You’ve heard of them all - or at least, the big ones. HP, Lenovo, Dell - if you know laptops, or even just desktops, you probably know at least some of their names. Most of us won’t have used every brand of laptop - unless you’ve switched around a lot - so you probably want some help picking out the creme of the crop.

For most people, buying a laptop is a reasonably big purchase and not something you do without considering your options - understandable given high end units often approach and surpass £1000, so how do you make sure you’re getting the right laptop for you? Which brand should your next laptop be? Well, let’s talk about them.

General quality is different between laptops of course, but it’s more based on price point than brand; the more a laptop costs, the more premium you can expect it to feel. On a general level (Individual laptops will vary) HP has a metallic build for the base and lid which definitely gives it a strong feel, and the actual build quality is solid because of it. Lenovo has a more general material feel; the chassis is made of a combination of carbon fiber, plastic and magnesium that’s really challenging to put into words how it’s texture feels, but is fairly comfortable. Dell is mostly metal, the back panel for the screen and for the bottom chassis both feel and look metallic, while the palmrest is a rubbery-plastic material that still feels quite durable.

While it would be simple to declare “metal is better than plastic” and proclaim HP as the undisputed ruler of build quality over Dell, it’s never that simple. Different models invariably are built differently, so although the materials used are different and may at a glance seem more or less resilient, it’s likely any laptop can handle everyday use. And while, for example, some of the low end Lenovo laptops are still very resilient, there can be concessions made in other areas that are more important if you were looking for a cheap laptop if damage isn’t a high risk. Features and spec might be more important to you than withstanding a drop. It’s worth bringing back into the discussion that in general business laptops will have a better build quality than a consumer laptop, and that difference is likely to be much more significant than any difference between brands.

Design preference is a personal issue. No laptop has it all for everyone - one keyboard you like might be a keyboard someone else wouldn’t begin to type on; one trackpad is someone’s favourite and someone else’s reason for buying a mouse. While it’s rational to assume a higher price point means better quality, there’s multiple ways to (for example) design a keyboard for a laptop, and different designs will please different people. So while I may prefer HP keyboards, other people in the office may prefer Dell or Lenovo, even though they’re all good quality laptops; they’ll still feel different to use and the pros and cons weigh differently for different people.

Even something as small as a keyboard layout or a fingerprint reader can be the deciding factor between which laptop you want to use, and no one brand has every combination of what you could want (If you’re shopping for a touchscreen, a Mac isn’t going to be an option). So checking for features, whether it be security card slots, durability or just your favourite colour, is perhaps more pressing than the brand logo on the box.