Ranking 10 Major PC Brands From Worst To Best – BGR

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The PC market has really boomed in the past five years or so. We’ve seen thinner and lighter laptops in the form of the Dell XPS and the LG Gram, as well as much higher-quality gaming laptops such as the Alienware M16.

As it’s such an expensive investment, it’s vital that consumers know who to trust out of the big brands in this space. This list breaks down the top ten PC brands, focusing on availability, breadth of choice, ease of configuration, build quality, pricing, and customer support. 

For example, we’ve placed both Lenovo and Dell highly for having a large catalogue and great build quality, even if the customer support can sometimes be hit or miss. On the other hand, even though Samsung has excellent build quality, customer support, and good pricing, the company doesn’t have options for gaming laptops or desktops. More information on our methodology can be found at the end of the article. 

LG’s PC offerings almost feel ceremonial for this tech giant, but even so, its LG Gram is probably one of the best thin and light laptops on the market. In fact, the LG Gram is the only laptop that LG offers, and if it weren’t excellent, LG would likely have been edged off this list by companies like Corsair or one of the newer PC makers.

As for the LG Gram itself, there are several options to pick from, and for the most part they all have the same ultra-thin frame and body. The main difference is that the LG Gram Pro models have the option for a discrete graphics card, such as the RTX 5050, which is solid.

Another nice benefit of the LG Gram is that it’s one of the few laptops that comes in a 17-inch size, which is perfect for those who prefer a larger screen. In fact, it’s a great alternative to the Dell XPS 17, as well as the Dell XPS lineup in general, especially since it is thinner and can be cheaper, depending on the specs you end up choosing.

MSI is a well-known Taiwanese tech company that started out as a motherboard manufacturer, however its PC offerings have been slim and hard to find. Unlike LG, all its laptops are targeted towards gaming, but there is a couple of interesting products.

For example, the MSI Stealth series has great choices. The MSI Alpha comes with a 17-inch option, and alongside the MSI Bravo, is a pretty solid budget-oriented gaming laptop. The MSI Bravo can go for as low as $849, if you don’t need anything fancy. On the other hand, the MSI Titan is a beast of a gaming laptop, and easily competes with the likes of Dell, especially since it’s one of only a handful of gaming laptops on the market that come in an 18-inch size.

While MSI’s customer support and build quality overall are pretty excellent, it does tend to suffer from availability. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find things like the MSI Alpha and Bravo locally, and you’ll likely have to get any laptop you want from MSI shipped to you from quite a distance. That said, MSI laptops are absolutely worth the price, especially given their form factor and specs.

Samsung is another tech giant that hasn’t had much interest or luck in the PC market. Although it has a few attractive offerings, it’s mostly ideal for those already in the Samsung ecosystem. For the most part, Samsung is focusing on ultraportable notebooks more than anything else. While you can find some good specs with its Galaxy Books, which is what it calls its laptops, they won’t compete with some of the best laptops on the market.

Luckily, even under the ultraportable banner, you still get quite a few options, starting with the Galaxy Book 4, which are well-priced entry-level laptops in the ecosystem, as well as the Galaxy Book 4 Ultra. Then there’s the Galaxy Book 5 Pro, Book 5 360, and Book 5 Pro 360, which is a very confusing naming convention, but essentially, the 360 means it’s a convertible laptop. Out of all those, the Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360 is likely the best, and can be found for as low as $1,400 with a discount.

Finally, there’s the Galaxy Chromebook Plus, which is great for those who don’t want Windows and prefer dealing with ChromeOS. In fact, it’s probably one of the best 15-inch Chromebooks on the market, even if it can be a bit on the pricey side.

Regardless of which Samsung device you go for, the build quality is excellent, and availability is pretty good, especially if you’re ordering directly from Samsung. That said, you are paying a bit of a premium for the Samsung name, and there aren’t always deals or discounts on the Samsung Galaxy Books.

