Yet another bad pixel rant

[blueskull]

So, I've been recently buying and returning 4 Acer Swift 7 and 1 Dell XPS 13, both are $1700 integrated GPU ultrabooks, so supposedly they should have perfect quality control.
To my surprise, all 5 units have at least one bad pixel and one has very bad backlight bleeding (not surprised since it's a Dell), one has a defective keyboard.
I was not looking for cheapies. I'm paying between $1.3k to $1.9k on an iGPU laptop, and it should have basic respect to its price tag.

What's wrong with the PC market? I've never seen those problems with a Mac, rest of a 2010 lowest end Air.
I don't need a Mac. MacOS is getting unusable as they abandon and deprecate OpenGL. OGL performance is miserable, and I can't even play CSGO with an external RX570.
Parallels is buggy, and it's becoming a limiting factor of Altium in 3D. Thus I need a real PC. Virtualization sounded good, but it is not.

Is there a PC brand that can be called premium that can stack up with Apple in terms of quality in 2019?

[Ampera]

This might be a stupid question, but aren't Macs just Unix PCs? Use a different operating system if the hardware in them is good for you.

[maginnovision]

My current HP laptop had no bad pixels in the 4k display when I bought it. I took it to Colorado for a trip where it developed one stuck red, one stuck blue, and one stuck green pixel. I was busy at the time but planned on sending it back for fixing(they have a pretty good policy in practice). I never did and... They've fixed themselves. None stuck on, even partially, or off.

[rrinker]

 The various Microsoft Surface models are top build quality. Not all of them are tablets or glorified tablets, they do have serious power models.

 Our company buys us all exclusively HP stuff (except sales, they get Surfaces), and I've had mine for goign on 2 years now with no issues, no parts breaking or feeling like they are about to break, the screen has no dead pixels, the hinge is nice and sturdy. It's not a touch screen (a plus in my book). It's fairly light weight, but it's not an ultra slim - you can open it up and the drive(s) (it has an m.2 AND SATA drive bay) are not soldered on, and neither is the RAM. No discrete GPU in this model, I don;t think it's even an option, but the integrated one works fine for EasyEDA, even the 3D views, and my 3D CAD, plus app dev tools and SQL Server. Since it's not an ultra slim design, it has real ports - multiple USBs, an actual Ethernet port (GbE), DVI, and VGA. BT (I think 4.0, this is actually 2 generations old now), 802.11ac wifi, optional cellular. The newer ones have betetr processors, mien has an i7-6600U so only 2 cores with hyperthreading, but I still run multiple VMs with no problem, I have 32GB RAM. This is the EliteBook 840 G3, current model is the G6 I think, with several improvements. Oh and you CAN get a discrete GPU in this model, Radeon RX 550. Just checked the HP page, it's fully customizable, so you can order it with the CPU you want but smallest memory and smallest SSD, and upgrade those yourself, and save a LOT, as with everyone, the price of the extra RAM and bigger drives is all out of proportion to what those things really cost. And HP still has service guides with parts lists and procedures, and you can buy spare parts to fix these things yourself.
 

[Ampera]

This might be a stupid question, but aren't Macs just Unix PCs? Use a different operating system if the hardware in them is good for you.

Windows driver is not complete. Not all hardware features are supported, and power management is bad.

What about Linux?

[Bud]

A single visit to a computer store can get you all discrete components, a motherboard, GPU, etc. Just spend an evening assembling one into a minitower and be done. Garanteed, will work better than any brand name.

[langwadt]

A single visit to a computer store can get you all discrete components, a motherboard, GPU, etc. Just spend an evening assembling one into a minitower and be done. Garanteed, will work better than any brand name.

a bit inconvenient to carry around

[Bud]

Ah, i must gave confused a PC with a Desktop PC 

[Black Phoenix]

Well the other one that impressed me by his quality was the Gigabyte Aero 15:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Gigabyte-Aero-15-XA-Laptop-Review-With-OLED-panel-and-4K-in-a-new-design.428407.0.html

Aluminium Chassis with an RTX2070 Max-Q and some expandability in terms of memory and storage. The colours is the only thing or you like or you hate. The all black have an accent red line in the lid. The Green is a lime green that screams tacky... Although I love the one with the Orange Lid.

Probably if one day my Zenbook kicks the bucket I will think about it.

[james_s]

I've never seen a bad pixel on any of the dozen or so Lenovo's I've owned, everything from Pentium II to the i7 X250 that I currently use. Particularly impressive given about half of them I fished out of the e-waste bin at a former employer.

That's disappointing for Dell, although a friend of mine works for a subsidiary of Dell and ended up selling the Dell laptop he bought and buying a Mac.

[Halcyon]

Is there a PC brand that can be called premium that can stack up with Apple in terms of quality in 2019?

I wouldn't call the quality of Apple hardware "premium", but their price tag certainly is. I guess I just have high standards? Personally, I'd be looking at the mid-to-high end Lenovo ThinkPad if I was in the market for a laptop. Acer are bargain basement stuff and a lot of the Dell gear isn't much better (unless you go Enterprise grade and even then, I've seen a lot of failures in their 7490 laptops).

