Readers’ Choice: Which Notebook Brand Is The Most Innovative?

Okay readers, so far you’ve chosen Apple as the best brand when it comes to design but rated Lenovo’s keyboards and touchpads the best, just as we did in our Best & Worst Laptop Brands story. Now it’s time for you to judge a category that’s not so straightforward: Innovation

For our story we evaluated the forethought and leadership of each brand. Did the company bring a new form factor or technology to market within the last 12 months? Did the changes they made to their line inspire industry-wide changes? Did their innovations work as promised, and were they useful improvements? Every brand leaves room for growth in this category, but there were definitely some stand-outs.

Round 3: Innovation

We awarded ASUS top honors here because the company proved over the past year that it’s a force to be reckoned with, being among the first to embrace such cutting edge technologies as Intel’s Core i5 CPUs and Nvidia’s Optimus graphics. More importantly, it implemented these and other technologies (Ultra-Low Voltage processors, 3D displays) better than the competition.

The company’s UL30A delivered good performance while lasting nearly 10 hours on a charge, and the G51J-3D (equipped with special shutter glasses) delivered eye-popping graphics for the latest games. It’s this combination of aggressiveness and execution that put ASUS at the top of our list.

Acer and Toshiba share second place here, the latter due to their implementation of Sleep-and-Charge USB ports and Intel’s Wireless Display technology, the former because they were among the first to offer touch and 3D at affordable prices.

Samsung, Gateway and Fujitsu scored the lowest in our estimation and all for much the same reason. Though their offerings may be solid, none of these brands wowed us with anything we hadn’t seen before. For Gateway, this is mostly due to being under the Acer umbrella with only a few lines that aren’t rebranded copies of Acer notebooks. Samsung found a formula that worked in their first few netbooks and notebooks and essentially stuck with it while keeping up with hardware trends. Recently we’ve seen a bit of forward motion with the Touch of Color notebooks in the R Series, and we hope they continue in this vein.

Click here to read full evaluations of each brand’s innovative nature, including the ones who earned mid-range grades.

Now it’s your turn. How would you rank the innovativeness of the brands below? Take our survey then tell us in the comments who you’d award top honors to and why.