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We configure and recommend
the world's most reliable laptops,
from the highest rated vendors,
with the best price for each system.
The lifespan of the average
computer is just 4 years.
A well configured computer
will serve for 15 to 20 years.
The cost of the average computer is $187 per year of service.
The cost of a well configured computer is just $135 per year of service.
There are a quarter million websites, countless YouTubers, and bloggers recommending expensive computers. Pretending to be altruistic experts.
They are all affiliates, who get paid by the vendor, to recommend garbage. The average affiliate makes 3% of every sale, just for linking to the laptop.
In just a few minutes, you're going to know what they choose to ignore.
Because vendors of reliable computers don't have affiliate programs.
We're not affiliates of any company.
Our recommendations are based totally on extensive research of each component in the laptops we configure
Then we choose from our list of well vetted vendors, the one with the lowest price for each system, to recommend to our clients.
Once you learn about the incredible secrets of the computer industry, from the page below, you'll never look at laptops the same way again!
Then you'll be able to make a great choice,
of a quality laptop, that meets your needs. Click HELP in the menu when you're ready.

Before you purchase a new computer, there are a few things that you should know…
The following companies don’t manufacture computers.
They are all just vendors, who market, rebrand and sell computers.
Kind of like car dealerships. They may order the vehicle, customize it, put their dealership’s name on it, and sell it, but they don’t manufacture the vehicle.
The following companies are the ones that
actually manufacture most of the world’s laptops!(ODMs)
So when someone buys a “Dell”, they are actually buying a Foxconn, Pegatron, or Quanta computer, with a Dell logo. Same ODMs if they buy an “Apple” MacBook.
All of those vendors have some of the worst customer care.
Quality vendors that we recommend have
a minimum 8 of 10 customer review scores.

  • Customer Reviews are just the beginning of good vendor vetting. Learn More!

    Most vendors are eliminated from our consideration by their customer review scores. Those who score at least 8 out of 10 are looked at even further. A great review score only matters if the reviews reflect a vendor’s determination to quickly resolve legitimate issues. Reviews about how great a computer was soon after purchase, mean nothing, as many people are content with slow, frustrating garbage. It’s the words of their customers, about how well problems were RESOLVED, that is one of the hallmarks of a great vendor. Some vendors will have a suspicious number of great reviews (extremely disproportionate to their percentage of the market) on one site and no reviews on another. When we check social media, many of their customers are raking them over the coals, often for legitimate issues that are still unresolved after months of fighting with the vendor!
    If a vendor takes care of their customers’ legitimate problems quickly, then we look at their business history. We look for deceptive advertising. (Great computer vendors typically spend very little money on marketing, relying mostly on word of mouth advertising.) We search for class action lawsuits and court records. We look at their past mergers and the likelihood of them selling out, like Alienware (who was always overpriced) did with Dell. We want to make sure that all the vendors we recommend are stable companies, who will be there to uphold their warranties. We search news articles, techie forums, and other places, for as much info as we can get about their history and business practices, e.g. do they install bloatware like most of the big vendors do?
    If the vendor makes it past all of that, only a dozen have so far, then we start comparing their prices. Some vendors have a higher markup on their lower end systems, because lower end systems have higher failure rates that require more customer service. While other vendors have a higher markup, on the computers typically bought by people who don’t care about cost.
    There is a huge difference in reliability and longevity for similar components from different manufacturers.

    Although we only configure reliable, quality computers, we always care about cost. Every month we look at all of the quality computers, offered by vetted vendors, with the most reliable components, and compare their prices, determining which vendor offers the best price on out list of the best computers.
These are the surveyed failure rates of the following vendors…
apple

Apple Inc.

Survey doesn’t include massive number of recent Macbook keyboard problems.

samsung

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
삼성전자

acer

Acer Inc.
宏碁股份有限公司

hp

HP Inc.

asus

AsusTek Computer Inc.
華碩電腦股份有限公司

lenovo

Lenovo Group Limited
联想集团有限公司

dell

Dell Technologies Inc.

toshiba

Toshiba Corporation
株式会社東芝

microsoftsurface

Microsoft Surface

…over just 2 years.

  • Learn why most computers are cheap garbage.

     

    In 1981 IBM introduced their first personal computer using open architecture. The BIOS was the only part that was original IBM design. In 1984 Phoenix, used the “Clean Room Design” to legally create their clone of the IBM BIOS, and sold it to other computer manufacturers.

