Plastic, WHY?

OK, I have been using my HP Elitebook for quite some time now and I cannot stop but to ask myself this question. Elitebook is made entirely of Aluminum

Why on earth do laptop OEMs use materials like plastic? I can give you several reasons why Aluminum rock:

1. It doesn`t bend. My laptop is rock solid. You can almost put your weight on it. Still doesnt bend.

2. Finger marks are almost history. With cheap plastic laptops you easily get finger marks on the palmrest/lid. It is damn hard to get any marks on a aluminum laptop. You have to be real greasy to manage that.

3. Aluminum is much better at heat dissipation than plastic. I think (I don`t know) that laptops with high end hardware can get better cooling with aluminum. Plastic on the other hand, meh.

4. Aluminum is resistant to scratches. I had sharp objects touching the laptop and I thought I had scratched it, but no. Not a single mark.

5. Aluminum is SO much better to look at. Design wise.


So other than that plastic is cheaper, why? I can understand that cheap laptops is plastic fantastic because OEMs want to lower their prices. But high end laptops that are already expensive, who wouldn`t want to toss in another $150 for aluminum? I would!

 

For the same reason anyone does anything. Cost. A completely different type of chassis would cost a good deal more than $150 per. You couldn't just say "ok, this laptop is plastic, but I'll give you $150 to make it aluminum." There's significant tooling costs involved.

 

actually elitebooks are more magnesium than aluminum. AL is actually a much weaker metal. but heat dissipation is more to the fact that Elitebooks have a MUCH better designed cooling system than most. a good example my 8740W with hot CPU and GPU runs 20C cooler than my aluminum Macbook Pro

in defence of some of the plasics though unit like the ASUS G and Clevos have almost as good of cooling. and not all plastics are created equal. some units are more carbon fibre or special resins or compounds and not generis ABS

now if we are strictly taking cheap $300-600 consumer laptops then you are most certantly right. but comparing those things to our babies is like comparing an egg and a rock

 

Not only is plastic cheaper - it is much cheaper.

Margins, much easier to charge 100x for plastic over cost than for aluminum (with it's much higher base cost - simply less volume makes it much more expensive).

$150 is the cost for a complete system for some folks. Not trying to be funny; sad, but true. This is why I donate almost all my systems to (specific) people - not organizations (charity or otherwise).

Don't get me wrong - I'd spend $500 more on a quality chassis - but there are many, many (too many) people that can't or won't.

From the consumer end a $50 or even a $20 price delta is buy/wait type of cutoff. From the manufacturer's end - margin, margin, margin (they don't have unlimited resources - they choose to go after the highest margin while maintaining the highest turnover).

Simple, standard business practice. (Ugh!).

 

Yeah you`re right. Elitebook is aluminum and an alloy of magnesium, so a mixture of both. But even if aluminum is weaker than magnesium, it is still a whole lot stronger than plastic.

The reason why some laptops have good cooling is because of dual fan or a massive single fan. Like the G-series. But wouldn`t they get even better with a aluminum casing?

I was in the hardware store the other day testing out different laptops, almost all were plastic of course. I was disgusted with using plastic. It felt so cheap and so crappy compared to my Elitebook. I just can`t see myself using a plastic laptop anymore. Damn you HP

@tiller: But lets forget about cheap laptops and focus on the $1500++ laptops. $1650 instead of $1500 but with much better material. Don`t you think there exist a customer base that would want that?

 

That has more to do with the internal frame, unless if the Alumi is rather thick.

Only if glossy. Though as someone noted, it depends.

I'd rather not my laptop be a heatsink But of course, that all has to do with design. It's part of why Apple uses plastic near the heatvents on their otherwise alumi Macs.

Depends on the materials. In my experience, alumi also shows of scratches more obviously.

Well... I probably shouldn't respond to this, because I've already passed the stage of MY life where I liked alumi shells (old Sony VAIOs ).

You can create a helluva laptop with a plastic exterior, I think my old D820 is a prime example of that. No flex, probably impossible to scratch, not to mention, the fit and finish were impeccable. Of couse, it has a magnesium alloy frame all over the inside (made the laptop a hot runner ).


Please don't take what I posted as any attack or something, I do realize it can be seen that way. I'm just posting my opinion on the matter, and not exactly awake.

 

My Elitebook is brushed aluminum, so if, god forbid, it got any scratches, it would blend in nicely. But it is pretty resilient against anything sharp.

Even though this Elitebook mentioned is aluminum and have a quad core and a decent GPU, it doesn`t get hot at all. It gets pretty quick cold after a session of gaming, so I think that shows that aluminum is pretty good at heat dissipation. Or maybe a combination of the cooling system and the materials involved

 

^^yeah, probably a beastly cooling system


If the overheating quad core MBP17 using the old i7 720QM were any indicator of what Alumi done wrong can be

 

There exists a customer base for $11K notebooks (I was one of them - ThinkPAD).

