I keep hearing this, also for phones, and people usually associate it with certain materials.
Why? I'd rather have a light plastic laptop/phone that works well, is light, and survives a few hits than an overpriced piece of fashion. Bonus points for phones with cracked backs because glass "feels more valuable".
Of course I understand the value of e.g. good hinges, keyboards etc., but pretty sure that's not what people are generally referring to.
I drove it 54,000 miles around Africa on the worst roads in the world, using it every day in the heat, humidity, dust and sun. I drove it 30,000+ miles around North America using it heavily. I drove it 36,000 miles around Australia, using it at least 30 hours a week in the dust, heat, sun, etc.
It's had many dings and bashes and a few drops.
It still works great, and I've never repaired a thing on it. The charger has duct tape on the worn cables, and battery life is down to about 3 hours with light use and less than an hour editing HD video.
Exactly. I don't care how it's built I care that it survives some daily use that is not sitting on a desk.
My job many years ago provided me a Lenovo x220. I used to haul that thing from NJ to Arkansas with me twice a year and all over. It was not pretty but it literally took anything I could give it.
My current M1 MacBook Air goes with me on my bicycle daily, goes camping and goes everywhere with no issues.
My Starlabs linux "star lite" laptop had screws back out of it the first time I took it on my bicycle. After replacing screws over and over and eventually taping them in place to avoid the hassle the display stopped working. After fixing the cable for this eventually my keyboard began acting up and now the machine is just a desktop. Mind you this was in about 1.5 years.
Everyone should experience the x220 keyboard. It's probably the best laptop keyboard I've experienced.
The x230 onward is also extremely good.
The trick for me is key travel. I bought a new Thinkpad that had 1.3mm of travel and instantly hated it. 1.5mm feels so so much better (not to mention 1.8mm). No new thinkpads have above 1.3mm I believe (in the pursuit of thinness).
Meanwhile my (new in) 2016 macbook pro overheats if I plug the charging cable in the wrong side, have a bunch of keys that don't register and only moved a total of maybe 300 feet after reaching the office.
I was using that to show how beat up it has been, the conditions it has had to endure and the amount of use it has had.
I think it's safe to say a laptop has to be pretty tough to handle what mine has been through, compared to one that sits on a desk, or commutes to/from work in a backpack.
When it comes to laptops, plastic exteriors are often a signal that the machine is lower end with as minimal of an internal frame as the manufacturer can get away with, which means that it’ll have extreme body flex which is bad for motherboard longevity. It also means that the laptop will probably squeak and creak when picked up and handled which subjectively feels cheap, and doesn’t bode well for the laptop being able to take a tumble.
There are exceptions like the older ThinkPads which had robust frames under their plastic, but this is not typical.
I'd suspect it is related to the thinness push. I share with the author a lack of need for my laptop to shave every last millimeter off, and I've had sturdy plastic laptops in the past... but those laptops are from many years ago now. Shaving every millimeter and still feeling solid requires non-plastic.
chazeon observes the Steam Deck feels quite solid, and I'd agree, but it is also definitely a device that isn't shaving millimeters. Compared to the Switch it is quite the chonk. But it also feels solid. So does the Switch, but the Switch does it with metal.
Odd example but the Nintendo 3DS/DS/Wii U are also good examples of string devices built out of plastic because they needed to both be extremely durable and relatively cheap. It’s completely doable if you make it a design goal
It looks to me like you're thinking of "build quality" as mostly esthetic rather than functional. I think when most people describe build quality, they are talking about good hinges, keyboards, and the ability to survive a few hits.
Yes, good hinges are probably the second most important thing when looking at build quality, second only to the keyboard. Do I have to gingerly baby the laptop when I pick it up to move it in order for it to last me 5-10 years, or can I man-handle the thing, and just pick it up by the screen, and still have a laptop that can open and stay open at a specific angle, and that will still close all the way without creaking and threatening to break 5-10 years down the line.
But that's also a more niche audience. The people who've bought a steam deck (myself included) are more likely to care about, and know about, hardware. When selling to an audience that can't evaluate the build quality as easily you have to rely on shorthand. One common shorthand is that plastic things are bad build quality
I keep hearing this, also for phones, and people usually associate it with certain materials.
Why? I'd rather have a light plastic laptop/phone that works well, is light, and survives a few hits than an overpriced piece of fashion. Bonus points for phones with cracked backs because glass "feels more valuable".
Of course I understand the value of e.g. good hinges, keyboards etc., but pretty sure that's not what people are generally referring to.