We are here to help you choose the best laptop for college purposes. Today, most colleges require you to have a laptop for some classes to take lecture notes or check information online.
While studying, having a portable device makes life easier for many reasons. As a student you usually have to travel more often, being away from home, and need a laptop to check e-mails, write assignments, and maybe some other work. However, there are variety of choices for picking the perfect notebook for college.
Let’s take a look at the basic criteria for the best laptops for college students.
Price
First off, a great idea is to pick-up a laptop that can last for the next 4 years in terms of specifications. That way won’t need to buy another one after 2 years or so, or have to upgrade it. These laptops may vary in price, but they will cost between $700 and $1200. In college, you will definitely need the Microsoft Office package. Sometimes, colleges provide those kinds of products that are necessary for studying, but usually a license needs to be purchased. If not, make sure that the laptop you are buying comes with the Office package included, or at least a Windows license, so you don’t need to buy it separately.
Display size and weight
Another criteria that is important while purchasing a laptop for college is the screen size. For college, you need portability. You need more battery life, and you definitely don’t need a big screen. 13 inch laptop screen may sound surprisingly small to you, but it is one of the best choices. You can also go with 14 inch screen. From my experience, I can say that the 15 inch screen laptop is a little bit TOO BIG, and you may not find it very comfortable (but it’s great if it doubles as your TV). Never go with a 17” screen. If you are required to work on a huge screen, better purchase a small, portable laptop and an external monitor with it.
Storage / Hard Drive
For college work, you may not need a lot of storage. But it depends on your specialization. If you have any important data it would be better to keep it (or back it up) on an external hard drive, not in your laptop.
Anyway, its 2012, the year of the SSD (solid-state drive). Many laptops are now configured with SSD. This device is much faster and it is not as big as the regular HDD, so it is much lighter too. The disadvantage is that it cannot keep a lot of data. These devices are usually smaller (128GB or 256GB) than the 5400RPM hard drives. Our recommendation is to choose a laptop with SSD.
Battery Life
There will definitely be some lectures that last more than 2 hours and there won’t always be a chance to plug in your laptop to charge. It would be better to choose a laptop with longer battery life, so you don’t have to worry about missing out on taking notes, referencing material and other stuff that your college requires. In other words, make sure that your laptop would be able to last up to 3 hours on a single charge. In our laptop reviews we will include the battery life as an important criteria.
Ask the university
Before making any decision, check to see if the university you are applying to offers any student discounts on laptops. School usually offer advice for best laptops for college students depending on the program you are in. Then, you can ask them what kind of hardware specifications are good for your particular program anc courses and what software you will be working with. Finally, take some notes, go to the local store, or ask someone who is competent with technology. You may also ask us. Just send us an e-mail from the contact form.
There are also “educational discounts” that you should definitely keep an eye out for. They can save you up to $150 or even more in hardware and software. For example, there are some huge discounts on Adobe and Microsoft products, around 90%!
Best laptop for college
The best laptop for college depends on your preferences.
Apple laptop for college
The Macbook Air has a lot of advantages, especially for college students. What makes it one of the best laptops for college is the combined ultra portability and functionality. I am not going to get into much hardware details, since it depends on the model that you have chosen, but they are all good. It has a great battery performance, which will last for up to 6 hours when working. I would recommend you to buy the 13 inch version of Macbook Air, since the 11 inch version is too small.
The advantages of Macbook Air for college student laptop are :
- A great portability.
- SSD technology for storage
- Great processor
The price of Macbook Air is $1.299.00.
You may also consider Macbook Pro as a better alternative. Read our advices on Macbook Air or Macbook Pro for college.
Many people would not find a Macbook the best solution, since its default operating system is Mac OS X. If it is easier for you to work with Windows, there are also a lot of great devices that are portable, cheap and with good performance at the same time, which are running on Windows 7 and even Windows 8.
HP Envy 14
A great pick up is the HP ENVY 14. It became one of the most preferable laptops for college, because of its portability, performance and uniqueness. It is a new model from HP, which is dedicated to both business and entertainment.
It fits to our guidelines above just perfectly.
- The price of HP ENVY 14 is $999.00
- It has a screen display of 14.5 inch.
- It uses SSD (few times faster technology)
- It also has a great sound (BEATS AUDIO™)
You may also check the HP ENVY 14 Spectre, which is the newest model from the ENVY series.
Cheap laptop for college
There are also few good cheap alternatives. The new Dell Inspirion 14z has slim design, backlit keyboard, a strong battery life and good overall performance. CNET Editor’s Rating rated this machine “Excellent”. While it comes to price, it’s one of the cheapest laptops out there at $599.00. The display size is 14 inch, which is perfect, and it has a lot of storage with 500GB. Usually, it comes with everything that is necessary. Of course, you may not be able to play a lot of games on it, but as we are picking a laptop for college, it is still a good choice.
Another cheap, but good laptop is the Lenovo Essential G570, which sticks to one of the best processors – Intel Core i5. We recommend it as a good “budget laptop”, since its price is $399.00. The 15 inch display is just perfect for college work.