    Computers were comparably reliable, improving in speed as the technology advanced. In the mid 1990s, the price for the best value desktops were around $1,500 ($2,500 adjusted for inflation).

    Then in 1998, a company called eMachine put out an invitation for bids, for the cheapest computer components that anyone could manufacture, and sold the cheapest, slowest, most unreliable piece of crap computers for under $500. Within six months they had the 4th highest PC sales.

    So the companies who had been selling good, reliable, fast PCs (comparably speaking) for 10 years, decided to sacrifice their reputation for higher market share, and one by one, Compaq, Gateway, HP, Packard Bell, & Dell started selling cheap garbage too.

    This is why the industry average service life of computers is only 4 years, instead of the 15 to 20+ years of the well researched reliable computers that we recommend.

     

The failure rates of computers that we recommend are…

UNDER

…over 10 years!

Mostly due to owner abuse. “Oops, I spilled my coffee!”
No other laptops can serve for 10+ years without repair.
There are at least a couple of components in almost every laptop that aren’t capable of surviving 10 years of daily use. But with one added feature, and some well chosen components, a quality laptop can actually survive for 20 years or more.
Lithium-Ion batteries have a lifespan of only 500 to 1,000 cycles, when being charged to 100% (saturation charging). The laptops that we configure are the ONLY laptops that can be configured not to saturation charge the battery, and increase the life to over 5,000 cycles.
Even if you always have your laptop plugged in and don’t spend charging cycles, having the battery charged over 90% stresses the battery. So, unless you deplete the battery to 60%, use it only as a paperweight, and just boot it up once a year to recharge to 60% no other laptop battery will last for 10 years!
HDD drives are another common reason for short lifespans and ridiculously high failure rates. Techie’s brag about HDDs that run for more than 6 years (52,560 hours) because it is so rare.
A quality SSD (not all are reliable) is expected to survive well over 3,000 writes. If you rewrite the entire drive every week, this will be equivalent to 60 years! (52 x 60 = 3120). While an SSD may be 3 (SATA) to 5 (PCIe) times as expensive as an HDD, they are also 5 (SATA) to 25 (PCIe) times as fast, and as mentioned earlier, work 10 times as long. You WILL notice a difference in performance!
Binning is another major factor in reliability and longevity. I’ve seen many expensive “gaming laptops” that use low binned components. They will have a good CPU and GPU (for marketing), but lousy RAM, lousy SSDs, and even HDDs. It’s like putting wagon wheels on a Tesla! (Of course it takes watching some extremely techie YouTube videos to find out the details that the vendors never mention or publish.) Most “gaming laptops” also tend to have underpowered cooling systems, that causes thermal throttling, and greatly reduces performance.
Laptops don’t become obsolete because of how quickly technology develops, but because of current technology they lack.
Most laptops lack a lot of current technology. So even if the battery, power supply, drives. RAM, fans, or other components didn’t fail, owners would end up replacing them because of how slow they are, or what they can’t do.
Storage Drives

Fastest real world benchmarks in each class.
Sequential Read/Write/Mixed Average:

SATA HDD

SATA SSD

PCIe SSD

Random Read/Write/Mixed Average:

SATA HDD

SATA SSD

PCIe SSD

Price Per Gigabyte

SATA HDD

SATA SSD

PCIe SSD

Thunderbolt 3
Let’s compare some major differences between the #1 system that we recommend, and Amazon’s best selling laptop.
1. PCIe SSD: As mentioned further up the page, HDDs are quick to fail, and very slow. Our recommended PCIe at 2200 MB/s vs Amazon’s 140 MB/s is blazing fast. PCIe will be the standard for storage drives for the next 20+ years, just as SATA has been for the last 20 years.
2. Thunderbolt 3 USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C combo port: Thunderbolt 3 and USB Type C are the way devices will connect for the next 20 years, just as Type A was the way for the last 20 years. But very few new laptops have these ports. Most of the ones we recommend do.
3. Desktop CPU: The i9-9900K desktop CPU is 34% faster than the fastest laptop CPU, and 137% faster than the one in Amazon’s best seller. We won’t even get into the 8 cores & 16 threads vs 2 cores & 4 threads of Amazon’s.
4. RTX 2060 GPU: This graphics processor totally blows away the GPU of every cheap laptop. It is 1200% faster (That’s NOT a typo!) than the integrated Intel HD 620 of Amazon’s best seller. Even if you don’t play VR games, having a good GPU makes a world of difference for keeping up with the resolution and refresh rates of your display.
5. 32GB of high performance DDR4 RAM: RAM gets more technical than people realize. It’s not just the amount and the Mhz, but the CAS Latency (CL) as well. The difference between the two? 119%. Our recommended laptop also has room for 64GB. Amazon’s, just 8 GB.
The list goes on and on, from 144Hz displays vs 60Hz, 4 storage drive capacity vs just 1, Mini DisplayPorts, Optical high definition audio, 6-in-1 card reader, FHD vs HD webcam, 1,730 Mbps dual band wifi vs 300 Mbps and more. Even if Amazon’s best seller would last for more than 10 years, the torture would be like riding a scooter to work, rather than driving a Tesla.

