Laptop test - keyboard, screen, ports and battery

The keyboard is the check worth doing properly

A laptop keyboard is not replaceable in the way a desktop one is, so a dead key changes what the machine is worth. The tester here works on physical key positions rather than the characters they produce, so it is equally valid on a QWERTY, AZERTY or Dvorak layout, and it tracks left and right modifiers separately — a dead right Shift is common and a character-based test cannot see it at all.

Browser shortcuts are never swallowed, so you are not trapped on the page, and Escape always ends the test.

Battery is user-entered, and labelled as such

No browser reports battery wear. The Battery Status API gives a charge percentage and nothing else, and it has been removed from several browsers entirely. Take the health figure and cycle count from the operating system and enter them; the report marks them as entered rather than measured.

Ports, hinges and fans

All guided checks. A browser cannot see a USB port, and a hinge that has gone loose is something you feel rather than something a page can detect. Each is a question with a recorded answer, never an invented pass.

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Keyboard tester, key rollover test, mouse test, webcam test, dead pixel test.