But that 'base' is too small for today's companies to get excited over. Even if their margins were 10x their cost - the volume of such products is not worth for them to pursue even as a 'status symbol' type product.

Sure, you could spend $10K today on a notebook - but it still doesn't feel like the tanks you could get in '97 or '98 from IBM. And I mean 'tanks' in a good way.

(If you couldn't dazzle your competitor with your portable processing horsepower, (powered by IBM and 1 ton truck crush-proof), you could always take him out with a single blow with your machine - and just keep on using your system without a scratch, dent or smudge).


(Not that I ever did, of course).

 

Wouldn't that depend on the internal construction more so than the skin? My laptop doesn't bend either.

If it's glossy plastic, definitely. Matte plastic has the same anti-fingerprint property though.


Anyway, as stated above, it's mostly because of cost. OEMs like Dell only make about 3% profit on their laptops, which is pretty much next to nothing (for example, a $600 laptop only gives the OEM about $18 in profit). Therefore, OEMs have to rely on selling boatloads of cheap laptops (as well as bloatware and other kickbacks) to make a meaningful income off the hardware. Having an all-metal lineup would not only increase the short-term cost (buying the machining equipment and redoing the assembly lines), but customers would demand less laptops (simple supply-demand curve).

Obviously, having a laptop with a metal skin (and internal rollcage) at a reasonable price point (reasonable for John and Jane Smith) would be much better than a generic ABS laptop, but unfortunately it would create an economic problem and in the end would help neither the customers nor the OEMs.

 

Because nobody really cares as much as a few people on an internet forum do.

 

^^^Sadly, that's true. I sometimes feel disappointed when friends ask me for laptop advice and they give me links to garbage laptops from Bestbuy, then stick to those choices because they don't trust online shopping or some other weird excuse.

 

I've got to be honest though, I don't care about aluminum vs plastic. I hate bare glossy plastic, but I don't mind glossy paint or matte plastic on my laptop.

 

Thinkpad plastic is pretty nice....i suppose it's what grade of plastic that's used.

 

Why plastic? Because there ain't no rest for the wicked, and money don't grow on trees. I'm not going to increase the price of my machine by 30% so that its CASE is prettier to look at by someone else's subjective standards. I've got other things to spend that money on.

 

Aluminum is a very soft metal and it actually scratches very easily. You actually don't want it to dissipate heat since then it will heat up the chassis. It would be better to use a material that is an insulator and direct the heat out via heatpipes and a fan.

The thing is you have to realize that the term plastics can vary a lot as much as aluminum (though it's usually an alloy of aluminum that's used). Alloys are much stronger and more resistant but as stated, cost a lot more. In general, the range of plastics is very high, there are some that you can rip with your hands to the strongest ones that are better than most alloys. Similarly, aluminum alloys range from bendable to as strong as steel.

 

There is also the fact that even if aluminum dissipates heat better, the chassis is still a case of free convection. Convection coefficients of h~5W/(m^2K) while the heatsink is a case of forced convection, h ranges in the hundreds. It's pretty obvious that the heatsink dissipates heat much faster even though the chassis has more surface area.

As said by others, there are some pretty wicked polymers available as well and polymers alloys too. A lot of chassis are made of an alloy of ABS/polycarbonates. Pure polycarbonate is too brittle, think of the macbook issue with the cracking chassis, adding ABS gives it a bit more flexibility while retaining much of the polycarbonate's mechanical properties.

 

In terms of scratching
Aluminum is way better than plastic.
Hands down. I`ve worked with this material, and it does not scratch easily.

I`ve tried everything from Lenovos to Asus to Alienware, and if I compare those plastic casings to this Elitebook, MEH.

I am probably spoiled, and the quest for my next gaming laptop is going to be extremely hard

But you all make good points. Different types of alloys, crappy cooling system combined with aluminum, good plastics etc. I just wish there was some OEMs that catered for gamers that made good laptops.
Alienware is pure rubbish, same with Sager, Asus etc. The laptops that use good materials tend to feature mediocre hardware too

 

I wouldn't look down on plastic, it has its own merits. For example you say alumium is stronger, for that to be true it really depends how you want to define "strength". For example, while alumium is stiffer once it's bent it will never go back and it doesn't take much to dent it, try putting an irreversable dent in a plastic laptop and it would be much harder.

Also, if you drop a plastic laptop the chasis will flex and protect it (assuming it's made well), with laptops that have a metal chasis the corner of the palm rest can snap off instead.

 

Aluminum bends and dents. It's a soft metal. Many Apple users have reported their macbook pros denting and bending, and scratching. I don't know where you get your information from, but aluminum is not the best material to make a laptop from, unless it's *super* thick.
Plastic, while it doesn't look as good or feel as good, allows flexing and bending under load, and if properly supported (like thinkpad's magnesium shell), it can be very solid.

