In this year’s “Failing the Fix” scorecard, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group said cell phones overall are getting more repairable, while laptops have stagnated.
The U.S. PIRG first published the scorecard in 2022, and in July 2024, released a “Leaders and Laggards” report card scoring 21 products on the availability of repair materials based on New York’s right-to-repair law.
In the 2025 update, Apple’s and Google’s cellphones got a B-, while Motorola’s scored a C+ and Samsung’s cell phones earned a C-. For comparison, in 2022, Apple scored an F, Google a D, Motorola a B and Samsung a C.
The report noted that overall, cellphones from all major manufacturers are getting more repairable.
“Specifically, they have all gotten easier to disassemble, which is what makes the biggest difference for people who want to open up the phone to fix it,” the report stated. “Apple had the most improvement in this area, followed by Motorola.”
Looking at laptops, the rankings were as follows: Asus (A-), Acer (B+), Dell (B-), Microsoft (B-), Samsung (B-), HP (C), Apple (C-), Lenovo (F).Â
In 2022, Asus, Acer, Dell and Lenovo all scored a B, while HP earned a C and Microsoft and Apple earned scores of D.
The report noted that laptop repairability has plateaued, and there was not significant improvement across the eight most popular laptop brands in the U.S.Â
“While Apple and Dell laptops both saw some improvement in ease of disassembly (though Apple still fares the worst by far), the other brands saw minimal to no change from 2024 to 2025,” the report noted.Â
Therefore, the biggest takeaway from this year’s scorecard is that “devices are getting more repairable, but it’s not happening fast enough.”Â
“In other words, advocating for Right to Repair is having an impact, but there’s still a lot of work left to do,” the report concluded.
Another recent report from the U.S. PIRG, “The State of Right to Repair,” also found that while repair access is improving, “more needs to be done to ensure our devices get fixed.” That includes both new policies and enforcement of existing laws, the report noted.Â
One of the biggest areas of improvement is access to parts, U.S. PIRG found, even though pricing remains a barrier. Â
“In our survey, we found that enterprise computing equipment repair technicians have seen far less improvement than other device types,” the report stated.Â
Scores consider multiple criteria
U.S. PIRG uses information from France, which has required companies to provide an index of detailed information about how fixable certain consumer technology products are since 2021.
The scorecard looked at that detailed repair information for 104 devices from the brands. This year, Samsung laptops were included for the first time.Â
Another change this year was that instead of including all of the device models available from each manufacturer, U.S. PIRG looked only at the 10 most recently released devices from each brand, or the top 10 devices featured on the website.Â
“This ensures that our data reflects the repairability of the newest devices and those that are most prioritized by each brand,” the report noted. “It also allows us to more accurately compare our findings to previous data, and to calculate a repairability score for the brand as a whole.”
The scorecard assigns points based on documentation, disassembly, parts availability, parts pricing and device-specific factors, such as the availability of software updates.
In addition, points are added or subtracted based on if the company supports right-to-repairs laws or not.
