared well in the innovation category (thanks to welcome experimentation with motion control, touchpad design and hybrids), and we also continue to like HP’s design, keyboard comfort, and overall value and selection. Tech support could be better — especially on the phone — but overall, this is a brand you can trust.

HP turned in a slightly better performance than it did last year, with five of its notebooks earning a 4-star rating, five getting a 3.5-star rating and three receiving a 3-star rating. The high-end Spectre 13t — which has an innovative touchpad — and the bang-for-your-buck Pavilion G6z were two systems that received Editors’ Choice awards.

MORE: 5 Best HP Laptops

HP has a well-designed website that makes it easy to find answers to common questions, and the company has been improving its social media tech support, though it still doesn’t offer live chat. However, these improvements barely managed to offset HP’s disastrous phone-support score. We were transferred between multiple representatives each time, who all had difficulty with our fairly basic questions. One rep tried to sell us an unnecessary HP support package.

MORE: HP: Tech Support Showdown Rating

HP deserves praise for creating the best-looking Chromebooks of the year. The Pavilion 14 Chromebook used glittery plastic to lend the notebook an air of sophistication at a low price, and the Chromebook 11 added a pop of color to a gleaming white chassis. The HP Spectre 13t impressed with its stylish, truffle-brown exterior and Control Zone touchpad. However, a couple of less-imaginative MacBook clones, such as the Envy TouchSmart 15, relegated HP to fourth place. The company also needs to find a way to trim the fat; the Elitebook 2750p lives on the bulkier end of the spectrum.

Hewlett Packard offers consistently comfy, flex-free keyboards on both its business and consumer laptops. The company’s touchpads provided accurate, jitter-free navigation on all of the systems we tested. HP’s Elitebook line of business laptops even offer dedicated mouse buttons, which provide the best clicking experience. However, the Elitebook pointing sticks are uncomfortable because of their concave surfaces.

From consumer Ultrabooks like the HP Spectre 13 to the business-focused ZBook 15, HP has upped its audio-visual game. As a result, the company boosted its score by two points to tie for first in this category. While most of HP’s panels delivered rich color and wide viewing angles, the average brightness of 219 lux recorded on the systems we tested is well below the 242-lux laptop category average. 

Sound consistently impressed across the board. Even budget models, such as the sub-$500 Pavilion G6z-2200, have front-mounted speakers capable of blaring full-bodied tunes. On average, the HP notebooks we reviewed in 2013 pumped out sound at 84 decibels, which is just slightly below the laptop category average (85 dB). HP also includes Beats Audio on several of its laptops, which enriches bass and overall sound.

After a lackluster showing in last year’s Innovation category, HP jumped all the way to the No. 2 spot. The boost came as a result of groundbreaking notebooks like the Envy 17, which includes a built-in 3D controller, courtesy of Leap Motion. The company also rolled out its slick Spectre 13 Ultrabook, which features a unique Control Zone touchpad that makes Windows 8 gestures more intuitive.

MORE: Top 10 Ultrabooks

There is a wide selection of HP laptops on the company’s website, and a large range of retailers also sell HP systems. Thanks to a wide variety of price points — from the $479 Pavilion 14z TouchSmart to the $954 Elitebook 850 G1 business notebook — HP earned a second-place spot in this category. The company also offers a Windows 7 option on most of its notebooks, so you can get an up-to-date device with the comfort of a familiar operating system. A colorful line of Chromebooks expands the budget end of HP’s already-wide range of products.

HP’s software suite isn’t quite as impressive as it was last year. Recent HP flagships, like the Envy TouchSmart 15, pack HP Connected Photo and Connected Music, which allow you to easily organize your multimedia content. The HP Savings Center is an online coupon book, and there’s an unnecessary HP Games hub for sampling already-free games like “Plants vs. Zombies.” HP’s SimplePass software offers extra security with a fingerprint reader, and you can register all 10 of your fingers for logging in to Windows and websites.