 

Well ok. Aluminum alloys then. Moar of them

 

Umm... I have a 4 year old Dell that has far fewer noticeable scratched than the a 2010 Macbook Pro @ my house... and the Dell took far more abuse than the mac... and the dell is plastic...

Your knowledge = fail...

 

My hp g62 is plastic and it runs cooler then my mac book pro(which i dont even use since i got it). It also has no marks or dents looks brand new. Depends on how it is built and who uses it. I take care of all my electronics very carefully.

 

Luis_GT:
But that is because it is Apple... Dents I can believe could be a problem if you are reckless with your laptop though. Scratches on this Elitebook? Not gonna happen. Pure quality. And please read the thread before making accusations. Different alloys, different resistants. Same with plastic. Yuck


Wonder if a laptop made of titanium excists...Probably not cheap material

 

Saying something runs cooler than a MBP isn't really saying much. I'm not saying that your laptop must have bad cooling because of it, but running cooler than an MP isn't that difficult given how poorly designed the cooling system is.

 

Exactly, i'm rather in favor of polymers (plastics of you prefer) since it's my field of study, but i loathe cheaply built laptops like all of you. In the end, it is a matter of choosing the right materials. Some polymers can also be very expensive.

 

Plastic is sub-par? Tell that to my G73.

 

The MSI GT780 is primarily plastic except for some brushed aluminum panels and the chassis of course. In terms of aesthetics, I think the brushed aluminum makes the notebook look a lot better. It also cools really well with one fan, and I don't think completely aluminum shells really make a difference to cooling...at least with notebooks. Also, in addition to plastic being a lot cheaper than aluminum, plastic is also lighter. Albeit, it may not be that much lighter, but it still is in most cases.

 

If you read earlier, not all plastics are created alike.

ThinkPad plastics are far superior to all consumer grade plastics.

Worse case of cheapo plastic is my brother's M5030. There is literally no metal in the chassis at all. When I remove the palmrest, you can actually flex the entire chassis. Coupled with a crappy heatink, you have a winner for a crappy cooling laptop. That's what you get when you sell a brand new 15.6" notebook for 279.99.

 

Out of curiosity, any idea what the thinkpads are made of?

Just looking at the T420 in my home, makes me think that the injection molding process was done under better conditions as well when they made the various chassis parts. I forgot to mention that earlier, the manufacturing process conditions for the chassis are also very important.

 

tijo,

See:
ThinkPad - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Yeah: nothing like a ThinkPAD!

 

Well, carbon fiber reinforced polymers could explain the feel of the laptop, rubberized polymer coating aside of course. Thanks for answering, i kinda felt lazy when i woke up .

 

No prob, sometimes, we all feel lazy.

 

on my personal list of if i have the money i'd love to do this. once warranty expires on g53sw fully dissasemble and either 3d scan or precision measure and model all chassis parts, then have custom replacements made through something like ponoko.coms custom fabrication service from my partfiles and tolerances.

maybe refine the base design and integrate some bottom of chassis intake fan mounts and raise it a little higher while at it, which would leave room for an independent battery for the intake fans, and a charge controller.

shouldn't cost more then say 600$ for something using mixed aluminum, copper and plastics with mods, or rough mental estimate based on experience pegs simply having the stock plastic chassis parts redone with say aluminum running 250$.

which answers why plastic yet again. if you really really want it in a case of some other material, you can definitely have a chassis made in numerous ways. not so for multilevel trace sandwichboard pcbs with mixed rohs smt/bga/socket components everywhere on both sides. custom fab for a notebook motherboard class piece of hardware dwarfs the cost of the chassis of any material short of perhaps pure beryllium( typically worth more than platinum, but lighter, harder, stronger, and handy as a radiation shield

oh and if you aren't in europe love your lead based designs if you can get em, still more mature and reliable compared to the pb free/rohs assemblies for this type of equipment.(read: more durable, and more reliable under varying vibration/shock/operating temp loads).

 

The typical "aluminum" and "titanium" used in products you buy are almost always an alloy of some kind, and almost never just the pure element. Pure aluminum is way too soft to be useful as a structural material. Just adding 0.15% of some other metal creates an alloy that can be a ZILLION times stiffer than pure aluminum. Pure titanium is kind of flexible. Typically it is alloyed with a bit of aluminum and vanadium to get a nice hardness/stiffness. Of course it adds a LOT of cost, both in terms of materials and because aluminum is much easier to work with.

Very small customer base, but yes they exist.

That's because gamers often just care about performance, and those who are more superficial aren't necessarily gamers.

Just because those companies use plastic doesn't mean they aren't catered for gamers. Heck, just read some reviews recently on the latest Alienware notebooks and they have dual graphics in Crossfire/SLI along with overclockable Sandy Bridge quads. Anyone who thinks that isn't "catered for gamers" should go back to their consoles.