As someone else noted, "strength" in material is not one-dimensional. Carbon plastic is still way more conducive to cracking, for one.
Ergo, there is no "objectively better" choice between metal/plastic/carbon in the general case, it comes down to preferences, priorities and requirements.
I don't know those answers; perhaps carbon plastic wins on all metrics. It would be interesting to learn.
Usually tensile strength. For example: Tensile strength: even a commodity PA6-GF30 (most half-decent tools are made of) is ~110MPa [according to ISO 527], cast Aluminum - would be ~150MPa (22K psi for the imperial folks) depending on the alloy.
Of course, most laptops would be using an ABS blend, which is the hallmark low-quality tools.
>Dents
That would depend on the top finish, not so much of the material itself.
> That would depend on the top finish, not so much of the material itself.
Would it? If I dropped an aluminium bodied laptop like a Macbook or HP Envy, I'd expect it might scuff and slightly dent at the point of impact. If I dropped the cheapest plastic bodied thing from Currys/Walmart/whatever, I'd expect it might scuff and crack the plastic between screws or something.
What top finish would you apply to a cheap plastic laptop to make it 'ding' like aluminium instead of crack in a drop test?
Again, a good plastic with glass or carbon fiber reinforcement would have similar properties to al-mg body, yet feel cheap as most people consider all plastics quite the same. For example: polycarbonate, 30% carbon fiber would have tensile strength of 150MPa (which the same to cast aluminum)
You said above that that was more to do with 'top finish' than 'material'; that's what I was responding to - how would you finish crackable plastic material to make it dent like aluminium/alloy instead.