Good Student Laptop for USD$ ~750-1000 - Summer 2023

[M 6360]

Hello,

I'm going off for college early this July (July 10th, specifically) and need to get a new laptop as my old one is busted. It doesn't need to be heavy gaming-capable, as I already have my desktop for that and the dorm rooms will have adequate space for it. I just need something good, reliable, and reasonably fast for school, in the $750-1000 range, ideally with 16GB or more of RAM. Recommendations?

[TylerD321]

Gaming laptops are not the way to go for college laptops anyway. Thin and light is better for your back. Look into lenovo laptops. What country are you located in? What’s your major?

[Needfuldoer]

Pick up an off-lease or refurbished business-class laptop like a Dell Latitude or a ThinkPad. They're solidly built, generally easy to upgrade, and parts are readily available and inexpensive.

 

I've had a Latitude 5480 as my daily driver laptop for a few years, it has a 1080p screen, and it's been rock-solid. It's no gaming powerhouse, but you said you have a gaming desktop so it doesn't have to be. I'd go for at least a 5490 though, since they have official Windows 11 support. (Assuming you're going for a four-year degree that something to consider, since Windows 10 support will end before then.)

 

I recently bought a Latitude 5290 and a Dell part number 0R7CW8 power bank to go with it, as a mobile SDR station / camera card dumping ground for the bike rides I keep telling myself I'm going to go on at some point. I think the laptop was something like $120 and the extra battery was about $40.

[Rayyan9400]

macbook air 2015 if your budget, macbook air m1 if you wanna get fancy.

[venomtail]

Acer swift 3 is my go to choice for a light, cheap, light load laptop. Got me through my programming courses but part of that was thanks to AMD's APU. Don't think Intels offering would fare so well.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

1 hour ago, Rayyan9400 said:

macbook air 2015 if your budget

I mean... it's still a usable machine for daily use but why... it's no longer officially supported by the latest version of MacOS unless you do some Hackintosh shenanigans, the display is mediocre by today's standards (1440x900), you have a maximum of 8GB of RAM which won't last long plus it's non-upgradable, and the storage maxes out at 256GB again non-upgradable. 

 

Nothing against Macs but I wouldn't really want to recommend something like that to a first-year college student where the presumption is it should last til they graduate. 

 

4 minutes ago, venomtail said:

Acer swift 3 is my go to choice for a light, cheap, light load laptop. Got me through my programming courses but part of that was thanks to AMD's APU. Don't think Intels offering would fare so well.

Intel's offerings on mobile are still up there. They're not embarrassing as people would lead you to believe. 

[venomtail]

1 minute ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Intel's offerings on mobile are still up there. They're not embarrassing as people would lead you to believe. 

To really be able to give the best recommendation, we'd have to know what is required of them to learn on their laptops. If someone's a history major then Intel or AMD won't make a difference as word works well on both, in my case however the graphical performance between the Intel iGPU and AMD's APU was double, if not even tripple in some cases when the first models came out.

[Rambo]

I just bought a refurb 2021 HP Probook 630 G8 for less than half the price of something new. I opted for a memory upgrade to 16 GB. 

Haven´t used it too much yet but it feels solid.

[Rayyan9400]

On 5/23/2023 at 11:50 PM, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

I mean... it's still a usable machine for daily use but why... it's no longer officially supported by the latest version of MacOS unless you do some Hackintosh shenanigans, the display is mediocre by today's standards (1440x900), you have a maximum of 8GB of RAM which won't last long plus it's non-upgradable, and the storage maxes out at 256GB again non-upgradable. 

 

Nothing against Macs but I wouldn't really want to recommend something like that to a first-year college student where the presumption is it should last til they graduate. 

 

at 200$, it is better than other laptops and you can use patcher to install ventura but i would not recommend it