The Best Laptops for College Students
A laptop is as important for a college student as their textbooks or the college ID. And it is not only useful for college projects. But it should also be able to deal with other activities like listening to music, playing games, watching movies, social networking, video chatting, editing photos, and much more. And of course, the best laptops for college students should last them for the long haul, probably through the entire four years of under-graduation.
Below are the basic specifications you must have to keep in mind when you are buying a laptop for college works.
First and foremost, the main thing to do is check with your college for specific requirements of the system. Some Universities and colleges want their students to be equipped with Windows-based laptops, which helps them to cut down on software incompatibility issues. If you’re a hard-core type, others don’t even care for whatever operating system you choose, whether it is Windows, Linux or even mac-OS. Many of the institutions have their on-site repair centers that service only the university-bought laptops, where the overall time is much faster than the original manufacturer if you were to send it overnight to the original manufacturer. Also note that most of the colleges offer price breaks particularly to some vendors and include extensive software bundles, which shaves off a good amount from your laptop purchase.
Keeping It Light In Weight:
It’s better to have a mini home theater in your dorm room instead of a big screen, but a laptop with a big screen will be a real necessity to haul across the campus while you are running from class to class. In such situations you will be better with something that is light in weight: If screen size matters less to you than convenience, a super-thin ultra-portable device might be the choice to go with. But for most people, a maximum of 13 or 14-inch widescreen is ideal, as it minimizes the weight burden and makes room for other items in your backpack. Depending on the tolerance level of your laptop, a smaller display will work as long as you understand that more scrolling is involved in full web pages and productivity applications, and fonts appear smaller than they how they appear on larger screens.
Research papers, chatting online with your classmates and essays will steal most of your computing time, so a full-size keyboard and comfortable touchpad are necessary. When you experiment a 13-inch platform, you can run the risk of getting not the same experience of typing. The simplest way of ensuring that you are having the best keyboard is to halt by using a brick-and-mortar store and allocate some time typing on proposed choices. (If you plan to buy a less expensive and smaller laptop, investing in a standalone keyboard is probably worthy so that you can keep it at home whenever you need to type a lot.)
Power You Need to Operate:
Depending on the amount you want to spend on buying a laptop, they offer a wide range of processors—for example, you can select a laptop that increases the performance or one that supports in its battery life. Else you can choose the one that acts to both strengths: The CPU of the Intel Core has the favor in the aspect of both battery efficiency and power. If you desire to have battery life for all-day, it’s best to choose a Chromebook, which runs typically on a processor which is powered low. If the highest rank on the list is the device’s performance, the CPU of an Intel Core i7 gives you the most energy but at the cost of battery life.
If you like to play games in your leisure time, you may want to spend on a more expensive gaming laptop. Most of the general-purpose equipment will not have the required discrete graphics card to make the hottest titles look great and to smoothly play. These can also help, for suppose, when a video is being transcoded or watch a Blu-ray movie, but, they also entertain on the battery same as a processor.
One good news about this is that in all the other cases (unless you are an architecture major on CAD software with a heavy reliance), most of the integrated GPUs must be more than enough for the tasks you will face day-to-day.
Storage Solutions:
With the increasing importance of the Web applications and cloud storage, having a huge space for local storage is now somewhat less crucial than it used to be, but still, you should assure that your laptop is meeting all your needs and requirements. If you plan to install a number of programs or want to hang on to files and folders, then you will need to have 256GB of space or more than that. If you are a bit more low-key, or you are content with leaving a plenty of your work online, you can get by with a less spaced laptop.
Whatever be the way you go, remind yourself that storage always affects the speed of any device. If you choose to go with a hard drive so that you get more storage space for less money, remember that noticeably, it will be slower than a solid-state drive (SSD), though the lower capacity and higher cost of a faster SSD may be a trade-off which some people will make. The great news is that by plugging into your laptop’s USB port, an external hard drive, you could be able to increase the space of the hard drive whenever you want it. Although you probably will not have to do this to increase the space unless you are an aspiring filmmaker or a video junkie, which is a good option to have.
Battery Life
A battery that is sizable can be your ever best friend in a day filled with classes and also extracurricular activities. Most of the college-oriented laptops are coming with more number of battery options whereas other ordinary laptops have only one—moreover, it is a non-removable battery. In such cases, figure out the things where battery life ranks in the grand scheme. If an extended battery is not available, then it might be a good idea for purchasing an additional one. The more “cells” you choose, the better will be the battery life of any device. A bigger sized battery is accompanied by some channels, but the weight gain is well worth it if it means to keep the system unplugged from dawn until dusk.
What About Chromebooks?
In the previous few years, there had been a strong push into the education market by Chromebook manufacturers. And Chromebooks have reached from being glorified netbooks that run the Chrome OS to laptops that are still Web-Centric even they relatively have a full feature set. Like many schools and colleges, the one you attend puts its coursework in the cloud, a Chromebook will just offer you as much functionality as a regular laptop, and also have longer battery life. Likely, it also costs you far less than other types of notebooks, as Chromebook prices typically run more than that. Just be sure that you have easy and constant Wi-Fi access, as there is slight storage available on these systems.
Considering a Hybrid
In the past recent years, the latest group of laptop/tablet hybrid has been developed. Hybrids are those that are capable of functioning same as a traditional clamshell-style laptop whenever you want them to work as required, but they can be transformed into tablets when that is a more convenient form factor. Some (generally called convertibles) sport a folding design that is capable of flipping the keyboard out of the way, whereas others (detachable) allow you to lock a detachable tablet PC with an accessory keyboard for a functionality like a laptop.
A Word on Warranties
Almost every laptop is left by the at least one-year warranty on its parts and the labor. More extended warranties are also available, but if they are enough worthy, it depends on who you are as a user. The standard warranty does not cover accidents that stem from a spilled drink or a drop on a hard surface. Most of the manufacturers sell this accident coverage as separate plans, on top of extended warranties that can work on top of the standard one. Apple offers a maximum of three years extended the warranty, where most of the laptops’ vendors that are based on Windows will offer up to four years of warranty.
In our opinion, if the cost of the warranty is more than 15 percent of the total price of the laptop, then you will be better off spending the money on services or backup drives that reduce the downtime in case something does go badly. However, there is no possibility to put a price tag on peace of mind. But in rare cases, the display or the logic board which is the most expensive components of a laptop, can fail and cost you in repairs half the worth of the laptop. Mostly, during the first year, the faulty components usually break down.
So, what is the best laptop to get for college? Truly, there are even more options to choose on the market today and can be a bit daunting slogging through them. No worries, that we did the slogging for you. Check out the hottest laptops to grace the room that is a dorm, which may be also the college classroom and campus quad for this. When shopping, looking for more general factors, check out the overall top best picks for laptops, and also our favorite notebooks under our budget and the best desktops for all the students.
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