A Comprehensive Guide to Computer Purchase: 05 - What Brand to Choose?

This article is a transcript of a video that you can watch by clicking the thumbnail below. Hence, certain statements may not make sense in this text form, and watching the video instead is recommended.

What You May Already Know

You know different brands have different design languages of their own, and then we also talked about how they differ in price points as well. There’s more to brands than just that, and that’s exactly what we’ll talk about in this video.

Multiple Lineups Within Brands

Almost every brand has multiple sub-brands or lineups within them, some more than others. Most brands have separate series or offerings for regular home users, small businesses, large enterprises, business users, gamers, etc. Lenovo has more than six at the time of this recording. What’s interesting is that the offerings differ not only in price range but also significantly in terms of build quality, longevity, etc.

Known Characteristics with Certain Brands

There are known characteristics of brands that often make it easier to narrow down choices for purchase. Apple computers are often expensive but are well built, though they are some of the most difficult to repair. Dell laptops have some of the best screens I’ve seen. Razer provides some of the best audio experiences in a non-Apple computer. Lenovo’s ThinkPad lineup might not be the most attractive for an individual consumer as it does for businesses, and if one could look past their relatively (and arguably) unattractive design, they’d be getting something far easier to maintain and repair, just in case things go wrong.

Brands that Promote Self-Repair

Speaking of self-repair, several manufacturers promote themselves with their products being easy to maintain, repair, and upgrade, and they do sometimes markup their prices for the luxury of being able to work with that hardware closely. I can’t help but think of System76 and Framework.

Choose the Manufacturer Wisely

From a distance, it may appear that going with any brand would eventually get you something very similar with the end product being merely slightly different than the other, but this may be another of the important choices that may determine how value for money the purchase might end up being a few years down the line.