Best student laptops: Quick Menu
The best student laptop should offer four things: solid performance, durability, reliable battery life, and of course good value for money. The Back to School 2023 period is upon us, so we’ve gathered our favorite picks for your consideration.
Plenty of the best laptops in general will be great picks for students, but it’s worth thinking about the needs of the average student as opposed to a user who isn’t in education – so we use a slightly different set of criteria for determining which laptops belong in this list.
For example, the best MacBooks can be excellent tools for students in creative disciplines like animation and graphic art. Conversely, if you’re going to be using your laptop at the university level for tasks like 3D rendering or scientific modeling, getting a laptop with a powerful discrete graphics card is a good call.
Whatever subject you’re studying, you’ll also want a laptop that can last a full school day without a charge and also stand up to the hustle and bustle of student life. Many of the best 2-in-1 laptops are lightweight and compact enough to easily take with you in a mad dash between classes.
Price is a huge factor here too – most students don’t have unlimited budgets when it comes to buying a new laptop, so it’s important to know you’re getting plenty of bang for your buck. You can check out our list of the best cheap laptops if you’re shopping on a tight budget; otherwise, here’s our top choices of laptops for students of every discipline.
The quick list
If you want to get right to it and see the best student laptop in every category, check out our quick roundup of top picks below. Don’t worry though, you can easily jump to a more detailed view of every pick along with a price comparison tool to help you find the best laptop deals for students no matter your budget.
Best student laptop overall
With a solid build and decent weight, this extremely affordable 14-inch laptop offers decent battery life and performance for the price.
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2. Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3 Chromebook
Best budget student Chromebook
It might not be the flashiest, but it’s built to last, especially in terms of battery. ChromeOS is also a great, versatile OS – especially for younger learners.
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3. Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook
Best student Chromebook
The best Chromebook for students overall, the Duet 5 Chromebook features a gorgeous OLED display, excellent battery life, and a portable design.
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4. Acer Chromebook Spin 514 (2022)
Best premium Chromebook
It may not be cheap, but its performance more than justifies the extra expense, delivering one of the best Chromebook experiences.
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Best Windows student laptop
Still one of the best Windows laptops you can buy at an affordable price, it’s thin and light without compromising on performance.
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6. Apple MacBook Air (M2)
Best laptop for creative students
Generally the best laptop out there for most people, this is a dream machine for creative students. Just be prepared to pay the steep price.
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7. Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 (2022)
Best affordable 2-in-1 for students
This laptop has an attractive price, good design, great performance, and excellent battery life. And it offers a great degree of versatility.
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Best premium 2-in-1 for students
Sometimes, you need more than just good enough from a 2-in-1, and this delivers performance and build – though it’s generally more expensive.
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Best gaming laptop for students
It can’t be all work and no play, but on a student budget, the MSI GF63 Thin has great performance and affordability you need from a gaming laptop.
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Best OLED laptop for students
If you’re looking for a great-looking screen on a student budget, this 2-in-1 comes with a gorgeous OLED display along with great performance.
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The best student laptop overall
The Acer Aspire 5 (2022) is a 14-inch Windows laptop that makes some compromises to get to its price point, but thankfully it doesn’t scrimp on too much so it’s performance is more than enough to get students through several years of school work, whether that’s in secondary school or university-level coursework.
Powered by 11th-gen Intel Core or 5000-series AMD Ryzen processors, this laptop is slightly behind the performance curve, but that’s actually a good thing in this case since that makes it cheaper, and it has far better battery life than 12th- and 13th-gen Intel chips, which are known to absolutely burn through a laptop’s battery life.
If you’re a student who isn’t looking for the highest-end specs and you need to come in under a budget, but you still need your laptop to last you through the day and perform well, the Acer Aspire 5 definitely has you covered.
Read our full Acer Aspire 5 (2022) review
The best budget Chromebook for students
The Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3 Chromebook isn’t flashy by any means, and its MediaTek processor and 4GB LPDDR4 RAM is just about enough to run Chrome OS, but there’s no denying that this is a solidly-built Chromebook that’ll get you through your school day without much trouble.
