Apple earned the lowest grades in a report on laptop and smartphone repairability released today by the consumer advocacy group Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund. The report, which looks at how easy devices are to disassemble and how easy it is to find repairability information, gave Apple a C-minusĀ in laptop repairability and a D-minus in cell phone repairability.
For its āFailing the Fix (2026): Grading laptop and cell phone companies on the fixability of their products” report, PIRG analyzed the 10 newest laptops and phones that were available via manufacturersā French website in January. PIRG uses devices available in France because much of its criteria stems from the French repairability index, a grading system for device repairability that must be displayed on products sold in France. The group, along with other right-to-repair advocates, believes vendors should apply the French requirements to devices sold in other geographies as well.
To calculate laptop vendors’ grades, PIRG used the French index but gave more āweight to the physical ease of disassembling the productā because it believes that āis what consumers generally expect a ārepair scoreā to refer to.ā The other French repairability index categories are:
It’s interesting to see the findings on laptop repairability, especially how major brands like Apple and Lenovo ranked. Repairability is such an important issue for consumers, and it will be intriguing to see how this impacts their future designs and policies.