The latest issue (May 2007) of
Consumer Reports containing their "Most and Least Reliable Brands" article is on the newsstands right now.
Their data was drawn from their annual Product Reliability Survey (sent to subscribers every year-- I always dutifully fill out mine). Quoting the article:
In 2006 alone more than 950,000 readers told us about their experiences with 30 kinds of products. Because many readers own more than one item in a category, that translates to more than 1.3 million vehicles, 1.2 million electronic gadgets, and 2.5 million appliances and lawn machines. That's about 5.1 million products in all.
That said, here's some interesting tidbits from their research:
- "Laptops have the highest repair rates over time of the products we track. No brand in our surveys, covering 2002 through mid-2006, stood out as especially reliable or especially repair-prone."
- "Desktops are less likely to require repairs and are easier and less costly to repair when they do. During the 2002 to mid-2006 time frame, only Apple desktops stood out as notably reliable, and no brand we evaluated was especially repair-prone."
...and to answer Carl's question about camcorders:
- Reliable: Panasonic (Mini DV) and Sony (DVD-RW/-R) (4% and 3% of respondents have had their units repaired, respectively)
- Most Repair-Prone: Canon, JVC, and Samsung MiniDV models (10%, 9%, and 10% repaired, respectively)
This is a fascinating issue and I suggest anyone who's looking for more info should check it out.