A laptop like this doesn’t need to have great specs thanks to the lightweight OS. Plus, as a 2-in-1 Chromebook, you’ll be able to get the most out of notetaking in the cloud and other collaborative apps like Office 365, Google’s G-Suite, and more thanks to built-in WiFi 6.
Best of all, this durable Chromebook is among the cheapest laptops for students you’ll find.
Read our full Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3 Chromebook
The best overall Chromebook for students
The Duet 5 Chromebook isn’t the most powerful on the market, nor is it the cheapest, but the mix of solid performance, adaptability, excellent battery life, and a very fair price makes this a Chromebook that you’ll not only want to use, but one you’ll want to show off.
This 2-in-1 detachable Chromebook features a full HD OLED display, giving you vibrant color and clarity that is almost impossible to find with even the best Chromebook using a standard IPS display. What’s more, with 8GB RAM and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen2 processor, you’re looking at some very solid performance as well.
And because it’s a Snapdragon CPU at its core, it’s battery life is phenomenal, lasting just over 16 hours in our tests. To be clear, this is downright unheard of for an OLED laptop, so you really can’t miss with this one. It’s not the best for note-taking, owing to its tighter 16:9 display ratio, but it can definitely do that and more, making it a great option for students with a bit of flex in their budgets.
Read the full Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook review
The best premium Chromebook for students
The Acer Chromebook Spin 514 is an easy Chromebook to love, thanks to its generally powerful hardware, ease of use, and great functionality owing to it being an Acer Spin 2-in-1 device, but like the best 2-in-1 laptops, the Chromebook Spin 514 can be fairly expensive, at least for a Chromebook anyway.
Still, for a student budget, where “expensive” can still be a couple hundred bucks/quid south of a grand, the Chromebook Spin 514 sits right at the top end of that budget while not being the most expensive Chromebook around (that would be the HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook).
And, for that, you get a fairly ruggged 2-in-1 with excellent specs that mean it can last you through most, if not all, of a four-year course of study at university, making the decent investment in this device at the start of a program money well spent.
Read the full Acer Chromebook Spin 514 (2022) review
The best Windows laptop for students
Further down this list you’ll find the Dell XPS 15, which packs a larger display and a discrete GPU- an ideal choice for students who need a bit more processing oomph to power through video-editing or number-crunching workloads. This model uses integrated graphics, which means that it’s better suited to more everyday tasks like answering emails and writing up essays.
But oh, what a great little device it is for doing those lower-intensity tasks. Dell’s XPS laptop line has long been one of our favorites, and this new-for-2022 model is no exception, with a superfast 12th-gen Intel processor and some extremely competitive pricing on the lower-spec models. Spring for a more powerful version and you can get more storage, faster performance, and a higher-resolution touch display.
The Dell XPS 13 is also incredibly thin and light, making it perfect for fast-moving students. If you’ve ever had to run across campus to make it between two classes (this writer certainly has), you’ll understand the value of a lightweight but sturdy laptop that can be quickly tossed into a bag for your next campus sprint.
Read our full Dell XPS 13 (2022) review
The best creative laptop for students
If you’re looking for the best student laptop for those with a serious creative ambition, look no further. When Apple rolled out its line of M1-powered products in 2020, the company made a huge splash. As the first laptop to receive Apple’s in-house system on a chip (SoC), the company’s thinnest and lightest MacBook Air ever became one of the most exciting Apple laptops in recent years.
This next-generation MacBook Air is powered by the new M2 SoC, making it better than ever, and delivering outstanding performance. The only real criticism we had to level at it was the price, which is a bit steep – if you want a MacBook but you’re on a tighter budget, you may want to consider the 2020 M1 model.