 

When someone says I want a laptop in this price range. They are instructing someone (who gets paid by the vendor) to eliminate current technology, reduce reliability, and decimate longevity. Which increases the cost per year of service, while decreasing performance.
The affiliates just search their vendor(s) for laptops by price. The affiliate gets paid the same percentage of the sale, whether they do any “research” or not.

  • The solution to remote computing, without sacrificing performance, is power inverters and power banks.

    In order to make a laptop battery last longer, you have to lessen the power that the computer uses, and that is done by using lower performance components (ie. CPUs and integrated GPUs).
    Our recommendation, rather than sacrifice performance, is to use a pure sine wave power inverter in the vehicle…
    …and a pure sine wave power bank elsewhere, when you’re going to be away from an outlet.
    Accessories: Cigarette lighter charging cable, Portable solar charger
    Optimizing your screen brightness around 50%, turning off keyboard LEDs, Disabling wifi if you’re not solidly connected to your network, turning on Windows 10 battery saver and power saver, and using Chrome for web browsing can help too.
    Disabling wifi & bluetooth (airplane mode), webcam, USB, IR, and lowering screen resolution won’t make much difference.
    This battery has a capacity of 155Wh vs laptop batteries capacities of less than 82Wh.
    When taking your power banks on a commercial airline, tape safety covers with electrical tape to get through security. While tape is only required for battery contacts, not power banks, it should imply that you’re safety conscious and know the precautions and regulations (links below) better than they do, and hopefully save the time of closer inspection.
    We recommend a quality water resistant backpack / shoulder bag / briefcase large enough to carry a 17.3″ laptop [17″ (w) x 12″ (d) x 2″ (h)] and enough room for the power supply, a couple of power banks, a power inverter, and personal items, that conforms to airline carry on dimensions [22″ (w) x 14″ (d) x 9″ (h)].
    If you fly and use your laptop, read on for more information about power banks, airplanes, FAA regulations and lithium ion battery fires…
    To avoid having to check your bag, it’s recommended that you board the aircraft as soon as you are allowed. If asked to check your bag, tell the flight crew that you have two power banks, and an expensive laptop with an 85 watt hour lithium ion battery and irreplaceable data, that you need for work you planned on doing during the flight. Please choose someone who doesn’t need their carry on during the flight.
    Good luck! With the added seats and fully booked sardine cans, most flights require some passengers to check their carry-on.

    We’re still looking for a power bank that meets all of our criteria, and can be used with plugs from various countries. For international travelers with different outlet needs we recommend this travel plug…
    FAA regulations limits lithium ion batteries to twenty 100Wh batteries. Or “with airline approval” two 100Wh – 160Wh. (See below about airline approval.) Wh = Watt Hour.
    Power banks are allowed in carry-on bags only. They are never allowed in checked baggage.
    As you may know, low quality, cheaply made lithium ion batteries can catch fire, and the energy stored in the battery can be converted into heat energy – more fire. In the passenger cabin, the flight crew can attack the fire, with water, soda, or a Halon ABC extinguisher. (Lithium ion batteries are Class B).
    The regulation is in Watt Hours (Wh) because it can apply to Lead Acid, Nickel Metal Hydride, as well as Lithium Ion, and other battery technologies.
    Lithium Ion batteries’ nominal voltage is 3.6 volts. which at 160Wh converts to 44,444mAh. Milliamp Hours (mAh) is the typical measurement of lithium ion capacity. So, no lithium ion battery above 44,444mAh * 3.6v = 160Wh is authorized aboard a commercial passenger aircraft.
    Modified sine wave, opened a whole new can of worms, because Modified Sine Wave power sources, which are cheaper and far more common than PURE SIGN WAVE, can have a detrimental effect on electronic devices, their power supplies, and batteries within them. Finding pure sine wave power inverters and power banks that met all of our other criteria was sooo frustrating, but it was worth it!
    Above, we linked to the power bank on Amazon but you can get it from their likely source in Asia on Alibaba if you dare.
    (See this YouTube review for more information about the vendor branded power bank.)
    The top 10 carriers in the U.S.’ pages expressing lithium ion battery policies:
    Southwest Airlines – Doesn’t mention Watt Hour limits. Just quantity of 20.
    Delta – Specifically mentions the 160Wh limit of 2.
    American Airlines – Specifically mentions the 160Wh limit of 2.
    United Airlines – Specifically mentions the 160Wh limit of 2.
    JetBlue – Specifically mentions the 160Wh limit of 2.
    SkyWest – Mentions policies of partner airlines, Alaska, American, Delta, & United.
    Alaska Airlines – Specifically mentions the 160Wh limit of 2.
    Spirit Airlines – Specifically mentions the 160Wh limit of 2.
    Republic Airlines – Mentions policies of partner airlines, American, Delta, & United.
    Frontier Airlines – Says to review TSA regulations which defer to the FAA regulations.

