Best PC Brand
Chillblast
RECOMMENDED ACER, PC SPECIALIST
We’ve said it many times before, but if you have a good idea of what PC specification you want then it makes sense to buy British. Or to put it another way: “[This is the] second PC I’ve bought from Chillblast, and I’m still using the first one,” wrote Graham Moore. “When I rang for help in ordering the right spec, they put me on to the guy who actually designed the system. You couldn’t do that in PC World!” No surprise, then, that 19 out of 20 Chillblast customers would buy from the company again.
Frankly, though, we were a little surprised to see that Acer produced such a strong result. This is nothing against Acer: it’s just that international companies usually fare poorly in the desktop PC section of our Awards, yet this time 96% of Acer’s PC buyers would stick with the company. Reading through the comments, it became clear that Acer’s space-saving PCs were the biggest contributor to its success, with Richard Edwards saying he had bought three: “Two are Core i5, one i7, and they are excellent small footprint computers.”
Kudos also to PC Specialist, which won its Recommended gong in recognition of its support and the speed of its products. Customers say they arrive quickly too: “Incredibly quick build time, testing and despatch,” wrote Matthew Austin. “Less than a week from ordering it was in my hands ready to go.”
It’s also good to see Asus and Scan pushing the others hard, but Apple, Dell and Lenovo will be disappointed with their showings. It’s value for money that drags Apple down – “overpriced and underspec’ed’” wrote Richard Prescott – along with only eight in ten people willing to buy again. But not everyone felt that way. “Change from Apple?” wrote Dennis Sare. “You must be joking.”