Though its fanless design can result in thermal throttling compared to the Pro, we were able to run intensive tasks without experiencing any major incidents of throttling. Another upside for intensive users is the battery life, which is quite stunning, and beats out many of its competitors. It’s not going to be the cheapest option for students, but for those wanting to go into creative industries one day, the MacOS platform is pretty much industry-standard, so this is a great entry point.
Read our full MacBook Air (M2, 2022) review
The best affordable 2-in-1 laptop for students
If you like the look of the Inspiron 16 2-in-1 but think it’s just a little bit too big (or a little bit too expensive), then perhaps its little sibling might be the right laptop for you.
A very similar hybrid touchscreen laptop, the Inspiron 14 excels in the same areas – good performance, versatility, good value – and falls down in largely the same areas too: once again, the lack of an included stylus is a real shame, since it could’ve added a lot to the package.
The overall specs of the Inspiron 14 are ever-so-slightly less impressive than its big brother the Inspiron 16; the drive capacity caps out at 512GB, and the i7 processor is a marginally less powerful i7-1255U as opposed to the i7-1260P found in the 16-inch model. Given the lower starting price of $849.99 (£699 / AU$1,278), though, it’s still an easy recommendation from us.
Read the full Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 review
The best premium 2-in-1 laptop for students
The Acer Spin series has long been one of the top student laptops for its incredible functionality, great performance, and innovative design, and that’s never been more true than with the Acer Spin 5 (2022).
The cost of entry here is rather high, making this a premium device for those students who are willing to invest more upfront to have a 2-in-1 device to carry them through several years of school work, but if that’s where you’re at, then this device is all you’ll need.
From the built-in stylus with an on-device charging garage that can get you hours of battery life with just a few minutes charge between classes to its incredibly solid battery life, this 2-in-1 will last you an entire school day and have some juice left over for watching movies or web browsing. Add in the phenomenal productivity performance we saw in our tests, and you’ve got one of the most capable student laptops you’re ever going to find.
Read our full Acer Spin 5 (2022) review
The best gaming laptop for students
Even the most studiest of students need some downtime, but even the best cheap gaming laptops can cost way more than a student’s budget can afford. Fortunately, for them, the MSI GF63 Thin is almost tailor made for their academic and non-academic needs.
While it might not have the portability of a MacBook Air or Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1, the GF63 Thin is still fairly manageable for a gaming laptop. What’s more, its specs include up to an Intel Core i7-11800H CPU, up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU, and plenty of RAM, so performance isn’t going to be too much of an issue.
Those beefy specs are also going to be great for productivity work and especially if you’re going into technical fields like engineering which often require special computer hardware for coursework. The MSI GF63 Thin is a fair compromise, then, between getting your school work done and having something to mess around with once you’re done — all without absolutely blowing a whole in your budget.
Read the full MSI GF63 Thin (2022) review
The best oled laptop for students
If you’re seeking a thin and easy-to-carry laptop for schoolwork with a brilliant OLED screen and great battery life, the HP Envy 13 x360 may be the most ideal — and affordable — option for you. Much more accessible than the Spectre line, price-wise, the Envy 13 x360 is a fantastic 2-in-1 laptop, especially for budget-minded students.
The fact that it can compete with 16-inch 2-in-1 laptops in terms of performance is even more impressive. We’ve been able to run spreadsheets, word processors, conference calls, and multiple browser tabs playing videos at the same time without issue. And our battery life experience with the Envy 13 x360 has been quite excellent as well, giving up a little over nine hours in our movie battery test.
It’s not exactly a budget buy, but considering the OLED technology you’re getting that delivers vivid colors, it’s pretty reasonably-priced. On top of that, the keyboard is solid and its port selection is varied, perfect for students with a lot of flash drives and for connecting to an external monitor.
Read our full HP Envy 13 x360 (2022) review
How to choose the best student laptop for you
The best student laptop is going to give you the right balance between sufficient performance for productivity tasks, affordability for a student’s budget, and durability to handle the kind of wear-and-tear that a student can put their laptops through – and having it look good never hurts.