From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Best & Worst Laptop Brands 2014

When readers ask us (and they often do), “What laptop should I buy?”, most of them really mean, “Which brand name should I look for?” That’s a tough question to answer, because there are so many factors to consider. How did a company’s systems perform on our benchmark tests? How good is the company’s support? Are the company’s systems well made on both the inside and the outside?

The answers to all of these questions matter, especially as companies experiment more with laptop-tablet hybrids. That’s why every year, we pit the biggest brands on the market against one another in the battle to end all battles, with the ultimate goal of telling you which companies deserve your hard-earned cash.

From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Revealed! The best and worst 802.11ac Wi-Fi routers of 2013

It’s been more than 18 months since the first 802.11ac routers hit the market, and the IEEE still hasn’t approved the draft standard. If you think Congress moves slowly, you haven’t been tracking the pace at which the IEEE has been considering the draft version of 802.11ac. Those engineers could teach our senators and representatives a thing or two about the deliberative process.

The Wi-Fi industry, however, certainly isn’t waiting: The leading router manufacturers are already shipping their second-generation 802.11ac routers, and several have introduced 802.11ac client adapters, too. Not sure what all the fuss is about? Here’s a quick refresher: 802.11ac routers and client adapters enable the fastest wireless networks you can buy, but they’re also backward-compatible with older Wi-Fi gear, including 802.11a/b/g/n devices.

If you’re looking to stream HD video, the 802.11ac standard is the way to go, even if some of your client devices support only 802.11n.

Whereas the previous fastest standard, 802.11n, provides aggregate bandwidth of up to 450 megabits per second, gear based on the 802.11ac standard delivers aggregate bandwidth of up to 1300 mbps. Both of those numbers are physical link rates—real-world data transfers are much lower—but 802.11ac products can be incredibly fast.

If you’re looking to stream HD video around your house, the 802.11ac standard is the way to go, even if some of your client devices support only 802.11n. These new routers are backward-compatible, and since they have more powerful radios than previous-generation devices do, they deliver higher throughput and longer range with both 802.11ac clients and older 802.11n clients. If you want a more in-depth look at 802.11ac, read the TechHive explanation.

Robert Cardin

In the back (from left): Asus RT-AC68U, D-Link DIR-868L, Trendnet TEW-812DR V2, Buffalo WZR-1750DHP. In the front (from left): Netgear Nightawk, Linksys EA6900. 

Before we get into the reviews, I wanted to give a quick explanation of the industry’s labeling practices, because they can be confusing. A router (or client adapter) marketed as AC1750, for example, is a dual-band model capable of operating on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands concurrently. The “AC” indicates that it supports the IEEE 802.11ac standard, which is backward-compatible with 802.11b (2.4GHz) and 802.11g (2.4GHz) hardware, as well as with 802.11n (both 2.4GHz and 5GHz) devices. The “1750” designation indicates that the product is capable of sending and receiving three 150-mbps spatial streams on its 2.4GHz 802.11b, -g, or -n Wi-Fi network (450 mbps in aggregate), three 150-mbps spatial streams on its 2.4GHz or 5GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi network, and three 433-mbps spatial streams (1300 mbps in aggregate) on its 5GHz 802.11ac network. (Total that up, and you get 450 plus 1300 equals 1750.) Vendors might also describe this type of hardware as a 3x3 device.

I put six brand-new 802.11ac Wi-Fi routers through the wringer.

An AC1200 device can support two 150-mbps spatial streams (300 mbps in aggregate) on its 802.11b, -g, or -n network (on both frequency bands) and two 433-mbps spatial streams (866 mbps in aggregate) on its 802.11ac network. The industry simply rounds up 300 plus 866 to 1200. Vendors might also call this type of hardware a 2x2 device.

A few devices that use Broadcom’s TurboQAM technology (more on that later) are marketed as AC1900 hardware. TurboQAM uses a more powerful encoding scheme to squeeze an extra 50 mbps into each 802.11n spatial stream (600 mbps in aggregate), adding 600 to 1300 for a total of 1900. Such products are still labeled as 3x3 devices.

