How to Choose the Best Laptop for College?

Choosing what to study at college is certainly more pivotal than choosing what laptop to accompany you while studying, but this decision is still important.

You want to give yourself the best shot at fulfilling your academic potential while studying at college, and the right laptop will help you leaps and bounds in this endeavor.

Whether perusing a course portal, taking notes in a lecture, reading assigned material, or simply procrastinating while watching your favorite vlogger, the average college student these days spends the majority of their time engaged with technology, specifically their laptop. You must invest in the right one.

In this article, I will introduce you to some of the most important considerations when choosing the best laptop for college.

Size & Weight: The majority of mainstream laptops on the market today are between 11-13 inches and are below 5 pounds. These computers are highly portable, which is the main concern for their size.

Unless you are in the Computer Science field or doing a lot of design or video production, something of this size will do the trick.

Random Access Memory (RAM): This is the main memory of a computer, and it determines how many programs the computer can run at a given time.

The standard baseline for RAM in most computers is 4GB, which is fine if you mostly use writing programs, watch videos, and browse presentations.

An upgrade to 8GB would be recommended considering the average course load and general online activity of a modern-day student.

Hard Drive & Storage: The average college student is going to require a significant amount of storage on the hard drive of their computer. You’ll be saving documents upon documents, presentations upon presentations, assignments upon assignments throughout the entirety of your program, and while you say you will keep your computer clean and void of any obsolete files, this just isn’t realistic.

Typical laptops come with 500GB of storage, which is fine if you only intend on saving documents to the hard drive. If you intend on saving anything extracurricular, like movies or games, then upgrading to 1 or 2TB would be a better investment. If this is outside of your budget, don’t worry – you can always buy an external hard drive for additional storage.

Price: Let’s be honest – for the majority of students, it’s going to come down to their parent’s budget, or the wiggle room from their student loan as to what laptop they choose. It’s important to understand the broad range of options for laptops depending on how much money you have to spend.

The reality is there is a laptop out there for everyone, virtually regardless of your budget. There are options for $300, such as the Acer Chromebook which will do just fine in achieving the fundamental needs of college students. However, there will be nothing fancy about it, and anything more than writing and reading may prove difficult by comparison.

There are mid-range options, such as the Google Pixelbook Pro, which goes for roughly $880 on Amazon and will give you 8GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. A solid option for any student that isn’t, again, involved in the Computer Science field or video production.

And then we have the upper echelon of laptops, the MacBook Pros of the world. These laptops are the cream of the crop, are beautiful by design, and are the envy of most who don’t have them. They far exceed the necessities for most students, for which you pay a hefty price – anywhere from $1,500-3,500 depending on the model.

Suffice it to say, students – don’t despair! There are options for everyone, regardless of program or budget. Now in the digital age, technology is available to most, especially those who are lucky and privileged enough to avail of post-secondary education. Here is our list of the 5 best laptops for college students.

Top 5 Laptops for College

• 1- Apple MacBook Pro
• 2- Google Pixelbook Pro
• 3- Acer Chromebook
• 4- Lеnоvо Flеx 5
• 5- Acer Swift 5