Full disclosure: I don't buy Apple products, but I've used and pulled enough of them apart to justify my opinion.

[TERRA Operative]

The 4K screen in my Dell Precision has been perfect for more than a year since I bought it. No bad pixels at all.

[dzseki]

Many years ago my brother bought a Compaq laptop (yes, it was that long ago) that had a stuck red pixel out of the box, he did not care about much, so he used it eventually, interestingly, over time, the pixel "healed" itself and the screen worked fine aterwards.   

[Black Phoenix]

Well the other one that impressed me by his quality was the Gigabyte Aero 15:

Was on my list (along with MAG15 and a few Zephyrus models), but I just couldn't justify the weight. I don't need a powerful GPU. I don't even play PUBG. I don't play CSGO that much even. Most of the time I play CS1.6 and Warcraft III, which both can run happily on an Atom processor.

I mostly want a productivity tool, and to be exact, an Altium computer that's light and thin.

Also, I am skeptical about building quality of gaming laptops as I've been burnt by GS63VR before.

Razer Blade Stealth?

[dferyance]

One of the few things Apple has been good on is their screens. But don't mistake screen quality for overall system quality. If the screen is what you care about, I get your frustration though.

Many laptops are made in the same factories between brands. And of course components are too. Overall the direction that the market has gone has been thin and light at the expense of pretty much anything else. Apple tries to address this mostly by just dropping features but their quality isn't great either. The mac-book I had was missing a ton of important keys on the keyboard, couldn't swap the battery, the network connectivity was terrible, the charger cable frayed, it would frequently electrocute you (a known / common problem), it was missing critical external ports, and was really underpowered. Other manufacturers aren't as quick to just drop features, instead they cut costs on them and execute them poorly.

My advice, get a good desktop PC where you will have quality over portability and get a cheap laptop for your portability needs. You can even use it as a dumb terminal and remote into the desktop PC (that's how I used my mac). Hell, maybe steam remote play could even work.

[Ampera]

I'd actually say that's a good choice. I have a Surface Pro 3 that I am using right now, and I absolutely love it. Granted mine is far older, but it's nice to see that the iGPU in the new surfaces are getting better. The one I have isn't awful, but it isn't good either (I have the i5-4300u model).

That being said, for what I use it for, I am absolutely impressed that we are able to stuff decently powerful PC hardware into the tablet form factor. I do wish it had external PCIe options for GPUs (and whatever else I might want), but if the new iGPUs are good, I'd just have to get around the eye wateringly high price tags (my SP3 was only 450 bucks, keyboard and charger included).

[james_s]

A desktop pc is not really viable for a lot of people now. I have a nice desktop but I hardly ever use it, maybe once a month I power it up to do something specific. With my laptop I can sit comfortably on the sofa, I can lay on the bed, I can sit outside on a nice day. At work my company is 100% laptops, many people have external peripherals at their desk to dock it.

I was a long time proponent of desktops but I will probably never buy another one. Higher end laptops are powerful enough for all of my needs and I really like the portability.

[TheSteve]

Lenovo X1 extreme gen II with the 4K OLED screen?

[TheSteve]

Lenovo X1 extreme gen II with the 4K OLED screen?

Good suggestion. But I've already pulled the trigger on SP7.

It is what I have my eye on should I decide my Yoga X1 gen II with OLED isn't cutting it anymore.

[TheSteve]

It is what I have my eye on should I decide my Yoga X1 gen II with OLED isn't cutting it anymore.

Did you experience OLED burn in on your Yoga?

That hasn't been an issue, however this specific OLED screen is known to crap out. You don't want one without a warranty. I believe the panel is fine, it's either the tcon chip or the soldering of it that fails. I'm on my third or fourth screen now. I can swap it in less then 10 minutes, only 2 screws. A total pain when it fails but still worth it as I'm a sucker for the contrast and blacks  it offers. It's the only screen that I never feel any eye fatigue.

[LeonR]

There are custom notebook dealers that use barebone parts (Clevo, etc), like Sager and XoticPC. As a plus, you can choose from a lot of hardware options, especially screen (size, panel type, resolution, refresh rate), etc.

[TheSteve]

If you paid via CC then dispute the charge from MSFT.
It is amazing how tough it is to get a really good screen these days.

[james_s]

I suspect it's the obsession with trying to make everything ridiculously thin. At some point physics steps in and causes problems, a display panel can only get just so thin before it lacks enough structural integrity to stay completely flat. It doesn't take much flex in a LCD panel to cause a hotspot or other artifacts.

[Bassman59]

If you paid via CC then dispute the charge from MSFT.
It is amazing how tough it is to get a really good screen these days.

Well, I paid with debit, so Wells Fargo isn't going to do anything for me.

Never pay for anything with a debit card. One data breach and you're fucked. "Oh, sorry my rent check bounced, my debit card was hacked."

And credit cards -- especially Amex -- have great customer support for chargebacks. Take advantage of the consumer protections you have and don't be afraid to pull that trigger.