Buying a laptop takes considerable planning and assessment. Will it be powerful enough to serve the use case it’s needed for? What extra features can it offer? And of course, the most important consideration is how much will it cost. That’s because, like smartphones, laptops have become more than just work tools. They have become a necessity. Especially in the ‘new normal’ that has popped up in the post-pandemic world.
In order to understand all of the different aspects buyers consider when purchasing a laptop, 91mobiles recently conducted the 2023 edition of its Laptop Buyer Insights Survey. After analysing the responses from over 5,000 laptop users, here are some insights on what matters to people the most when buying a laptop.
Aspects that matter the most
- Without a doubt, the most important aspect to buyers was performance. A whopping 76.1 percent of respondents said it was the most important aspect. In fact, this percentage has increased as compared to last year which was 72 percent.
- To better understand what exactly buyers were considering when talking about performance, we broke it down into processor, RAM capacity, graphics card, SSD, and benchmark scores. It turns out that as per 66.3 percent respondents, the processor was the most important aspect when it came to performance, followed by RAM capacity (15.3 percent).
- When it came to factors that go into a laptop’s display, 43.9 percent stated that they would look at the type of screen technology first. Only 20.5 percent stated that said that they would look at the size of the display.
Intel on top
- Intel ruled the roost in the survey with eight out of ten respondents stating that they had heard of the brand. Not only that, but a majority of the users (58.5 percent) would prefer an Intel-powered laptop.
- It should be noted that 17.6 percent of respondents didn’t really care who manufactured the processor as long as the laptop was good enough.
- Interestingly, a majority of the respondents (54.5 percent) also said that they would prefer an Intel GPU in their machine.
Most wanted features in a new laptop
- We asked respondents what were the must-have features they look for in a laptop. 37.2 percent stated that they wanted a laptop with a good webcam and speaker quality, which is unsurprising given the work-from-home nature of many professions during and after the pandemic.
- They also were quite split between choosing a hybrid/convertible laptop and picking one with a biometric scanner with 27.1 percent and 26.9 percent respectively.
- Interestingly, it seemed like most users did not value privacy very highly. Only 8.9 percent said that they would like to prefer that feature in their laptop.
The survey suggests that not much has changed in terms of public opinion since last year. Performance is still something that the public views as a priority when it comes to buying a laptop. This might be because thing much has changed over the past year that would catch the public’s attention.
The biggest change we see is in terms of the brands that people prefer when buying a laptop. While Intel was still the most popular processor brand, AMD pipped Apple to take the second position with 11.5 percent. This pushed Apple to the third spot, with under 10 percent of respondents saying they prefer Apple’s processor. This is highly interesting considering Apple has been doing a stellar job with its M1, M2, and newer custom processors. As such, these processor manufacturers will have to do something major to catch up to Intel’s popularity.