I put six dual-band routers from Asus, Buffalo, D-Link, Linksys, Netgear, and Trendnet through the wringer. Well, I didn’t flatten them between a pair of wooden rollers, but I did perform a comprehensive evaluation of their performance. First I tested each device as a 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11n router, using a laptop outfitted with an Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 Wi-Fi adapter. That adapter is a 3x3 dual-band 802.11b/g/n product, meaning that it can send and receive three spatial streams, each capable of carrying data at 150 mbps (450 mbps in aggregate) on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands.

I then tested all six with the same laptop but using a Linksys WUSB6300 802.11ac USB Wi-Fi adapter. Since very few notebooks ship with integrated 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapters, and legacy hardware such as Intel’s Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 doesn’t support 802.11ac, using a USB adapter is the easiest way to take full advantage of an 802.11ac network.

Next I repeated my tests using a Linksys WUMC710 802.11ac wireless bridge. If you need to connect more than one client to your 802.11ac network—say, a home-theater PC, an A/V receiver, and an Xbox One—this the most efficient means of doing so, because the bridge has four ethernet ports. In this scenario, you hard-wire the clients to the bridge, and then establish a wireless connection between the bridge and the router.

For my last wireless test, I reconfigured a second, identical router from each manufacturer as a wireless bridge. This test is similar to the one using the Linksys bridge, but it enables each router to operate at its maximum speed. The one drawback to both scenarios is that the bridge (or the router that you’ve configured as a bridge) needs to plug into a dedicated electrical outlet—it can’t draw power from another networked device.

In each of the scenarios described above, I measured TCP throughput at four locations inside a single-story, 2800-square-foot, stick-built home. Since each of these new routers is outfitted with at least one USB port (some have two), I also measured their performance as NAS (network-attached storage) devices by connecting a 500GB WD My Passport USB 3.0 hard drive and measuring how fast the routers could read and write files over a wired ethernet connection.

We benchmarked each of the six routers in this roundup by connecting to a client in four different rooms within this 2800-square-foot, single-story home.

Here’s a quick look at the features you can expect to find in most 802.11ac Wi-Fi routers. 

Beamforming: Routers that don’t support beamforming broadcast their signals in all directions—think of a pebble dropped in a still pond, and the ripples spreading out in concentric circles. With beamforming, the router and the client can exchange information about their respective locations to determine the most effective path over which data should travel. They can then focus and concentrate their signals to use the available bandwidth more efficiently. Both the router and the client must support beamforming for this technique to work, however. Read “All about beamforming” for an in-depth explanation.

Cloud services: Some routers allow you to manage them from an Internet connection. More-advanced models let you access storage attached to the router from the cloud, and a few even give you the power to access devices connected to the router from the cloud.

Dual-band functionality: Each of the routers in this roundup is a dual-band model. That means they’re capable of operating networks on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. The 2.4GHz frequency band is exceedingly crowded, but a router’s ability to support it is important because you might have older devices that can operate only on that frequency. If your client device can connect to a 5GHz network, however, use that instead.

Guest network: A guest network is a separate wireless network that your visitors can use. It allows them to reach the Internet but prevents them from accessing other PCs or storage devices operating on your network. A guest network is a courtesy that small-business owners can offer their customers, and that individuals and families can offer their visitors.

Media servers: Expect to get a UPnP (Universal Plug-n-Play) server at a minimum. This feature enables the router to stream music and video to client devices on the network. More-advanced routers will also offer a DLNA-certified server (the initialism stands for Digital Living Network Alliance). If you have a DLNA-compatible HDTV, A/V receiver, or other consumer-electronics devices on your network, they’ll be able to stream media from sources such as NAS boxes connected to your router. If you’re an iTunes fan, you’ll appreciate having a router with an iTunes server.

Parental controls: This feature is ostensibly designed for moms and dads who want to shield their children from seamier side of the Web, but small-business owners might also find it useful when deployed in moderation. It enables an administrator to establish rules as to when individual computers can access the Internet, and it can block particular websites or even entire categories of sites. If parental controls are the most important feature you want in a router, take a look at PowerCloud Systems’ Skydog. It’s based on the older 802.11n standard, so it’s not nearly as fast as the routers in this roundup, but it has the best management features I’ve ever seen.