    A couple of 151.2Wh (42,000mAh) power banks, should multiply up to 6 times your time away from an outlet, without pulling your hair out waiting on a frustratingly slow laptop. We also recommend keeping your laptop battery charged, using your power banks first.

Component failure rates are critical to customizing a reliable computer.

Most vendors won’t mention the make and model number of the components in their laptops, and they aren’t about to admit their high failure rates.
Our research of every component that we configure, such as RAM, storage drives, wireless LAN, and even thermal paste, in every laptop that we recommend, is extensive and continuous, from real world benchmarks to failure rates, from dozens of the most reliable sources.
Each component is important, like the engine, transmission, alternator, battery, etc. of a vehicle.
The failure rate of a computer is equal to the failure rate of all components added together. Even if you find one of the best vendors, with the best prices, if you choose the wrong components (like Western Digital or Seagate HDDs), you can still end up with a failure prone system.
Any honorable person doing real research would never recommend any vendor with deplorable customer service, or such high failure rates, or a laptop with an HDD, or one that lacks battery protection technology.
I don’t understand choosing 4 slow, frustrating $187 per year laptops, rather than 1 super fast, reliable $135 per year laptop.

Reliability

  • Dirty tricks and deceptions by vendors

    These are just some of the dirty tricks and deceptions committed by vendors.
    Mentioning SATA’s THEORETICAL maximum of 6Gbps. NO SATA SSD drive is capable of data speeds of more than 4.2Gbps, and the fastest HDD drive is only capable of 1.4Gbps. (Almost all vendors of SATA laptops are guilty of this deception.)
    Calling any laptop that isn’t Virtual Reality ready a “gaming laptop”. Any true gaming laptop will have a VR ready GTX 1060 / RX 480 or better. You may have never imagined caring about games, but why just watch a movie, when you can participate in one?Installing bloatware.
    Most vendors install software that waste system resources. It’s a deplorable practice, that unfortunately, even Microsoft has started doing with Windows 10. It’s just not right that you pay for a product, and that product is hindered by the company that you bought it from. Like buying a car with a 1,000 lb. weight in the trunk. Sure you can take it out, if you can figure out how.
    TIP: When you see components listed without the version, assume that it is the earliest version rather than the latest:
    Thunderbolt instead of Thunderbolt 3
    USB ports that don’t mention 3.1 Gen 1 (5Gbps), 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps), 3.2 (20Gbps), USB type C,
    DisplayPorts that don’t mention 1.2 or 1.3,
    MicroSD reader that doesn’t mention MMC/RSMMC/SDHC/SDXC or UHS-II,
    Screen resolution, without mentioning the MHz. 30Hz / Frames per second can be disappointing. 60Hz / FPS is considered good quality. Anything above 60Hz is necessary only for gaming.
    RAM that doesn’t mention DDR4 the GHz and the CL, expect that it is DDR3 lower than 2133GHz soldered and not upgradable.
    The ONLY reason to solder components such as CPU, GPU, RAM, Storage Drive, or Battery is to force customers to by new rather than upgrade or repair.
Bad Advice Everywhere You Look.
Affiliates
All the big vendors: Acer, Apple, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, NewEgg, Razer, & Toshiba have Affiliate Programs that typically pay 2% to 4% of the sale.
There are countless YouTube videos, websites, and forum posts by affiliates giving bad recommendations for “free”, who have no interest in customer service scores, hardware manufacturers, and failure rates of the computers that they “recommend”. Quite frankly they don’t give a damn about consumers who follow their identifying links. They care about the commissions they receive, and their revenue from sponsors and advertisers.
Just because someone seems to know more about computers than you do, doesn’t mean they are sharing knowledge altruistically.
The best vendors of the most reliable computers don’t have affiliate programs.
Unlike every other website that makes recommendations, this website contains no affiliate links, no advertisements, and accepts no sponsors. All recommendations are based on extensive research, with no influence by any vendor. Hence the name TRUSTED Consumer Consultants.
No computer magazine ever recommends reliable computers with Lithium-Ion battery protection. Magazines only recommend garbage from deplorable vendors, with affiliate programs and huge marketing budgets, their primary sources of revenue.
