HP Laptop Owners Most Commonly Report This One Big Problem

HP, one of the world's most recognizable laptop brands, doesn't exactly have an award-winning reputation these days. Its enormous lineup of hardware has seemingly seen diminished quality in some areas over the years, perhaps even contributing to the perceived "ensh*ttification" of devices and services that many of us complain about in modern times. HP users online find that their hardware runs into a wide variety of issues, from slow machines caused by bloatware to general support problems.

One major issue that has been persisting with HP laptops for quite some time now is the hinge durability problem. Online, it's incredibly easy to find threads and other posts about broken HP laptop hinges. In fact, this issue is so persistent that it resulted in a class action lawsuit being filed in 2021 — followed months later by another one in 2022. Around 30 people were named in the latter class action suit, and the former specifically dealt with the following laptops:

• Envy and Envy 360
• Pavilion and 360 variants
• HP 14, 15, 17

Obviously, the case hinged on the quality of the hinges, and evidence online from other users indicates that there is a genuine issue with HP hardware in recent years. The "360" models, which are meant to be opened and closed into a pseudo-tablet shape, are particularly known for durability issues, with a user in 2026 finding that they would need to pay around $500 for the hinge assembly to be repaired outside of warranty.

Among the surprising number of class action and regular lawsuits against HP over the years, the 2021 class action lawsuit was apparently voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiffs in January 2022. However, the lawsuit's complaints still persist, with the descriptions provided within the filing still potentially accurate to current users. On the official HP forums, hinge problems are still being brought up as of just a few days before the time of writing.

At the time of the 2021 lawsuit, HP was purportedly using brass inserts screwed directly into the materials connecting the hinge. With the metals pressing against the plastic, users described "crunching sounds," and in some cases, found evidence of plastic breakup coming out of the laptop itself. Unfortunately, for users still impacted by this issue, it seems that HP might have gotten away scot-free based on follow-up complaints post-dismissal.

This is usually the case for these types of class action lawsuits, despite the mounting evidence. Recent reports have indicated that most class action lawsuits never even see the inside of a courthouse for the trial, and instead, might be settled outside of it. The users behind the 2021 hinge lawsuit did demand a jury trial, but obviously this never came to be.

Over the years, HP has become demonstrably worse as a consumer-facing company. The never-satiated hunger for growth of these tech companies means that while they'll continue to release products for the consumer, firms like HP will always try to find a way to cut corners somewhere. In this case, hardware sustainability just doesn't seem to be a priority for HP, even though it has been publicly raked over the coals for it.

In 2022, a person filed a class action against HP for its failure to properly test batteries. The lawsuit stated that HP didn't use proper methods for battery testing, instead essentially only testing for larger issues rather than smaller ones that might impact performance. In 2015, a man died from a fire that was blamed on a lithium-ion battery from an HP laptop, though a jury found HP not liable for this incident in 2023. These aren't the only times HP has landed in hot water over battery issues, with the company also having been forced to pay out $425,000 in 2012 for failing to promptly report hazardous battery packs. Between 2009 and 2012, it recalled thousands of batteries and laptops.

While the hinges are a universally reviled bit of HP's output, the company has managed to get away with a lot worse, even more recently. HP's major business is centered around printers, and in 2025, the company narrowly avoided a huge bill based on the result of a class action suit over HP effectively bricking certain printers. This fiasco was centered around a "Dynamic Security" feature that HP essentially designed to prevent third-party ink from being used in its printers, perhaps in a move to push users toward its ink subscription service. This would have been one thing had HP only rolled out the "feature" on new models — however, the company issued an update in November 2020 to enable Dynamic Security on over 20 existing printer models, effectively rendering them useless for users who weren't interested in buying overly expensive printer ink.

One successful lawsuit doesn't even pertain to the products in hand, but to HP's online store, where the company was accused of presenting a false discount scheme as legitimate. This resulted in a $4 million settlement that impacted customers who bought certain laptops from HP's website between 2021 and 2024, with the June 2025 deadline to apply for a cut of the cash now long gone. Another successful class action suit was for investors, where $39 million was squeezed out of HP, with the claim deadline ending in January 2026. It doesn't seem like there's been much in the way of consumer wins here for quite some time.