Microsoft is almost entirely focused on its Surface laptops, and while they’re great, they can be pricey and hard to find. Microsoft does make the Surface Studio 2+, which is pretty unique and an excellent desktop PC for graphics artists, but the main manufacturing and distributing is for the Surface laptop and the Surface Pro.

The Surface laptop is a traditional laptop and is positioned to compete with the MacBook Air, which means it’s lightweight and has an excellent battery life. Unfortunately, there aren’t a good amount of configuration options you can pick from. You get to choose between a 13-inch, a 13.8-inch, and a 15-inch, and you pretty much get the hardware based on the size.

As for the Surface Pro, it is also competing with the iPad Pro, and comes in both a 12-inch option and a 13-inch option. It’s not going to quite compete with the iPad Pro on pure power, but it does come with more RAM by default, which is a huge plus. It’s also cheaper, with the Surface Pro 12-inch base model coming in at $800, and the 13-inch model coming in at $900.

Razer is a tough one to quantify on this scale, as it primarily focuses on gaming laptops, but that certainly gives it an upper hand in terms of specs and build quality. That said, Razer customer support isn’t always great, and devices tend to come with a premium for the name. Also, Razer laptops don’t have an amazing battery life comparatively, although some of that can be excused due to being high-end gaming laptops.

When Razer isn’t making its Zephyr Pro mask, it mostly focuses on its Razer Blade laptop that comes in 14-inch, 16-inch, and 18-inch size variants, all with quite a few good configuration options. In fact, the 14-inch Razer Blade is one of the smallest fully-powered gaming laptops out there, with a 0.62-inch thickness, and the ability to equip it with an RTX 5070, which is pretty solid for such a small laptop.

Of course, one of the big benefits of going with Razer is that you get to be part of the Chroma RGB ecosystem. That means you can grab one of Razer’s many excellent gaming headsets, keyboards, or mice, and sync them all up together for one of the best light shows in the gaming world. Razer also has a partnership with Maingear to create Razer Chroma-compatible devices.

Asus is another company that is hard to quantify, since its entire product line is targeted towards gaming with its ROG and TUF laptops. However, it does offer some of the best gaming gear on the market.

The ROG lineup is where it puts most of its high-end gear in, whether it’s laptops, motherboards, or even handheld consoles, like the ROG Ally. If you do want to grab a ROG gaming laptop, it’s best to look at the ROG Strix, which is not only powerful but also has so much RGB you could probably have a close encounter of the third kind. The ROG Zephyrus is another less flashy option, coming in a 14-inch or 16-inch size.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for something a little bit cheaper and toned down, TUF gaming laptops are excellent, although there’s only the A16 on offer at the moment. While it isn’t going to compete with the ROG lineup in terms of top-of-the-line specs, it’s a solid laptop that can take up to an RTX 5070, and depending on the configuration you end up going for, you can get it for as low a price as $1,400. 

The only thing to keep in mind with Asus is that it has had a few problems recently when it comes to its customer support. In fact, the YouTuber JayzTwoCents, who has 4.2 million subscribers, very publicly parted ways with Asus in a video with 2.5 million views. Of course, Asus has done work since then to bring back the brand, but it still has a long way to go to gain the same sort of consumer trust that other brands enjoy.

While Acer doesn’t have as large a selection as the top three in this list, it does a good job of providing several budget-friendly options. In fact, the Acer Nitro V is probably one of the best budget gaming laptops on the market, and you can snag it for $948 without discounts. It competes with Dell’s G15 and, depending on the deals you can find, it can come out as better value for money.

Another pretty common laptop to see recommended is the Acer Aspire, and you’ve probably run into one without noticing. They aren’t flashy, but they have a lot of configuration options, are solidly built, and Acer has decent customer support — so well worth grabbing if you’re looking for a budget-to-mid-range option.

You can also grab yourself the Acer Swift, if you want something thin and lightweight, while the Acer Travelmate lineup is great for business needs. Some of these models also offer OLED options, so if you spend a lot of time on your laptop, opting for one of those is a nice idea.

