What good is a great laptop if you’ll have to spend hours on the phone troubleshooting every time you have a problem with it? Having access to quality tech support is just as important as the actual specs inside your notebook, though it’s not always easy to tell which PC makers deliver fast, efficient customer service.
That’s why, for more than a decade, we’ve gone undercover as everyday shoppers to test the phone, social media and web support that’s provided by the leading laptop manufacturers. Here are tech support’s biggest winners and losers for 2019.
The Winners
Apple has dominated the top spot in our rankings for the past few years, and that hasn’t changed for 2019. The Cupertino company’s tech support agents continue to be among the fastest and most knowledgeable in the business, delivering accurate answers to our Mac questions across live chat, social media and over the phone.
The other big story this year was the rise of Razer. The gaming laptop brand climbed from second to last in 2018 to second place in 2019, going from offering zero phone support last year to presenting us with knowledgeable, thorough agents this year. And despite slipping a bit on the phone front, Dell retained its usual top three ranking with a third-place finish.
The Losers
MSI maintained its dead-last spot, due to its frustrating (though slightly improved) web experience and nonresponsive social accounts. Lenovo dropped to second to last by failing to correctly answer any of our phone questions. Huawei debuted on our list this year because of its string of excellent laptop releases, though its tech support was just a bit too lacking to keep it out of the bottom three.
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