US PIRG has a short report on what it considers to be the best laptop brands for repairability.
They are, in order:
Asus
Acer
Microsoft
Dell
HP
Lenovo
Apple
I’d love a bit more detail on the methodology they used for these rankings. (Perhaps the scores for repair and disassembly come via iFixit?) They hint at weighting favourably for disassembly and access to spare parts, and scoring against manufacturers who are involved in lobbying against right to repair.
It’s a shame that the Framework laptop isn’t mentioned, as they focus on larger manufacturers.
What do you make of the list - does it chime with your experience?
Given that repair events tend to see older - sometimes very old - models, and the article is about the latest models, the comparison is probably a bit apples/oranges.
I’ve been volunteering at a charity that is refurbishing laptops on an industrial scale. The consensus is love Thinkpads hate HP. Mind you these are mostly devices that are at least 5 years old. Having said that, last week we were dealing with a batch of HPs manufactured by Bang & Olufsen - under 3 years old, beautifully made, in excellent condition and still under warranty so I’ve not opened one up.
Quick look at prices for the top models in their list:
Good point there that repairability can vary wildly within a manufacturer’s range. In general I’ve found it a good rule of thumb that the business product range from a manufacturer is more easily repairable than consumer product lines. e.g. ThinkPads, Dell Latitude, Vostro. So it’s interesting to see a consumer range like Asus ZenBooks listed as repairable here, or the B&O HP ones you mention. Quite possibly correlates to cost of the laptop?
Agreed with @neil & @Monique that this is a very curious list.
I think labelling the survey as anything to do with repairability is misleading. Marking brands down for being part of the CTA or TechNet is valid if you’re proving a point about corporate ideologies, but it has nothing to do with real-world repairability. I’ve never yet failed to open a laptop because it was built by a CTA member.
However, the line which really intrigued me:
“Replacement parts for Asus laptops are also more affordable and readily available”
Which is certainly not my experience - and clearly no-one who frequents this forum will be surprised either. Currently, manufacturers are terrible at making parts available and their pricing is generated by two drunk guys using ChatGPT.
Here’s the Lenovo Thinkpad which came in yesterday for a battery replacement:
As you can see, the battery is out of stock (not unusual for Lenovo), but it made me smile that they wanted £23.33 for a power cable - that’s not the PSU - just the mains cable which plugs into a PSU.
I’m aware that PIRG may not have the resources to seriously dig into parts pricing and availability, but I don’t think it is possible to rank repairability without this data.
I think this becomes more important as R2R legislation (which usually promises to provide ‘better access to parts’) comes on-stream. We need to understand how manufacturers are providing access to their parts cupboards.
I have a bunch of those in a cupboard… indeed where does the logic for the price come from? (other than drunken ChatGPT antics as you mention 
)