Quality of Service: If you depend on your router for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), frequently stream music and video around your network, or play online games, you’ll want a router with good QoS (Quality of Service) features. Most high-end routers have at least the basics, meaning that the router can analyze traffic being uploaded to the network and can distinguish between lag-sensitive packets (VoIP and video Web-chat streams, for instance) and non-lag-sensitive packets (such as file transfers). The router will assign higher priority to the former, to prevent dropouts, and lower priority to the latter (because any dropped packets can be re-sent with little impact). A more advanced router will allow you to customize its QoS settings or even permit you to write your own rules. Some routers can also manage downlink traffic and are capable of assigning higher priority to lag-sensitive data streams, such as Netflix streams.

USB ports: High-end routers typically carry one or two USB ports. You can use one port to share a printer and the other to share storage—in the form of a USB hard drive—among all the computers on your network. Some router manufacturers are taking the step of building a hard drive into the router itself. If you need fast storage, however, you’ll be better served by a dedicated NAS box.

Okay, enough preamble. Let’s get to the reviews!

Note: This story was updated on 12/28/2013 to correct the name of company that manufactures the Skydog router. We regret the error. 

Michael manages PCWorld's hardware product reviews and contributes to TechHive's coverage of home-control systems and sound bars.
More by Michael Brown

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Lenovo Best and Worst Notebook Brands 2013 Rating

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

Samsung Best and Worst Notebook Brands 2013 Rating

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

HP Best and Worst Notebook Brands 2013 Rating

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

Dell Best and Worst Notebook Brands 2013 Rating

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

Sony Best and Worst Notebook Brands 2013 Rating

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

ASUS Best and Worst Notebook Brands 2013 Rating

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

Best and Worst Notebook Brands 2013

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

Toshiba Best and Worst Notebook Brands 2013 Rating

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

8 Worst Windows 8 Annoyances and How to Fix Them

All new operating systems have a learning curve, but due to its unique blend of new and old interfaces, Windows 8's is particularly steep. Whether it’s a menu system that forces you change screens to launch an app or a pair of dueling control panels that each contain a different set of settings, you often have to work harder to perform the same tasks as in Windows 7. Though you can’t solve all these issues on your own — the Start button is gone for good — you can make the most of Windows 8 with these tips.

Multitasking in Windows 8 is like dating Sybil. Because there's no more Start menu, users are encouraged to leave the desktop environment and go to the "Modern UI" Start screen, just to launch other desktop apps that take you right back to the desktop again. Not only does switching screens take more time than simply launching a menu, it takes you out of context by pushing your work in the first application off-screen, making it easy to lose track of what you were doing.

Fortunately, there are several ways to avoid going through the Start screen to launch desktop apps. You can install a third-party Start menu, create keyboard shortcuts or pin application's to the taskbar.

Read More: How to Launch Apps from The Desktop in Windows 8

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

2012 Best and Worst Laptop Brands

Rather than just picking a laptop model out of thin air, many consumers rely on brand reputation to launch their searches. Different users are concerned with different aspects of brand quality, such as customer support, software and price. We put the top laptop brands to the test, rating design, keyboards and touchpads, tech support, displays and audio, value and selection, software, customer satisfaction and innovation. Using a point system, we added each brand’s scores for a cumulative score that determined their place in the rankings.

In the three years LAPTOP Magazine has reviewed the best + worst laptop brands, there hasn’t been much change in the brands that take the crown. But other factors, such as innovation and how they ranked in our individual reviews, have fluctuated. And some brands consistently perform at high levels in some categories, but fail to bring a solid performance in others. Oddly, Apple is the only brand whose overall score dropped from 2011.

For instance, Lenovo improved in 2012 with its individual reviews as well as in tech support and value and selection but didn’t perform as well in the software category. And Dell drastically improved in 2012 with its individual reviews, but dropped in the software and innovation categories. But Apple and ASUS continue to be the leaders in design, while Apple and Lenovo take the lead in customer satisfaction.

Check out LAPTOP’s Best and Worst Notebook brands of 2012 to see how your favorite brands fared.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here