Introduction

In this article, I’m going to tell you the best laptops for students. Now, for this one, my team and I went absolutely nuts. We got in pretty much every viable student laptop. We have tested an epic 15 laptops. Everything from Apple’s MacBook Air to Microsoft Surface laptop, from Asus’s Zenbooks to Samsung Galaxy Books. If you’re wondering what our experience with student laptops is,  then I’m going to very first briefly hit on some important points that you must be aware of when picking a laptop for school. Then, I’m going to get straight into what you’re actually here to read, which is which laptops we recommend for various types of students.

Firstly, the laptop should be small and portable.

Students frequently move from classroom to classroom. Plus, they often have group projects where they meet in various locations. No one wants to lug around a heavy beast of a machine. Also, when you have a laptop open in class, you don’t want to be the person who blocks the view to the teacher and the board for those sitting behind you because your laptop is large. On the flip side, you’ll want a laptop that’s large enough to get real work done. That means you want to see a good amount of content on screen.

Secondly, Screen Size.

Now, you may think that a laptop’s screen size is what determines how much content you can see. And it is a key factor, but size, as you know, isn’t everything. There are two other factors that determine this. The first is the clarity of the screen, which is determined by how many pixels it has to precisely display content. And the second is how bright the screen is. Therefore, students should ideally get a 14 -inch laptop with a resolution higher than 1920 x 1200 and a screen brighter than 400 nits, which will also help you see the screen in a bright environment, like using it close to a window, and schools tend to have lots of windows. If you do need to compromise on one of these factors, you will survive with only a 1920 x 1200 resolution display. We have two Dell XPS 13 Plus laptops, a high resolution one and one with a substantially lower resolution display. We found that you’ll see an additional three rows of Excel with a sharper screen. 

Long lasting machine

Next, as a student, you’re likely to be at school for several years. You’ll want the laptop to last. That means you’ll want to have enough performance to be future -proof. For most students, all modern processors will be good enough. However, for those doing degrees that have additional software requirements like math, design, article editing, software development, special note. If you’re looking at Intel laptops, I’d avoid getting one with a U -series processor. Those processors are not fast enough to future -proof your purchase. If you get an Intel laptop, get one with a beefier P or H series. Now, if you go for an Apple laptop or one with an AMD processor, you won’t have to worry about this as their entire lineup is powerful enough. I’ll address more about these types of students pc later in the article. Now, for all students, try to get a laptop with 16GB of RAM. Some manufacturers, Apple, still only offer 8GB in many of their base models which is an absolute disgrace for the price they charge. And when it comes to storage, 512GB should really be the minimum unless you’re studying something storage intensive like film in which case you’ll probably want 1TB. On the note of longevity, you should buy your laptop from a reputable brand, especially one that offers the ability to purchase an extended warranty. Some manufacturers like Dell even have an upgrade where someone will come to meet you next business day to fix your laptop. Make sure you leave money in your budget to ensure your laptop has a warranty long enough to cover your time at school. 

Decent battery life

Next, you’ll likely want decent battery life. Yes, modern classrooms have outlets at every desk, but you will face situations where there aren’t enough. For example, you’re doing group work in a place with limited outlets like a coffee store. Apple is your best bet here. Their laptops run circles around Windows laptops when it comes to battery life. That being said, some PC laptops do have decent battery life. I’ll be placing a link to all the laptops we tested in a sheet which you can access from the link below. On that sheet, I’ve clearly marked our battery test results so you can see which laptops are good enough.

Low noise and low heat

Moving along, you don’t want a laptop that has distracting fan noise. No one wants to be that person who’s in class and suddenly your laptop’s fan spins up and everyone looks at you. And you also don’t want your laptop to feel uncomfortably warm to the touch. That will also be distracting.

Choosing the right tool.

Next, you may be tempted to buy a Chromebook or a tablet with a keyboard instead of a full -blown laptop. Yes, these will work for several types of students with very basic needs, but you really are making things harder on yourself than they need to be. More applications will run on a standard laptop. If you get one of those devices, you’ll regularly have to find workarounds for things that just come easily to students with a standard laptop. Plus, if you ever use your laptop on your lap, balancing a tablet stand, it’s really not a pleasant experience. 

Smart Shopping for Student Laptops: Discounts, Deals.

And finally, make sure to use the discounts available to you. Reach out to your school to find out what discounts they have. And to help you out, the sheet I mentioned earlier where I’m listing all the laptops I recommend will have links to the cheapest possible prices that they are currently available for. And if you’re strapped for cash, I highly recommend buying a returned laptop from a reputable seller. Best Buy has their open -box laptops, Apple has their refurbished program, and Dell has their outlet store. The reason I prefer you buy from these over eBay or Craigslist is these laptops will come with warranties and return policies. So in the event that something doesn’t work or you just don’t like the laptop, you can do something about it. Plus, you may be able to stack discounts on top of these already reduced prices. All right, before we get into recommendations, as mentioned, every laptop that we’ve tested that could be a good student laptop will be listed on the sheet which I’m linking below. We will be keeping that sheet updated well past this article going live, and I may put some additional laptops or expanded rationale in there that I don’t have time to cover in this article.

Our best Recommendations

Alright, after testing tons of different laptops from all major brands, the best laptop for most students right now is the Acer Assembook 14X. This laptop has a large 14 .5 -inch display, a stunning high -resolution OLED panel, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, but none of those positives are why it’s our number one choice. Firstly, it only costs $1000 and that’s before sales. That is a lot lower than competitors with similar specs. Second, if you thought this laptop would feel cheaper than bigger -name competitors, you’d be wrong. It feels premium and has one of the best keyboards I’ve used. Thirdly, unlike competitors that use lower -powered Intel U or P series processors, this has a very powerful 8 -series processor inside, and yet it surprisingly runs quieter and feels cooler to the touch than other laptops with less powerful processors. I don’t know how they are doing it, but it is amazing. Fourth, even with the powerful processor, its battery life is solid at over 8 hours for our Netflix article playback test. 

Our next favorite is the MacBook Air with M2. It has several benefits over the Zenbook in that it is significantly lighter, it feels even more premium, it has longer battery life and it has substantially better graphics performance. So if you plan to do something like article editing, it’s going to be viable on this laptop. But it costs a lot more than the Zenbook for a similarly -specced machine, and its CPU performance is substantially worse. For those students who want to draw on their laptop or use it as a tablet, we’ve got a tie between Lenovo’s Yoga 9i and the HP Spectre x360 13 .5. Both offer similar benefits, with the most noticeable difference being that the Yoga 9i has a bit of fan noise whereas the Spectre x360 doesn’t. On the flip side, the Spectre x360 isn’t the fastest of machines, although it is good enough for using Office and browsing the web. Since these laptops are so close to each other in their overall value proposition, I’d choose which one to get based on which is on the best sale at the time you buy. Both of these laptops regularly go on substantial sales where their prices drop by several hundred dollars. 

For the students who like to game, one laptop really stands out. It’s the Asus G14. I know this laptop really well. I personally bought one last year and used it a ton. I then upgraded to this year’s model. The G14 is incredibly powerful for its size and can be had with a variety of different high -powered graphics right up to the RTX 4080, although I find the RTX 4060 model is really the sweet spot in terms of price to performance. And on pricing, it’s really reasonable for what you get, especially if you buy it on a sale and it regularly goes on sale. Compared to last year’s model, this year’s version is now dead quiet for casual tasks like browsing the web and working on office documents. The main downside with this laptop is it gets extremely warm to the touch when you use it. In fact, you may want to use an external keyboard when you play. If you want a laptop that can still game and doesn’t feel as warm to the touch, stay tuned.