Acer’s reliability rating… What do you think?
- posted by Michael Walsh on October 17th, 2009
- (3)
While I was writing that last article on Acer overtaking Dell to become the world’s second largest PC vendor, I scrolled down the comments to the Engadget article and came across this one from Dest.
OK, it’s his opinion and as he says in his post it’s subjective, but I think this comment needs to be published and maybe discussed a little further by The Acer Guy readers.
I posted this in the other Acer market share article, but it was already flooded by comments at the time so I’ll post it again:
“Wow, I can’t believe how much ignorance there is on a site like Engadget over the quality of Acer products. Check out the latest reader surveys in PCMag. You can view them for free (although you have to register). The subjective reliability rating of Acer/Gateway is just as good as Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo, and better than HP (which has been tanking in recent years). Not only that, its percentage needing repair is 12%, which is lower than Lenovo (22%), Dell (23%), and HP (19%) that so I would quit perpetuating your outdated opinions. The only companies that had better reliability based on those 2 metrics are Asus. Sony, and Apple, and they are often in a difference price range.
With respect to build quality, please go to your local store to check out the laptop section of the HPs, Acers, Dells and Toshibas there. The latest few Acer laptops I checked out were cheaper, faster, and used higher quality plastics than the HPs in the same price range. I don’t know what laptops you guys have been looking at lately. I just bought a gateway and the internal components are what you find in any other laptop. It also runs cool, which isn’t something I can say for my last laptop that HP decided could handle a hot AMD processor fit into a tiny space.”
Oh yeah, the Gateway NV series laptop I bought it was called the best budget notebook by Laptop magazine.
So what’s YOUR opinion of Acer’s build quality and overall reliability? Do you have any recent experience of other manufacturers and if so, how did Acer compare?
I understand that there’s no definitive way of measuring subjective opinions like this but what the hell, it’s all in the name of science…
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Morris Lee wrote, on October 17th, 2009:
The quality has been pretty top notch for the laptops I have owned currently. That is the 5920G and the Aspire One.
Peter wrote, on October 18th, 2009:
Acer has a reputation from years past that will take a while to overcome. People will note that it was about three years ago that the quality of the Acer product line began a dramatic upswing. This was about the same time the merger/take over of Gateway and Packard Bell happened. Which means it’s probably about the same time Acer got really serious about being a big player in the market.
The Acer units in the market are usually a bit thicker than their competitors. This ends up allowing for better heat dissipation and in the end usually means the units last longer.
The best example of this is the recent video card debacle from Nvidia. the 8400/8600/9400/9500 chips had faulty soldering bumps. The Acer units had a much lower failure rate due to the design of the laptops that enabled greater heat dissipation. Thin and glossy is fine and dandy but not if you want the laptop to last for any period of time.
Ed Hassay wrote, on October 22nd, 2009:
Bought the first small ACER when they came out. Great little machine.
Wanted another to travel with when they advertised the longer battery. Bought another with bigger keys and the longer battery life. BIGGEST disappointment I’ve ever had with a computer. Slower than you can imagine…service is impossible when you try to get a hold of someone (like a secret code to try to find the phone number. Battery not the six hour as advertised and no camera (also advertised). Finally got a hold of support and the only solution was to return it… I did and got it back today. The service order idicates that the camera cable wa “reseated” and it tested OK. It is as slow as ever, a check of the “chrystal” web cam still show (and I love the grammar “camera no found” and while I’ve yet to test the duration of the batery, I’m just likely to chalk this one up to taking my chances and losing. Walmart wouldn’t retrn as it was beyond the 15 day period so if you do buy one of these, make sure you bring it right back, or better yet, do what I’m going to do ad that is to buy anything but an ACER next time. I’m in the market for another computer and definitely won’t be buying an ACER product again.