MacBooks Best Laptops, Says Consumer Reports
MacBooks are the best laptops, according to Consumer Reports' testing.
Say what you want about Apple products, but they certainly have their fans. Consumer Reports, a generally objective consumer-centric product review North American magazine, is in love with the current generations of MacBooks.
Apple MacBooks top spot in each of Consumer Reports’ three laptop categories of 13-inch, 14- to 15-inch and 17- to 18-inch.
13-inch MacBooks ruled the category, with the unibody MacBook, the MacBook Air and the polycarbonate MacBook White taking the top three spots. The PCs that make up the bottom half of the list are the HP Pavilion dv3-1075us, Dell Studio XPS 13, and the Gateway UC7807u.
(Image excerpted from ConsumerReports.org)The 15-inch MacBook Pro topped the 14- to 16-inch laptop category, scoring a 75 out of 100. The next closest offering in the category was the Toshiba Satellite M305-S4910 with a 64 out of 100. Of course, the so-called “Apple tax” was in full force with the MacBook Pro costing $2000 and the Toshiba running $700.
(Image excerpted from ConsumerReports.org)The 17- to 18-inch category belonged to the 17-inch MacBook Pro with the highest score of 80 out of 100. Second place went to the Dell Studio 17 with 64 out of 100. The Apple tax strikes even harder here with the MacBook Pro 17 costing $2800 and the Dell Studio 17 at only $750.
(Image excerpted from ConsumerReports.org)It’s no surprise that Apple products cost a premium over comparable PC products, but the MacBooks that topped the charts (and price points) also came with stronger specifications than its closest competitors in screen resolution, GPU, bundled software, just to name a few. In fact, Apple boasted about its own inherent ‘value’ in its products in a recent news story, though it’ll be hard to argue with a price difference of more than $1,000.
The message from Consumer Reports (subscription required for full ratings) is clear though – Apple hit a home run with its latest generation of MacBooks, but owning one over a PC will cost you.

This is the idiots guide to the best laptop.
I would comment this report as misleading in a way.
Apple's jewel is OS X and they are just capitalizing on that ace to boost hardware sales
As for PC laptops, the only brand I go with is ASUS since it's a meld between hardware quality and Windows. However, the Macbook Unibody is the icing with the LED backlit screen and the multitouch trackpad, it makes it very worth it since the multitouch trackpad is nowhere to be found on other laptops and makes work so much more efficient.
Apple fixed manufacturing issues with the unibody Macbook. Heck, the only reason why I got the unibody Macbook was because Apple replaced my old white Macbook for free due to constant defects.
it doesn't run faster because you can just get better hardware from a pc.
it doesn't run games.
it cost so much more.
so why is it being rated so much better
I was considering a small iFruitBook for my travel machine, since I wasn't expecting to do much with it but surf the net and view photos. Then I decided I needed to run our CAD software on it so I got serious and bought a Dell Latitude instead.
I'm not sure the people at consumer reports are smart enough to know what it means to be objective. What they write sounds good, until you find an article they wrote about products that you really know about and then you discover that maybe they don't know much after all.
This is the idiots guide to the best laptop.
For me (and people who read and are well informed about hardware) is crystal clear that mac is just a "cool"(yeah right!) and overpriced option...
People still read magazines to get information?
There's something called the internet nowadays...
I mean how the.... just wow. I think I might go emo now... (not really)
Constant defects? I though macs were the uber bestest thing evar? LOL.
Good try. OS X is UNIX. Let me know when Apple makes their own OS...oh wait they tried, it was called OS 9 and it blew goats...thats why they went to UNIX.
But really good try though.
As for this particular incident, its clear that price was a very low factor in their rating system. The fact that a supposedly similiar system that is rated only slightly worse but costs half as much I think says a lot too.
Like who would buy a car, even if it got a perfect 100 score, if it was 60-80k compared to the 20-40k of its primary competitors.