Even Consumer Reports’ “objective voice” has never mentioned the most reliable laptop brand.
If a company doesn’t have an affiliate program, or spend a fortune on advertising, it’s as if they don’t exist. Vendors of the most reliable laptops (from the fourth largest Taiwanese exporter) are the Cinderella of the computer industry!
Magazines
Your local PC shop
Some local PC shops have one big advantage. You can likely walk out of their store with a computer the same day. But it’s a short sighted solution, limited to their inventory, where you’ll spend a lot more than you should on lousy vendors with high failure rates and deplorable customer care. They never carry laptops with 15+ year lifespans.
Local PC shops have two useful functions. Repairs of unreliable computers that are out of warranty, and renting a computer while a reliable one that matches your needs is being built.
Just reading this page, you already have vital knowledge that most techies are oblivious to, or ignore because it’s not easily profitable.
With all due respect to all the great techies out there who can tear down and rebuild a computer, are an encyclopedia of diagnostic software programs, can diagnose almost any problem, and have gotten their friends’ computers working again, most of them are experts at solving problems rather than avoiding them in the first place.
The goal should be to avoid problems by researching failure rates as well as performance, and only recommending the most reliable computers, from the lowest priced quality vendors.
There are very few techies who conduct in depth research into failure rates, customer service reviews, hardware manufacturers, and the history of the companies that they recommend. Most of them suggest the same garbage that you find listed in magazines, or are limited to custom building a desktop, also with inadequately researched hardware.
Our obsession is reliability, performance to cost ratio, all of the information necessary to make the best choice, and recommending computers that serve their owners many times longer, without a lot of frustration.
A Techie Friend
Yourself
You are your own techie friend. You know how to fix most computer problems, and have researched the real world benchmarks of CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, RAM, etc… If you keep up on emerging technologies, also know the failure rates of all of the manufacturers, the customer reviews and detailed history of the vendors, and you get such information from more reliable sources than magazines, blogs, and forums, then there probably isn’t anything on this page that you weren’t aware of. We’d like to offer our hand for a virtual handshake. But if you’re not quite as passionate and obsessed with research as we are, then to save time, frustration, and money over the long term, you might want to consider our help.
Who are you going to trust to recommend the best computer to meet YOUR needs?!
Someone who gets paid by the vendor, without doing any real research,
Or someone who researches extensively and gets paid by you?
With very very few exceptions, if a service is free, then YOU are the product.
We just don’t understand anyone wanting to drive 4 Fiats over 16 years instead of 1 Tesla, if the 1 Tesla would cost less.
Even if you don’t need to accelerate 0 to 60 in 2.4 seconds, it’s nice to have more power than necessary, rather than not enough. Why spend more on 4 cars without autopilot, than 1 with, even if you only use it on your annual vacation?

We sure would appreciate your help, please!

puppy

We’re trying to take on the corrupt and deceptive computer industry, and the only way to do that is by sharing information. So, before you leave this page to see our list of quality computers, or ask for our help in custom configuring one for you, We beg that you use the buttons on the left to help us educate others in your social network.
If you don’t yet need a new laptop, but would like to buy us a cup of coffee for our late night research sessions, or help fund our hosting, research, hardware, publicity, development, and eventual expansion into helping consumers with a multitude of other products, we’d really appreciate your support.

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THE COMPUTERS THAT WE RECOMMEND WILL NEVER BE INFLUENCED BY ANYTHING OTHER THAN OUR CLIENTS' BEST INTEREST.

WE WILL NEVER RECOMMEND COMPUTER VENDORS WHOSE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION RATINGS ARE BELOW AVERAGE.

WE WILL NEVER BECOME A PUBLICLY TRADED COMPANY, WHERE SHAREHOLDER PROFITS CONFLICT WITH CLIENTS’ BEST INTEREST.

Our Promise to You