Where do you go for peer-to-peer recommendations about gadgets? As our social listening deep dive into the retail sector found, Reddit is the top social channel for consumer research into apparel and beauty items, but most of all for consumer electronics. We used our social listening solution to see what discussions about some of the world’s leading electronics brands on Reddit can show us about how tech consumers and enthusiasts are using the platform.
The following analysis is based on relevant brand and keyword mentions on Reddit from January 1 to November 15, 2024.
What is the most discussed electronics brand on Reddit?
Apple gets Redditors’ keyboards fired up more than any of the nine other electronics brands we analyzed, largely thanks to the release of the iPhone 16 earlier this year. The top destination for discussing the brand is r/Apple, which has 5.8 million members. Microsoft was the second most discussed brand, generating the most mentions in r/technology, a subreddit of 17 million members where discussion about the brand often focuses on breaking news about products, services, and company practices.
What comes up most when Redditors discuss consumer electronics brands?
The top keywords for all 10 brands we analyzed reveal the items and use cases Redditors most associate with each one, like “phone” for Apple, “laptop” for Lenovo, and “gaming” for ASUS. Secondary top keywords included “issue,” “money,” and “budget” highlighting just how many Redditors are using the platform for troubleshooting and bargain hunting.
Spikes in each discussion over the year also reveal the topics and occasions that generate the most buzz. For example, though ASUS is in the middle of the pack for volume of mentions, it generated the highest discussion spike of all the brands on February 20. That day, mentions jumped by 2,502% due to a post in a popular gaming subreddit doing a giveaway of an ASUS gaming graphics processing unit. The now-deleted post received 60,000 comments from gamers explaining why they deserved to win the specialized hardware as well as why they use ASUS gaming products. Along with increasing ASUS’s Reddit visibility, the comments boosted positive sentiment about the brand 190x higher than average.
Meanwhile, Sony generated the second highest spike on May 5, when mentions increased by 44%. That surge was due to discussion around Sony’s newly-implemented rule that PC players of the game Helldivers 2, which was released three months earlier for PlayStation 5 and Windows, would be required to have a PlayStation account.
Finally, Apple achieved the third highest spike in discussion on September 9 for the company’s special "It's Glowtime" event debuting its new products, including the iPhone 16 lineup. A “megathread” of discussion dedicated to the event generated more than 11,000 engagement actions and had an estimated reach of about 5.5 million.
What are the most discussed laptop brands on Reddit?
Narrowing our analysis down to focus on discussion of laptops specifically, Lenovo is the most discussed brand, followed by HP and Apple. Lenovo’s popularity in laptop talk was thanks in large part to the company’s debut of the world’s first transparent laptop at the 2024 Mobile World Congress on February 25. The unveiling drove discussion of Lenovo laptops to surge by about 200% on Reddit the following day.
While Redditors generally discussed Lenovo laptops more than the other brands we analyzed, Apple and HP generated the highest and second highest spikes in discussion, respectively. HP’s spike on April 22 was the result of an image post showing a single, slightly misaligned vent hole on an HP laptop.
The post went viral in a subreddit dedicated to interesting photos, generating about 13,600 engagement actions and spiking mentions of HP laptops by 975%. Similarly, Apple’s spike in mentions on August 13 was also due to a post in a general interest forum. This one, in a 39-million member subreddit dedicated to recently learned facts, discussed a 2010 class action lawsuit alleging a Pennsylvania high school spied on its students using school-issued MacBooks. Though the lawsuit was against the school, the discussion still made mentions of Apple MacBooks surge by 1,474%.
Takeaways for marketers
From product reviews and product debuts to gaming and visual oddities, the consumer electronics discussion on Reddit is alive and well in three key ways:
- As we highlighted in our retail consumer insights report, the platform is a top destination for social media users comparison shopping for electronics.
- As our brand analysis reveals, Reddit is also a go-to channel for techies to discuss and debate the latest updates in real-time.
- Along with having a thriving community of Apple enthusiasts, Reddit joins networks like Twitch and Discord as a hub for niche gaming communities.
For electronics marketers, following what’s happening on Reddit is valuable for much more than just revealing consumers’ top purchase considerations. Monitoring the site can also highlight the activations driving excitement in your core audience, reveal opportunities to connect with new ones, and uncover new and resurfacing narratives. Simply put, if you’re a gadget or software marketer who is not keeping tabs on Reddit, you’re missing out!
Learn more about digital shopping habits in our retail industry report.
