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For most students, one of the most important investments they will make is also the main academic tool they will need: a laptop. You can find a passable entry level laptop with a proper screen, battery life, graphics card, and hard drive for less than $ 300, but spending a few hundred more on the right laptop for your needs can yield a device with better performance, longer battery life, and a hard drive. Bigger and faster SSD hard drive, which is well worth the extra money. We created this list of the best laptops for college students using benchmark tests and our own hands-on experience. We will update it periodically as we review new products.
Keep in mind that most of our picks for the best laptops for college cost between $ 500 and $ 1,000. If you are looking for a less expensive college laptop, or if you are open to an alternative to MacOS from Apple and Microsoft Windows – we recommend checking best Chromebooks for students. The best budget laptop options are less expensive but still powerful enough to handle the basics of student life, like connecting to the Internet, email, creating documents, or working with spreadsheets.
However, if you are looking for something that can work like gaming laptop, has a ton of storage, or can handle powerful programs like video editing software, read on for our picks.
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The newest Apple MacBook Air has all the right notes – this powerful laptop is back to the old starting price of $ 999 and has Apple’s new Magic Keyboard, which most people prefer to the butterfly design of the previous model. Even better, this Apple laptop features current-era Intel processors, a new Force Touch trackpad, and 256GB of storage for the basic configuration. Biggest downside: The base model of this Apple MacBook Air with Retina display features a Core i3 processor, and upgrading to the Core i5 costs an additional $ 100.
Still, the new Apple MacBook Air and older models are on sale frequently. At the moment, the 2020 MacBook Air is available for around $ 950, which is a decent deal. With that said, the 2019 base configuration, which comes with an older but more powerful Core i5 processor, is still a great laptop worth checking out, especially when it is discounted under $ 900, despite being it’ll stick with that annoying older MacBook keyboard layout. Read our 2020 MacBook Air preview.
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If you’re committed to the Windows operating system and want a balance between portability, power, and price, it’s hard to find a better 13-inch laptop than the XPS 13. Dell has made incremental improvements to this Dell XPS 13 machine for a long time. whenever it is difficult to find a fault. For 2020, Dell made the laptop even smaller, while also making the screen bigger and boosting performance for both CPU and graphics-intensive tasks. It is not a great leap, but it is still the best in the category. The very capable 10th Gen Intel Core model is linked below, but versions with the 11th Gen Tiger Lake chips are now in the works. Read our Dell XPS 13 review.
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Surface Pro remains the standard for Windows devices that function as both a Surface laptop and a touchscreen tablet, although this convertible laptop is a better tablet than a laptop. (If you’re looking for the opposite, Lenovo’s two-in-one Yoga devices are better laptops than tablets.) In addition to the typical great performance and battery life you can expect, the Surface Pro 7th Edition finally gets a USB-C port. The superportable size of the Surface Laptop makes it ideal for high school and college students who can carry a lot of gear. Although this company still sells the Surface Laptop Pro without its essential Type Cover keyboard and Surface Pen included, it can often be found for a relatively inexpensive laptop price, sometimes with one or both accessories. Read our Surface Pro 7 review.
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Dell’s G-series laptops provide a smart balance between build quality, battery life, and performance, with plenty of graphics card power for college students looking to play the latest AAA games when they’re not on the books. The slim and compact design masks its pedigree and gaming power. And even the basic configuration is powerful, equipped with a 10th Gen Intel Core processor and an Nvidia GTX GeForce GTX 1650 Ti GPU.
Lenovo
The Yoga Chromebook is a versatile student laptop and it doubles as a compelling tablet too. This Chrome OS device has a 15.6-inch 4K touchscreen, long battery life and, with an Intel Core i5 CPU and 8GB of RAM, enough performance for everyday office and entertainment tasks. The aluminum chassis gives it a premium aesthetic, and it has a comfortable keyboard and touchpad. Although this touchscreen laptop lacks some of the high-end features found in the company’s Windows-equivalent C740 and C940, the Chromebook version has a private webcam shutter. It starts at $ 900, but is often on sale for less. Read our Lenovo Yoga C740 (14-inch) review.
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