Best College Laptop for 2023

There are countless laptops on the market that are suitable for students, and almost all of them come in multiple configurations to meet your performance needs and budget constraints. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of options, we’re here to help with advice on what to consider when shopping for a college laptop.

Price

The search for a new laptop starts with price for most people, especially for students on a budget. In order to end up with a laptop that will last you at least four years of school, I would advise against choosing an entry-level model that is a bargain. Plus, you could spend less in the previous years with an eye toward upgrading memory and storage in the future. Laptop manufacturers are increasingly moving away from making components that are easily upgradeable, so it is best to buy as many laptop features as you can afford from the start.

Generally speaking, the more you spend, the better the laptop. That could mean better components for faster performance, a nicer screen, sturdier build quality, a smaller or lighter design made with more expensive materials, or even a more comfortable keyboard. All of these things contribute to the cost of a laptop. I’d like to say that for $500, for example, you’re getting a powerful gaming laptop, but that’s not the case.

Right now, the sweet spot for a reliable laptop that can handle average school workloads is between $700 and $800. For STEM students who need to run demanding STEM apps (or who are looking to do a little gaming after their homework is done, of course), you’ll want to spend around $1,000 or a little more. The key is to look for discounts on models at all price points so you can get more laptop power for less.

Operating system

Choosing an operating system is part personal preference and part budget. Microsoft Windows and Apple’s macOS do largely the same thing (except for gaming, where Windows is the winner), but they do things differently. Unless you need an OS-specific application, pick the one you’re most comfortable using. If you’re not sure which one, go to an Apple store or local electronics store and try them out, or ask friends or family to let you try out theirs. If you have an iPhone or iPad and like it, chances are you’ll like macOS, too.

When it comes to price and variety (and, again, PC gaming), Windows laptops win. If you want macOS, get a MacBook. While Apple’s MacBooks regularly top our best lists, the least expensive is the $999 M1 MacBook Air , though this nearly three-year-old Air is regularly discounted to $750.

Windows laptops can be had for as little as a few hundred dollars and come in all shapes and sizes. Admittedly, we’d be hard-pressed to find a $200 laptop we’d heartily recommend, especially if you need it to last you four years of school.

If you’re on a budget, consider a Chromebook. ChromeOS is a different experience than Windows; more streamlined and easier to use. It is limited, since everything basically runs through the Chrome browser. Just make sure your school or coursework doesn’t require you to use apps that only run on a Windows or Mac machine.

Mate

If you plan on taking your laptop to class every day, you’ll want something lighter and thinner. We recommend a model with a 13- or 14-inch display for most students. Larger 15- and 16-inch models offer more screen space for getting work done and running multiple windows, but you’ll probably get tired of lugging it around campus.

Screen

When choosing a display, there are a lot of things to consider: how much screen you want to display (which, surprisingly, has more to do with resolution than screen size), what kind of content you want to watch, and whether you want to use the display for gaming, creative work, or STEM subjects.

You really want to optimize pixel density; that is, the number of pixels per inch that the screen can display. While other factors contribute to sharpness, a higher pixel density generally means sharper display of text and interface elements. (You can easily calculate the pixel density of any screen at DPI Calculator (If you don’t feel like calculating it, you can also find the calculations you need to perform there.) As a rule of thumb, we recommend a dot pitch of at least 100 pixels per inch.

Because of the way Windows and macOS scale to the screen, you’re often better off with a higher resolution than you might think. You can always make things bigger on a high-resolution display, but you can never make them smaller — to fit more content in frame — on a low-resolution display. For this reason, a 4K, 14-inch display might sound like unnecessary overkill, but it might not be if, say, you need to view a wide spreadsheet.

Text and the edges of images can appear blurry on lower-resolution displays. At a minimum, look for a Full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels or a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels on laptops with a 16:10 aspect ratio, which are taller than traditional 16:9 widescreen displays and provide more vertical screen space for working without significantly increasing your footprint. A Quad HD (QHD) resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels (2560 x 1600 pixels on a 16:10 display) will result in sharper text and images and will likely be sufficient on a 13- or 14-inch laptop display, so you don’t necessarily need a 4K display.

Processor

The processor, also known as the CPU, is the brain of a laptop. Intel and AMD are the main CPU makers for Windows laptops. Both offer a staggering selection of mobile processors. To complicate matters, both manufacturers have chips designed for different styles of laptops, such as power-saving chips for ultraportables or faster processors for gaming laptops. Their naming conventions let you know which type is being used. You can go to from Intel or from AMD sites for explanations so that you can get the performance you want. In general, the faster the processor speed and the more cores it has, the better the performance will be.

Apple makes its own chips for MacBooks, which simplifies things a bit. Like Intel and AMD, you still have to pay attention to naming conventions to know what kind of performance to expect. Apple uses its M-series chipsets in Macs. The entry-level MacBook Air uses an M1 chip with an eight-core CPU and a seven-core GPU. Current models use M2-series silicon, which starts with an eight-core CPU and a 10-core GPU and goes up to the M2 Max with a 12-core CPU and 38-core GPU. Again, generally speaking, the more cores it has, the better the performance.

Graphic

The graphics processor, or GPU, handles all the work of driving the screen and rendering what’s displayed, as well as accelerating many graphical (and increasingly, AI-related) operations. For Windows laptops, there are two types of GPUs: integrated (iGPU) and discrete (dGPU). As the names suggest, an iGPU is part of the CPU package, while a dGPU is a separate chip with dedicated memory (VRAM) that it communicates with directly, making it faster than sharing memory with the CPU.

Because the iGPU shares space, memory, and power with the CPU, it is constrained by its limitations. It is suitable for smaller, lighter laptops, but does not perform nearly as well as a dGPU. There are games and creative software that will not run unless they detect a dGPU or sufficient VRAM. Most productivity software, video streaming, web browsing, and other non-specialized apps will run fine on an iGPU.

For graphics-intensive applications like video editing, STEM and design applications, and gaming, you’ll want a dGPU. There are only two companies that actually make them: Nvidia and AMD. Intel also offers models based on its Xe-branded iGPU technology (or the older UHD Graphics brand) in its CPUs.

Memory

For memory, we highly recommend 16GB of RAM, with 8GB being the absolute minimum. RAM is where the operating system stores all of the data for currently running applications, and it can fill up quickly. After that, it starts swapping between RAM and SSD, which is slower. Many sub-$500 laptops come with 4GB or 8GB, which when combined with a slower drive can make for a frustratingly slow Windows laptop experience. Also, many laptops now have the memory soldered to the motherboard. Most manufacturers will tell you this, but if the RAM type is LPDDR, assume it’s soldered and non-upgradable.

Some PC manufacturers solder in the memory, leaving an empty internal slot to add a stick of RAM. You may need to contact the laptop manufacturer or look up the full specs of the laptop online to confirm this. Check the web for user reviews, as the slot may still be difficult to access, the memory may be non-standard or hard to come by, or other pitfalls including voiding the warranty.

Storage

You can still find cheaper hard drives in budget laptops and larger hard drives in gaming laptops, but faster solid state drives have all but replaced hard drives in laptops. They can make a big difference in performance. Not all SSDs are created equal, and cheaper laptops tend to have slower drives. If your laptop only has 4GB or 8GB of RAM, it may switch to that drive and your system may quickly slow down while you work.

Buy what you can afford, and if you need a smaller drive you can always add an external drive or two or use cloud storage to bolster a small internal drive. The only exception is gaming laptops: we wouldn’t recommend going for anything less than a 512GB SSD unless you’re really into deleting games every time you want to play a new one.