Acer laptops: better now or still crap?

Every standard pc brand has it's cheap computers. You can buy a sub $300 Acer at walmart at it will probably crap out within a few years, or you just want a new one because it became outdated fast (usually sub $300 laptops are outdated when you buy them anyways)

Dell isn't much of a consumer brand, although they do make some consumer products. They make most of their money from the enterprise. They have cheap parts and a damn good service team that will come to your house / business and replace bad parts. I like Dell because if a 4 year old office PC's motherboard dies i can get an exact motherboard from them. 90% of the system can be taken apart without tools and since i have an exact motherboard i don't have worry about driver or boot issues.

Acer, Gateway, and eMachines are all the same brand with Acer being the head corporation. They even own some of Packard Bell in Europe. I've had issues with all three brands so i try to stay away in general, but i would imagine their more expensive products are built better. Although i did have a Gateway FX laptop (high end) that died in two years from capacitor failure. Personally i only buy Apple, Dell, IBM, and HP Business products. Asus seems to be doing very well and i wouldn't hesitate buying one. MSI also seems good but i have no experience with them.

 

To go over a few points made....

Toshiba are terrible. Hands down we had more Toshiba repairs come in the shop than any other make. The sockets were poor and they used to have terrible hinges (I actually had a Toshiba rep argue that this was down to poor handling and picking it up by the screen until I went to show him on his shop model where the cracks were... and his never-removed-from-the-display unit had them)!

My Acer is an Extensa. It's running a Core2Duo with 8Gb RAM and Windows 7 Professional. Works great, Photoshop runs on it although it's not really a gaming laptop. My Mum's I think is an Aspire - it's not got the full keyboard with keypad unlike mine, but it has HDMI out and dual graphics cards. Neither are new by any means, but still going strong! I agree that Acer mini desktops (as with many) are bad. My friend's got a PSU / USB issue. It is unfortunate that Acer chose to buy Gateway, who had already bought eMachines, as they're both pretty poor brands. Still, one brand owning another shouldn't make you think any better or worse of that brand, really. Would you not buy a Ferrari any more because they're owned by Fiat?

Dell used to make nice laptops, but I've had so many fail on me. Their Vostro range and other non-consumer ranges used to be nice, but I'm not so sure any more.

Razer is an overpriced brand that has gone downhill.

If you don't want something that you're going to be the go-to repair guy for, then your only option is a tablet.

 

toshiba are not that bad at all just depends on the machine, some are awful though, but it's the same with most brands, im on a toshiba sat pro now and it's a really nice laptop(and im running it on a 14+ year old under spec power supply lol).

granted though i did repair it bringing it back from the dead lol (but it did have some physical damage) but now it purrrs.

the worst systems i've seen have been HP and store own brand ones such as advent. but then again hp had some excellent laptops back in the day i have a HP NC8000 and it was one of the best i've ever used.

 

Not sure about the laptops, but I absolutely love my 23" Acer LED backlit LCD monitor. Had it for over 2 years and no dead pixels or anything, it's just like the day I got it.

 

Business class (EliteBook etc) HP laptops are awesome, which is what I own for that reason.

 

HP are owning it right now. My friend just got one and it stays just as cool as my desktop (~37 degrees) with no added cooling, which is awesome considering every other laptop i've held gets hot as balls.

 

I have a quad core i7 with amd graphics 8460p, doesnt get very hot considering the spec.

swapped in a 250gb samsung 840 ssd and its a really really nice laptop

 

i also have an acer LED backlit tv/monitor and yeah, it's great i love it.

 

When I got my first laptop we made the mistake of buying consumer class HP, Pavillion Dv6000. What a disaster.

I'd probably never buy anything consumer grade now in terms of laptop. I'm a fan of thinkpads, generally the thicker ones though not those "thin" edge ones. You can buy those used and they're like the day they were first bought.

 

I know my experience doesn't go for every HP business laptop out there, but my EliteBook was an absolute piece of shit. Had to bring it in for repairs every 1-2 months until I got sick of it.
It doesn't help that their local repair centre was utterly incompetent either, causing me to sometimes have to bring it right back in for the same issue up to 3 times.

 

i used to do hp/compaq warranty repairs, i dont now so that explains why they are incompetent and not awesome without me

 

A Lenovo would probably be my alternative. The T530/w530 are both nice. If you want something smaller, the x230 is pretty good. Those are all current gen, you can go T520/w520/x220 for a price saving

 

Hahaha, I have an Acer Aspire 5552 that I use for my retro games, only bad thing was the harddrive, which I replaced

 

I don't like Dell on the basis that I've actually had to have them come to my house several times. They were involved in the Nvidia 8 series GPU fiasco and just like Apple they swept it under the carpet. The M1330 was probably one of the nicest machines Dell ever made and trying to find one that still works today is difficult. The GPU's failed on nearly all of them, they released an Intel Chipset version which is more reliable but apparently even they succumb eventually.

It just seems that with Dell every new model they make is released when all of the components are at the end of their performance shelf life making an upgrade inevitable a lot sooner that you'd planned.

It's a pity IBM sold off their hardware division to Lenovo as thinkpads were great. Lenovo are still doing a pretty good job.

EDIT: An hour ago my dad just walked through with a mint condition Thinkpad from 1999, Windows 98 SE and lotus notes anyone? Still works perfectly and is making me feel all nostalgic.

 

helps if you name the model so people can avoid it

 

As I works in a returns dept for a major online IT company (3rd largest in uk!) I would say Acer have the highest returns rate, however I don't know if this is due to high sales or they are just plainly crap!

 

I tend to recommend Dell because their mid range laptops are good value, but I'd usually recommend 3 years on site warranty with accidental damage.

If it never leaves the house and you're careful then you can probably get away without it.

 

You're sounding like a Dell salesman, there! Warranties are rarely worth paying extra for nowadays.

Lenovo actually bought ThinkPad in 2005, along with the right to use the IBM name on them for another five years. They stopped using it at the end of 2007, though. The crossover models were in the 1.5 - 2Ghz Pentium M range.

 

Had mostly Acers in my family since the Pentium dual core models and can't say I've had any complaints. For a budget brand they're great laptops, usually pretty well built, no creaky plastic. Recently had a Timeline M3 which I loved, screen was a bit rubbish but the specs and performance were top notch for the price. Only sold it because we're developing for iOS on my course this year and needed to grab a Macbook instead.
The m3 you can grab for ~£350-400 for the i3 model and it has a dedicated GT640m in it as well as a PCI-e SSD and a standard hard drive too. For the price I don't think there's a better deal out there.

Having said that I have had a couple of friends, one with an E1, the other with a slightly better model, both bought new and had the hard drives fail on them within a few months. Not really Acer's fault though as much as it is Hitachi's. Acer's customer service dealt with the issue pretty well though, giving them a replacement hard drive.

 

It is Acer's fault- they used Hitachi drives.


Although I'll give props to Acer for the Aspire S7 that came out- the second gen one with Haswell, not the first one. Verge actually took quite a liking to it, and I trust the Verge for good reviews.