But that can be a hard thing for students and families to balance, especially if they aren’t as familiar with computer hardware as they’d like to be. Fortunately, there are some general guidelines that you can follow to get the right student laptop for your needs and budget.
How to choose the right laptop for students
There are a few other boxes that the best student laptops should check besides being able to handle the demands of your coursework. One of the biggest considerations you should have when choosing a student laptop is battery life – you need something that will last all day during your classes and still have juice leftover for late nights studying at the library.
Student laptops should also ideally be both versatile and lightweight because you’ll want something that can multitask all the programs you’ll need without being a drag to carry around campus. Versatility is crucial with a student laptop, especially with majors that will have you flipping back and forth between a published paper and the essay you’re trying to finish in time.
Budget is also a major consideration in choosing the best student laptop for your university experience. Not everyone can shell out a ton of money for a student laptop – we absolutely understand that – so you need to be sure to pick something that meets all your criteria without going overboard on your budget. It’s easy to find a great student laptop within your price range these days, and even better when you find a sale and get a good deal on it.
Is a MacBook a good laptop for students?
This is a slightly loaded question, because ultimately the best operating system for students (whether that’s Windows 10 or 11, macOS, or ChromeOS) will always come down to which OS the student in question prefers to use. Some of us are married to the effective functionality of Windows; others might prefer the aesthetically pleasing UI of Apple devices, or the Android-esque, streamlined user experience Chromebook provide.
If you’re already comfortable using a specific operating system, making the leap can be tricky. ChromeOS is arguably the easiest to pick up and use, but changing to MacOS after a decade spend familiarizing yourself with Windows might lead to confusion. Take this into consideration when choosing a new laptop for school or college.
On the hardware side, we’re pleased to say that MacBooks are more competitive than ever. Apple’s fantastic M1 and M2 chips are much more capable of running demanding tasks than processors with integrated graphics, making Apple laptops excellent all-rounders for the busy student. However, if you need to run highly intensive software, it’s worth considering a Windows laptop with a dedicated GPU – ideally an Nvidia RTX one – since this will give you a lot more grunt in GPU-accelerated programs.
Which is better for students: a laptop or a desktop?
Simply put, most college-level students will need a laptop for their studies at this stage. While having a computer of some kind is practically a necessity at this point – with the rise of remote learning and content creation among university students – a laptop can be thrown into a rucksack and taken along to lectures and workshops, unlike a desktop PC.
Yes, a desktop will typically offer more processing power and the advantage of a bigger screen, but you might end up spending more (especially once you factor in the need for peripherals) and then still find yourself needing a portable device for note-taking and working on the go. If you’ve already got a small tablet or laptop that you can take out and about, you might want to consider buying one of the best desktop computers, but otherwise, we recommend you get a more capable laptop and use that in lieu of a desktop.
How we tested these student laptops
We know that buying a new laptop can be a huge investment. Even more so with laptops for college students. That’s why we take our jobs seriously, and test every laptop we recommend on this list extensively.
That process involves using them in our day-to-day lives to see how long their battery lasts, how robust they are – college kids have hectic lives, after all, and how cool they stay under pressure. We also look at their design, including how stylish they are, if they are thin and light enough to carry around with, and how comfortable they are to work on. Because the webcam and microphone in a laptop are also incredibly important, especially these days, we take time to test those out as well.
When it comes to performance, we use a mix of real-world tests and synthetic benchmarks to see how powerful (or not) these laptops are. This means using Windows 10 (or Chrome OS on Chromebooks and macOS on MacBooks) and running various apps and seeing how fast they load, noting down any problems.
Battery lives are also important, so we’ll keep track of how long we can use the laptop without needing to charge it. To get specific numbers, we also run our own battery life benchmark that plays a looped 1080p movie until the battery dies and the PC Mark 10 battery life benchmark, which replicates real-world usage, such as web browsing and document creation. These tests give us an excellent idea of how long the batteries in these laptops last.
When all is said and done, we then take everything we’ve learned about the laptop and compare it to its price, to see if it offers the best value to students.
