While choosing among the best laptops for college, you have to keep in mind the most important criteria for your purpose. You can visit our home page and learn more tips how to choose the best laptop for college.
In this thread we are going to review the best laptops for college students for 2012. The criteria that we are going to use in this review are “Battery Life”; “Performance”; “Portability”; and “Price”.
As we have reviewed many laptops in the past, and we also have been visiting college, so we know what a student needs and we know where to find it.
First off, lets start by saying that we are not going to review Macbooks in this thread. If you are about to choose a Macbook for college, but wondering which version, you can check out our thread macbook air or macbook pro for college.
Okay, let’s move directly to the reviews.
ASUS A53SV-EH71
The performance of this laptop is more than great. It comes with one of the latest Intel processors, the Intel Core i7-2630QM with 4 cores and Intel Turbo Boost 2.0 Technology. You can also enjoy the full experience of the external graphics cards, which is brought by NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M graphics with 1GB DDR3 VRAM and NVIDIA Optimus Technology. 6GB of RAM will feed all of your applications running. Enough said for the performance, it is obvious that it is more than great for college work and activities.Asus have released a new 15.6 inch model late 2011, which we have tested and we were really surprised. A friend of mine had a lecture of 4 hours on one battery stand with the new development of Asus for battery savings, which makes this model a great laptop for college students.
When it comes to portability, this laptop meets the borderline for a “portable notebook”. Its display of 15.6″ and weight of 5.7 pounds (2.6kgs) is not the perfect portable laptop, but if you need a better performance you will have to compensate around this.
This notebook costs around $750. We can say that its price is fairly good for such a build.
Sony VAIO SE1 Series VPCSE13FX
When it comes to luxury, Sony Vaio is one of the biggest brands. This doesn’t mean that there are no cheap models out there, which can suit the best laptops for college students category. We’re going to talk about the Sony VAIO SE1 Series VPCSE13FX. Released in October, 2011, this machine is still a great choice. From our personal experience, the battery is not running as good as the Asus above, but it is still a good one. On the other hand, there is a great feature called “Hybrid Graphics”, which allows you to quickly switch between the two video cards – the one for better performance of battery, and the other for much more graphics experience.
When it comes to performance, the laptop is acting fairly good for its price. For a college work we can say it is more than perfect. The 2.4 GHz Intel Core i5-2430M dual-core processor and the AMD Radeon HD 6470M (with 512 MB of dedicated video RAM) combined with 4GB of RAM are great for 3d graphics work, playing games and other stuff that require a lot of resources.
When it comes to portability, this laptop meets the borderline for a “portable notebook” again. Its display of 15.6″ and weight of 4.4 pounds is not the perfect portable laptop, but if you need a better performance you will have to compensate around this.
This notebook costs around $1000. Definitely it can offer a lot more on the side of performance for this price, but don’t forget that it comes with a Windows 7 Home Premium installed on it.
Acer Aspire AS4743-6628 14-Inch HD Display Laptop
Here we are about to review the Acer Aspire 14 inch model, released October, 2011. It is a pretty new model from the fast-growing manufacturer – Acer.
Last years, Acer have managed to develop a very strong notebooks at very low price. They are considered as one of the best laptops for college students. The AS4743-6628 model may be very strong for our purpose, since it has everything a student needs. It comes with a 6-cell Li-ion battery for up to 3.5 hours of work.
The Intel® Core™ i5-480M Processor 2.66GHzwith Turbo Boost Technology up to 2.93GHz keeps the performance of this laptop at a very high level.
The built-in graphics card - Intel® HD Graphics – is one of the reasons for its portability and battery savings.
It has a display size of 14 inches, which makes it more portable. The screen resolution is perfect for watching 720p movies on it.
The 1.3 MP HD Webcam and the high-quality Microphone let you go face-to-face in online chats with your family, especially if you are abroad.
In this review, this is the cheapest laptop with a price of around $650. Perfect for student 
Conclusion
If you want to play the latest games on high graphics performance, you should go with the Asus one. But if you want your laptop to be easier to carry around, choose the 14″ Acer.
If the price is not that important when making your choice, and you definitely want a luxury laptop, you should go with a Sony VAIO model.
There are also A LOT of other models, we’re just trying to give you a clearer idea which is the best one for college students.
Hey! I am currently using the 14 inch HD Acer. Perfect laptop!
That is great! You prolly enjoy portability
Many thanks for the suggestions
Helped me a lot with my choice.
Also, I may add that these 3 brands are the best laptop manufacturers. And of course if you want something much more professional you can go with Apple products.
Thank you for your comment!
I agree with your point about Apple products
They are definitely well developed, but they are not that cheap.
Im searching for good laptop store in NL? Any recommendations anyone? Thanks!
@Aghete Why don’t you look at beslist?
Exactly what I was looking for, thanks.
My wife had an acer that worked well for a few years. It would’ve got her through college, but she had to stop part way through. It was a pretty good computer with some really good features. Unfortunately, it is outdated now.
I know that you have another thread for Macs, but I personally like them best for college!
I have HP Pavilion DV5 for two years and it fully satisfies me. But in future I want to buy Apple laptop.