Again, it’s worth noting that Acer doesn’t do flashy; what it does is solid, dependable laptops at an attractive price, which is why they are ranked so highly on this list.

HP has a solid selection of laptops and desktops, and even a very interesting portable desktop, but it doesn’t have the same breadth of options and availability as the top two on this list. Even so, it’s been around so long that HP has certainly developed a reputation for solid build quality and relatively good pricing.

The HP Omen desktops and laptops are perfect for gamers who are looking for a mid-to-high-end specification. For those who are more interested in budget gaming, the Victus lineup is a worthwhile alternative, with a couple of nice configuration options.

Then, of course, there are the HP Pavilion desktops, which are oriented more towards business use. The same goes for the Envy laptops, although they’ve been recently marketed more towards hybrid home and office use, which is great for those who work from home. HP also offers 17-inch laptop options if you want a larger screen, with a range of spec configurations.

HP does offer some PCs that are best to avoid, such as its nameless 14-inch laptop. Buyers beware of this device, as it’s not very powerful, but the caveat is it’s very cheap. As HP regularly runs deals we’d heavily recommend waiting for an available deal on a better laptop which you like. 

Dell has been around for ages, and ever since it bought out Alienware back in 2006, it’s become a powerhouse for business, personal, and gaming PCs. Besides Lenovo, it has one of the largest selections of laptops and desktops you’re likely to find, pretty much regardless of what you’re going for.

One of the most well-known lineups under Dell is the XPS series, which is made to compete with the MacBook Air and potentially the MacBook Pro if you go for the higher-end specifications. As for the Dell G15 and G16 laptops, they’re excellent gaming laptops. Compared to the Acer Nitro V, the Dell G16 is a bit more expensive, but it does come with powerful specs and is an excellent price for a 16-inch gaming laptop. Another well-known lineup is the Inspiron, which is Dell’s general-use laptop that’s marketed to pretty much everyone.

One interesting aspect about Dell is that it also offers laptops with Linux, and more specifically, Ubuntu. Dell also has a lot of excellent deals running almost all the time, so we echo the advice above about buying something with a deal on it, or waiting for the specific laptop you want to be offered at a discount.

Either way, Dell has solid build quality, and great pricing, especially with deals.

It can be a bit of a toss-up between Lenovo and Dell in terms of options and configurations, but Lenovo does win out slightly when it comes to variety. For example, Lenovo has some great Chromebooks or devices with Chromebook options, such as the Chromebook Duet and the IdeaPad Slim. There’s even a 2-in-1 Chromebook option in the form of the IdeaPad Flex.

As for gaming, Lenovo has the LOQ and Legion lineups, with the former being more budget-oriented and the latter aimed at higher-end gaming. Of course, one of the most well-known Lenovo ranges is its Thinkpad lineup, which is targeted towards business users, and has that famous red trackpad dot in the middle of the keyboard. Also, while not technically a PC, Lenovo also makes the Legion Go, a pretty solid handheld gaming console.

All that said, Lenovo does come with one big caveat: it often inflates prices way beyond what they are actually worth, so that the discounts you see feel better. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you’re aware of it, especially since Lenovo constantly has discounts on almost everything. And if you take out the inflated original price, the discounted prices are still excellent.

Beyond that, Lenovo has some of the best availability and options on the market, at least when it comes to laptops. So, if you’re looking for a specific type of laptop with a specific set of specs, you’ll absolutely find it at Lenovo.

Most competition around PC brands comes in the form of customer support, hardware, and pricing. When it comes to customer support, we compared how each brand handles returns or software problems across the whole product range, researching user reviews, and detailed consumer reports, alongside our own experience and subject-matter expertise.

Hardware configuration is the biggest determinant of rank, and so we evaluated the options that each brand offers, assessing what works well together, and which PCs are targeted to the right audience. If a brand was trying to upsell, or paired lower-end components with those at the higher-end, that would harm its ranking. Finally, we considered the context of the PC market and whether products were priced fairly and competitively.