Best laptops for college students 2024: Top picks and expert advice

Price When Reviewed:

$329.99

Calling all coffee shop goers and laptop notetakers. The Dell XPS 13 Plus is the perfect laptop to take to class or to your local café. It provides great CPU performance with a 13th-gen Core i7-1360P processor and also comes with a generous 32GB of RAM. And at just 13.4-inches wide, it packs all of that performance into a very small package. Plus, it weighs a mere 2.9 pounds, which means it’s about the same size as a MacBook Pro 14 but weighs even less.

The Dell XPS 13 Plus also comes with a superb 4K display, which is a big upgrade over similarly priced models with lower resolutions from competitors. It’s only real downside is its less-than-ideal battery life, which isn’t terrible by any means, but it doesn’t last as long as we would expect. Still, the XPS 13 Plus is more than worthy of being your main around-town portable laptop.

Price When Reviewed:

$1,299.99

If you’re looking for an ultraportable, but can’t swing for the Dell XPS 13 Plus, then your next-best option is the Acer Swift Edge 16. This ultra-thin and lightweight machine comes in at a svelte 0.6-inches thick and only weighs 2.71 pounds. It also packs a 3200x2000p 120Hz OLED display which impresses with deep, inky blacks and perfect contrast. It comes with pretty good performance features as well such as a Ryzen 7 7840U CPU and 1TB of onboard SSD storage.

As is the case with all ultrabooks, to achieve that level of portability they have to sacrifice something and it’s usually the battery. The Swift Edge 16 comes with a smaller 54 watt-hour battery and our tests showed you can expect about six or seven hours of continuous use between charges—not bad, but behind the curve. Let that not take away from the advantages of this affordable, lightweight laptop. The Acer Swift Edge 16 is a solid ultraportable with a gorgeous screen, good performance, and a great price.

Price When Reviewed:

$869

When you’re running between home, your classes, and the local coffee shop, you need a laptop that can hold a charge without needing to be plugged in all day. The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED provides marathon-length battery life and more. Our tests showed that it can stand up to 15 hours and 20 minutes of continuous use before needing a charge — in a real-world setting this will likely be reduced to 10 to 12 hours. It easily outlasted most competitors and the battery will have no issues keeping you productive on the go throughout your day and even through those late night cram sessions.

The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED also comes with a beautiful 14-inch 2880x1800p OLED touchscreen display and a sturdy metal chassis that can withstand the rigors of student life. And while not the cheapest model on this list, it’s still reasonably budget friendly as a sub-$1,000 laptop.

Price When Reviewed:

$852

College is an extremely expensive undertaking for everyone and many students don’t have the room in their budgets to go big on a laptop, especially for extra-curricular activities such as gaming. Thankfully, MSI has recognized this problem and made the latest MSI Thin GF63 model in order to appeal to gamers on a very tight budget. It won’t blow your socks off with performance features, but it does come with a Core i5 processor and an Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU—which gives enough horsepower to play modern games at 1080p with decent framerates. The biggest plus however is the price tag which gives you gaming features without breaking the bank.

In order to keep the price this lower though, MSI needed to sacrifice some things. The 1080p screen doesn’t have great color or brightness, but it is capable of 144Hz refresh rate. Likewise, the battery life is rather poor, especially if you’re gaming without the charger. That being said, it’s the value of the MSI Thin GF63, not the features, that give it an edge over competitors and the rock-bottom price for a model with discrete graphics is a rarity indeed in today’s market.

Price When Reviewed:

$1,399

Want the attractive design, incredible efficiency, and great performance of a MacBook Pro but in a Windows device? Well, the HP Dragonfly Pro comes about as close as you can get to Apple’s line of premium laptops. HP partnered with AMD to create this slim laptop that packs the latest generation Ryzen 7 processor with 8 high-performance cores and a surprisingly powerful Radeon 680M graphic card.

The laptop’s design is thin and attractive with a high quality feel made from aluminum and polycarbonate. However, just like the MacBook Pro models, this laptop takes a minimalist approach to ports, making those who rely on a bunch of plug-in accessories to feel a little hard done by. The display is nice enough, but it does have some catching up to do if it hopes to rival Apple’s best. Still, for a laptop that is significantly cheaper than the current line of MacBook Pro models, this Dragonfly Pro laptop from HP is a more than worthy competitor.

Price When Reviewed:

$899.99

The Aspire Vero is Acer’s latest from their eco-friendly line of notebooks. The eco-conscious buyer can rest easier knowing this laptop is built from recycled materials, meaning you’re reducing your carbon footprint. It also sports some pretty good hardware for the price too. From strong Core i7 CPU performance to a surprisingly good 1080p display, this laptop has more to offer than just being environmentally friendly.

All of these things and more make the Aspire Vero a great everyday laptop. Its only real downside is that some components such as the soldered-on RAM are not replaceable, meaning you won’t have the option to upgrade in the future. This is a minor nitpick however and doesn’t take away from a well-performing laptop that’s both affordable and sustainable.

Price When Reviewed:

$569.99

Chromebooks are a college student’s best friend—reliable, lightweight, and affordable. But they might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you want a gaming computer. Thankfully, Lenovo has made gaming more accessible to Chromebook users with its IdeaPad 5 Gaming. It comes with a Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a bright 16-inch 2560×1600 display. Plus, in a rarity for any type of laptop, the speakers are surprisingly good.

If those specs seem good, but not enough to game with, don’t worry. Gaming on a Chromebook is done mostly, if not entirely, through a cloud gaming service anyways. For only the monthly fee of one of these services, you’re able to stream the very best modern games straight from the cloud to your Chromebook. When testing this Chromebook we even found that we could stream AAA games at good resolutions and up to 120Hz. That’s pretty impressive for a laptop that costs less then a third of what you’d pay for a more powerful Windows gaming rig. For more on which cloud gaming services are our favorites, check out our roundup of the best cloud gaming services.

Simply put, no—at least, not well. It comes down to what type of gaming you intend to do. Chromebooks can run web games and Android games perfectly well. But if you’re looking to play the latest high-powered titles such as Elden Ring, a Chromebook just won’t cut it. This is mainly due to the fact that most titles only run on Windows and Chromebooks typically don’t come with sufficient graphics power.

All that said, Google is trying to bring cloud gaming to its Chromebooks. Cloud gaming services work by using a remote PC or console to play games streamed through the cloud down onto the Chromebook. However, until this service becomes more common, Chromebooks are not good options for gaming.

Yes, recently the the latest integrated graphics processors from the likes of Intel and AMD can handle modern PC games at reasonable settings. For example, Intel’s latest Iris Xe line of processors with integrated graphics have been shown to run some of the latest releases at 1080p and 30fps. Be careful, however, as not all integrated graphics are created equal.

Regarding gaming performance, Intel and AMD’s integrated graphics have made huge leaps in recent years. So if you’re on a budget or looking for an ultra-thin laptop and the only options include integrated graphics, fear not, you can still game on. For more information check out Intel’s Core 12th-gen Iris Xe versus AMD’s brand new Ryzen 6000 RDNA 2.