While a phone is central to college social life, for most college students a laptop is the primary academic tool they need. It's probably one of your most significant investments as well.
Students on a budget may find a tolerable one Entry-level laptop - with a decent hard drive, graphics card, display, and battery life - for under $ 300. But rather than opting for a cheap laptop, we think it makes sense to spend a few hundred more on a computer with longer battery life, better performance, and a bigger, faster SSD hard drive. This list of the best laptops for students is based on our own hands-on uses and benchmark tests. We will update it regularly as we review new products.
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Note that most of our picks for the best laptops for college range from $ 500 to $ 1,000. If you're looking for a cheaper college laptop or looking for an alternative to Microsoft Windows and Apple's macOS, we recommend you take a look the best Chromebooks for students. The best budget laptop options are less expensive but still powerful enough to handle the basics of student life like email, the Internet, creating documents, or working with spreadsheets.
If you're looking for something that stands out as a Gaming laptop, has a lot of storage space, or can handle powerful programs like video editing software. However, read on to find our picks of the best laptops for students.
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The latest Apple MacBook Air hits the right notes: it's back at its old starting price of $ 999 and features Apple's new Magic Keyboard, which most people prefer to the butterfly design of the previous model. Even better, this Apple laptop has the latest-era Intel processors, a new Force Touch trackpad, and 256GB of storage for the entry-level configuration. The main drawback: the base model of this Apple MacBook Air with Retina display has a Core i3 processor, and switching to the Core i5 will cost an additional $ 100.
Still, the brand new Apple MacBook Air and older models are often offered for sale. Right now, the 2020 MacBook Air retails for around $ 950, which is a decent deal. That said, the 2019 base configuration that comes with an older but more powerful Core i5 processor is still a great laptop worth a look, especially when it's reduced to less than $ 900, even though you're with this one annoying problem getting stuck older MacBook keyboard design. Read our preview of the 2020 MacBook Air.
