5 Major Laptop Brands To Avoid, According To Consumer Reports

When buying a new laptop, you must consider several factors. Some of these include the price, operating system, processor, screen size, and weight. You might want a laptop that's as basic as possible for school, like a Chromebook, while the next person might need a workhorse that can handle any demanding tasks thrown at it. Regardless of your budget or operating system of choice, a key consideration you shouldn't miss out on is brand reliability, because that will ensure that the laptop you pick can serve you for a while without any issues. 

And that's where Consumer Reports (CR), an independent, member-supported non-profit organization that reviews products for the public, comes in handy. The site conducts annual surveys of thousands of users who have bought laptops from different brands and uses this data to find each manufacturer's predicted reliability and owner satisfaction. Brands that score higher have products that present fewer problems than others after three years of use. Unfortunately, not every laptop manufacturer on the market has a good reliability score. 

Some major brands have poor CR scores and, as such, are worth avoiding. So if you want to get a laptop for school or work, you should stay away from the five popular laptop brands below if you want dependable computers you won't have to replace soon.

Owned by Dell, Alienware specializes in making high-performance laptops for gamers by incorporating high-end parts. For instance, Alienware's 16X Aurora Gaming Laptop is configurable with up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 GPU, up to 64 GB of RAM, and up to 4 TB of storage. The brand's laptops are also made with gaming aesthetics like RGB lighting. 

While some of the brand's laptops are praised for being great machines for gaming, they aren't reliable. In fact, the Alienware brand has one of the lowest reliability scores in CR's laptop and Chromebook rankings. This means that you should avoid Alienware laptops as much as possible if you want a device that will get the job done for a while without giving you problems. 

When you consider that none of the brand's laptops cost less than $1,000, it doesn't make sense to splurge on one of them if the chances of experiencing issues within the first three years are high, as implied by the brand's low predicted reliability scores.

Dell ranks as one of the major brands on the market. Data from research firm Gartner ranked the company third in the number of PC units sold worldwide in the last quarter of 2025. If you thought you could buy directly from Dell instead of its Alienware sub-brand due to the latter's low reliability scores, think again.

Dell is just as undependable a brand as Alienware. But while Dell's laptops have better reliability scores than its gaming sub-brand, its scores put it near the bottom of the list when compared to other laptop makers.

Some specific Dell laptop models, like the company's popular XPS lineup, which has been a darling of professionals and tech enthusiasts alike, help the company show up on the list of the best laptop brands based on their reputation for reliability. However, the company has a wide lineup of laptops with bad scores, according to CR's data. That includes several Inspiron and Latitude models.

MSI is yet another brand whose laptops are mainly marketed at those who want a gaming computer. As one of the major gaming laptop brands, the company has a wide selection of devices, including the non-gaming Prestige lineup of light business laptops that promise excellent battery life. As a matter of fact, the MSI Prestige 13 AI Evo is lighter than Apple's MacBook Air.

However, the brand is best known for its high-performance laptops, and it's no surprise that it makes some of the best computers for gamers. Unfortunately, gaming laptops are notoriously unreliable, and MSI's predicted reliability score in CR's data, only slightly higher than Dell's, is proof of that. The company has poor scores per CR's user surveys, so it's best to skip its laptops and consider more reliable laptop brands instead.

Acer has a diversified laptop portfolio, and you can buy devices at a vast range of price points. The company sells cheap Chromebooks, which are perfect for anyone with a tight budget, and expensive, powerful models for demanding customers. It even has a lineup of gaming-dedicated laptops: the Acer Nitro and Acer Predator series, for those who need portable yet capable devices that can breeze through modern-day games. 

Its mid-range and entry-level devices are known to offer the best bang for buck, so it might make sense that you'd want to snag a unit if you don't want to buy high-end laptops. But before you invest in that cheap Chromebook from Acer or any of its high-end models, you should keep in mind that the brand's reliability scores are among the lowest for major laptop brands, according to CR. The Aspire line is especially disappointing, with low performance and display ratings as well.

As such, there's a higher chance that you'll experience issues with your Acer laptop within the first three years of ownership than if you buy from other reliable brands that have higher scores. Until the company works on making its laptops last longer, you should avoid buying them if you want a device that will last several years.

Windows laptop manufacturers are notorious for launching a variety of models every year, unlike Apple, which only releases a handful of models at a time and has only recently expanded its laptop lineup to three models: MacBook Air, Pro, and Neo. On the Windows side, Asus is another laptop brand you should avoid, according to data from CR. 

It has a similar approach to Acer when it comes to its laptops, with entry-level Chromebooks mixed with some mid-range and high-end laptops, including gaming-focused options in its flagship Republic of Gamers (ROG) lineup. Its portfolio has models that run Intel's chips, while others incorporate Qualcomm's ARM-based Snapdragon X series chipsets. 

The brand is known for its bold experiments on new form factors, such as the Asus Zenbook Duo 14, which comes with two screens. The only caveat of buying this company's products is that it has low reliability scores. According to CR data, the brand scores just slightly higher than Acer, but significantly lower than LG, Samsung, and Apple. So, don't expect a smooth ride after the first years of your ownership journey.

To find the reliability of each brand's laptop, we relied on data from CR. The organization conducts annual surveys of its members who have purchased new laptops and uses a statistical model to determine each brand's predicted reliability scores.

The data in question included three annual surveys conducted in 2023, 2024, and 2025, where users shared their experience with their brand-new laptop models bought between 2019 and 2025. The data collected was from a total of 75,923 laptops. To compile this list of laptop brands to avoid, we strictly considered laptop brands that had the lowest reliability scores from CR's data. Once we found brands with the lowest reliability scores, the next step was to discard any brand that isn't considered a major one from the list, such as Gateway.