Best laptop for college??

[UhamVj]

I have a budget of €2000 (that's 2250 US dollars) i can go over a bit but not to much. I'm mainly looking for an apple laptop. i don't need any real raw power because i don't edit video or photo and i don't game. My main use will be school (study: medical school). I am looking for a new laptop so no used ones. Any recommandations? Thx a lot!

[Fasauceome]

for really light tasks, a macbook air does pretty well.

[bmichaels556]

To be honest with you... While I do see some appeal to a nice Macbook Pro for example (Final Cut is quite good IMO), I think in your case, you'd be completely playing yourself to buy an Apple machine based on your use case.. Like, outright scamming yourself.

 

It really depends what you're doing. But you could be very well-served with something like an Acer Swift 3 w/ i5-8250u and Nvidia MX150. For your uses, you'll see equivelent performance, and in fact better in some sense, because of the dedicated GPU on board, so at least you could do some light gaming if you so choose.

 

If you want similar specs to the above, but a more premium Mac-like feel, go for something like an Asus Zenbook with those same specs. Again, similar performance, still-premium feel, great display, superior compatbility for any kind of program you may want to run (Windows can't be beat here), and the ability to game, for under HALF the cost. 

 

Also, it might be really fun to harass your classmates on getting scammed into buying a Mac, and you can flash your generally superior Windows machine with pride.  

 

Okay, that last part is for me.  

[aisle9]

12 minutes ago, UhamVj said:

I have a budget of €2000 (that's 2250 US dollars) i can go over a bit but not to much. I'm mainly looking for an apple laptop. i don't need any real raw power because i don't edit video or photo and i don't game. My main use will be school (study: medical school). I am looking for a new laptop so no used ones. Any recommandations? Thx a lot!

Get the most specced-out ThinkPad T480 you can, do that thing we can't talk about that rhymes with "smackintosh" to it, then take your special lady friend someplace really nice 5-7 times and enjoy your sex afterwards. That's right, you can get a better laptop and banged for a week straight for less than a MacBook Pro costs.

[SupaKomputa]

For that budget, any apple product will do fine. Depends on the screen size, are you ok with small 13inch screen?

If yes then the macbook air is good enough.

 

On the windows side, you can get a Dell XPS, HP Spectre, Thinkpads that goes to 15 inch with a thin and light body.

[DrMacintosh]

23 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

for really light tasks, a macbook air does pretty well.

Yeah, but with that budget why not go for a Pro? 

[Fasauceome]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

Yeah, but with that budget why not go for a Pro? 

I suppose a pro would be nice, but if the features aren't being put to good use, then it's not really money well spent. Also, the portability of an ultrabook, especially for college classes, is really nice.

[DrMacintosh]

Use the Apple Education Store and pick up a the base 2018" MacBook Pro with TouchBar. 

 

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, fasauceome said:

Also, the portability of an ultrabook, especially for college classes, is really nice.

The 13" MacBook Pro is just as much an ultrabook as the MacBook Air. Their Air has marginally less volume, but the overall footprint is identical. Also the Pros have brighter displays which can come in handy on a college campus. 

[Mephi00]

I would suggest a Dell xps with a touchscreen if in budget or even as a 2in1 , so you can take handwritten notes or draw something

[Eastman51]

I would get a Surface Pro (or similar) or something like a Dell XPS. You can always put Linux on it if you don't want Windows, or do some wizardry ("smackintosh" as @aisle9 put it). Macs themselves are grossly overpriced (at least imo), you can get better performance for less; and with the right power settings you can extend your battery life a fair bit. If you were to get a laptop with dedicated graphics, Windows has built in features to switch over to the iGPU for less intensive tasks to save battery life. 

 

I have a severe dislike of Apple products, so I'm slightly biased. If you do go with a Macbook, probably get a Pro; the Macbook Air is pretty low spec for the price, objectively speaking.

[aisle9]

47 minutes ago, Eastman51 said:

I would get a Surface Pro (or similar) or something like a Dell XPS.

The new XPS laptops are disasters on wheels. Lots of hardware problems, questionable build quality at best and woefully inadequate cooling. I'd avoid them.

[Eastman51]

41 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

The new XPS laptops are disasters on wheels. Lots of hardware problems, questionable build quality at best and woefully inadequate cooling. I'd avoid them.

Huh, good to know. I'll keep that in mind, thanks

[UhamVj]

Thx for all the answers but windows isn't going to cut it for me and i can't bother to do some crazy wizzardy things to turn a native windows into a macos. I think it is going to be one of the macbook pros 13'', preferably the touchbar model. One more question: can the 8gb ram suffer from relative heavy internet browsing not necessary crashing but will performance drop?, So is it worth spending around €100 or 115 US dollars upgrading to a 16gb model, i think i can squeez a 100 bucks extra in the budget if it's necessary. (i've watched linus' video on this but it's still not so clear for me, the: is 8gb ram enough in 2018 video). Once again thx for the all the answers!

 

( Spelling may suck, i'm not native english :) )

 

[markr54632]

1 minute ago, UhamVj said:

Thx for all the answers but windows isn't going to cut it for me and i can't bother to do some crazy wizzardy things to turn a native windows into a macos. I think it is going to be one of the macbook pros 13'', preferably the touchbar model. One more question: can the 8gb ram suffer from relative heavy internet browsing not necessary crashing but will performance drop?, So is it worth spending around €100 or 115 US dollars upgrading to a 16gb model, i think i can squeez a 100 bucks extra in the budget if it's necessary. (i've watched linus' video on this but it's still not so clear for me, the: is 8gb ram enough in 2018 video). Once again thx for the all the answers!

 

(Spelling may suck, i'm not native english)

 

I dont blame you. Alot of schools like to utilize the apple ecosystem in the healthcare programs around here.

 

To answer your question, order the 16gb model. The ssd and ram are soldered, so there is no upgrading later on. Order what you will need towards the end of the laptops life. I wouldn't touch a macbook with less than 256gb in storage and 16gb in ram.

[UhamVj]

16 hours ago, markr54632 said:

I dont blame you. Alot of schools like to utilize the apple ecosystem in the healthcare programs around here.

  

To answer your question, order the 16gb model. The ssd and ram are soldered, so there is no upgrading later on. Order what you will need towards the end of the laptops life. I wouldn't touch a macbook with less than 256gb in storage and 16gb in ram.

You're right, some of my proffesors even recommand apple more then anything else. And thx for your reply