HP’s laptop subscriptions are a great deal — for HP

There’s been some hullabaloo over HP’s laptop subscription service, recently brought to light by a Linus Tech Tips video. And for good reason: it feels like everything is a subscription these days. But it’s not just the dystopian feeling that companies are happy to sell you access to movies, music, games, phones, printers, and now even laptops without you actually owning them. HP’s subscriptions for its consumer and gaming laptop lines are just a bad deal.

HP offers subscriptions for four productivity laptops and four gaming laptops, starting at $34.99 per month and $49.99 per month, respectively. There’s no starting fee or down payment, just a soft credit check. Each laptop subscription includes a coverage plan with 24/7 support from a live agent, and you can upgrade to a new model after 12 months. That last part is the service’s most appealing feature. You’ll never own this laptop (you can’t even buy out your lease), but you can be on the cutting edge with a new computer every year, if that’s important to you.

HP has a nice-sounding trial period, allowing you to cancel in the first 30 days with a full refund. But beyond that, you’re paying for a full year even if you cancel. End your $130/month subscription for the Omen Max 16” on day 31, and you’ll be hit with over $1,429 in fees. (If you cancel after a full year, there’s no fee, though you’ll have to pay for the rest of the month you’re on.) And cancelling, whether early or after the year, still leaves you with no laptop. Failing to return the hardware after cancelling results in a non-return fee of around the model’s full MSRP, no matter how much you’ve already paid. And you still don’t own it. According to the terms and conditions, HP can remotely lock the laptop and pass any delinquent payments over to a collection agency — ruining your credit score.

Stiff consequences for nonpayment aren’t novel, but these subscriptions are still crummy deals if you do everything right. The Linus Tech Tips video discussed the value of a year’s subscription to the Elitebook 6 G1q they rented, which is about a third of its $3,206 manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP). LTT’s video is only a tiny bit critical of the subscription’s value, but by focusing on just the first year’s costs, and quoting MSRP rather than retail price, they give HP more leeway than deserved.

HP laptops rarely sell for MSRP, either at HP.com or at sites like Best Buy. I just reviewed an HP laptop with an MSRP of nearly $4,700 that I’ve yet to see sell for more than $3,500. At publishing time HP is selling that exact Elitebook config for $1,763.30. So if you rent it at $84.99 per month, after 21 months you’ll have spent more than if you bought it outright.

I checked retail prices on all the laptops HP offers for subscription (or the closest config still available), and each one costs more to rent for two years than it does to buy. A couple of them are more expensive to rent for 14 months. You’d be able to upgrade any of them before that, after just 12 months, but that locks you in for another year, and the price may change. HP’s terms say: “If You elect to receive a Laptop Upgrade, Your Fee in subsequent months may change.”

Like a lot of loan and rental agreements or buy-now-pay-laters, these programs appeal to lower-income folks but are poised to prey on them. I’ll concede that the low barrier to entry on a laptop subscription can be tempting to someone who doesn’t have the money to pay for a laptop up front. But if buying a new laptop is not feasible, you’re better served shopping for a used or refurbished model from a few years back. You’d actually own whatever laptop you get.

HP wants to tempt you with an “affordable” way to stay at the cutting edge. But you’ll end up paying more in the long run, and you’re at the mercy of HP’s terms, its hardware availability, and whatever bits of the program may change over time. Plus, there’s no benefit to getting a new laptop every year. By the time your old laptop feels slow or a new generation of GPUs arrives, you’ll have spent way more than the price of a new one.

The Verge reached out to HP with questions about its laptop subscription program, but company reps did not respond before time of publication.