Key Takeaways
- Opt for a repairable laptop to save money and reduce e-waste.
- Look for easy-to-disassemble laptops for basic or advanced repairs.
- Check for laptops with swappable memory, storage slots, and Wi-Fi cards.
A laptop isn’t the easiest electronic device to repair. Other than the memory, storage, and perhaps the Wi-Fi card, there’s not much you can replace. With modern laptops thinner and lighter than ever, most components are now directly soldered onto the motherboard, meaning the only realistic repair is swapping out the entire motherboard.
At that point, understandably, most folks just opt for a new laptop.
When shopping for a laptop, there’s a lot to consider, from performance requirements to connectivity options. But if you want to make your laptop last, it’s also good to watch for repairability options.
Why Bother Buying a Repairable Laptop?
Most high-performance thin and light laptops are not very repairable. To make laptops increasingly thin and light, manufacturers compress the core components as much as possible. This means that just about everything is soldered onto the motherboard and packaged in a manner that makes it very difficult to repair or upgrade.
An easily repairable laptop is good for both you and the environment. If something goes wrong with your machine, you can swap out a part instead of buying another computer, which, as you can guess, is far cheaper. You also end up dumping less e-waste into the garbage, helping make the earth a bit greener.
Generally speaking, older laptops tend to be more repairable. If you’re buying a new laptop, getting something like a Framework laptop is your best bet. However, enterprise-level laptops from Dell, Lenovo, and HP also tend to be easily fixable. You can check out iFixit’s laptop repairability scores for more options.
How to Choose a Repairable Laptop
So, let’s say you’re in the market for a laptop that’s easy to repair and doesn’t mind a little bulk or drop in performance. There are still some hoops you need to jump through, as it can be difficult to tell whether or not a laptop will be repairable just by looking at pictures or reviews online.
No laptop is impossible to repair, and a skilled person might be able to bring back even the most difficult-to-repair laptops from the dead. However, here are five things you should be looking out for if you want to know whether your next laptop will be easy to repair.
How Easy Is It to Take Apart?
While not always the case, generally speaking, laptops that are easier to get into tend to be more repairable. Manufacturers don’t want you or unauthorized repair shops to get into and repair their laptops, so they make them difficult to open in the first place. For example, you might find Torx Security screws instead of regular Torx screws aimed to make it difficult for the regular person to disassemble a laptop.
If a laptop only requires you to undo a small number of screws to give you access to the insides, chances are you’ll be able to perform some basic fixes. If you see more screws that let you take apart the cooling system or the entire motherboard, it means you can perform more advanced fixes like changing the thermal paste or even replacing the keyboard.
The Memory Type
LPDDR5X memory provides blazing-fast speeds, but it’s also soldered directly onto the motherboard, meaning you won’t be able to replace or upgrade the memory. Additionally, there’s a chance that whatever cooling solution your laptop uses covers the memory, making potential repairs difficult.
Memory type and speed are often among the most hyped specifications on a laptop, so if you see a laptop with LPDDR5X memory over 7,000 MT/s, chances are it’s not going to be very easy to fix. Laptops that use swappable SODIMM modules tend to be easier to work on, albeit at the cost of slower memory speed, or you might consider one with shiny new LPCAMM2 memory.
Check Storage Options
Just about every laptop on the planet, no matter how difficult to repair, will likely have replaceable storage. That said, some laptops, and perhaps most infamously, MacBooks, now have soldered SSDs. Yes, it improves performance, but it also makes upgrading or replacing your storage nearly impossible.
It would be best to aim for laptops that have at least one PCIe or SATA slot so you can add or upgrade storage. If you’re using a Windows laptop, chances are you’ll be good to go here. As for MacBooks, it’s not impossible to repair or upgrade the storage, but it’ll burn a big hole in your wallet.
Wi-Fi and Network Connectivity Cards
With newer laptops switching to Wi-Fi 6E and 7, there’s a good chance that your laptop’s Wi-Fi card will be soldered to the motherboard. However, there’s still a significant number of laptops that feature swappable Wi-Fi cards.
Generally speaking, the Wi-Fi card your laptop comes with won’t be perfect, and you will run into Wi-Fi issues at some point in your laptop’s lifecycle, as I have on multiple laptops from different manufacturers. Sometimes, the fix is updating the drivers, but otherwise, you’ll be thanking yourself for buying an easy-to-repair laptop when you swap that old card for a new one.
Battery
The battery is also one area of a laptop that’s often easily swappable as it tends to be the easiest component to fail. You might even be able to repair your laptop’s charging port depending on it’s configuration.
So, unless you’re dealing with something like a MacBook, chances are your battery woes will be easy to fix. Regardless of the battery chemistry, repairing battery issues with any laptop should be a simple matter of unplugging the old one and putting in a new one.
By going the extra mile and getting an easily repairable laptop, you’ll do yourself a big favor. Sure, the performance won’t be top-notch, but unless you’re looking for it, most laptops that satisfy your requirements will have some degree of repairability.