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For students: Best laptop size?

djdelarosa25
By djdelarosa25
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As small as possible, really... It's all personal preference. I prefer large laptops that offer a desktop-like experience, but portability can be an issue.

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Title says it all.

11-13" for the average student. If you're a big guy, you can probably pull off 15-17". 

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Resolution might end up being more important than size, since that's what dictates how much you can fit on the screen, which is what you probably want to maximize (right?), but there's a limit, especially since you'll want a physically smaller one too; 4K at 13" without scaling is not recommended :)

 

Just make sure you get one that's not too heavy and/or thick.  That can be a bigger problem than size any day

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I'm a pretty small guy. I'm about a 5'3-5'4, skinny, 14-year old. Anyways, I'd almost always be carrying it everyday in my bag to school. What's the perfect size?

 

Also, can you guys recommend me a $500-$700 laptop that'll be reliable for the next few years?

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Also, can you guys recommend me a $500-$600 laptop that'll be reliable for the next few years?

 

That depends on what you're doing.  When I got my school laptop it had to serve as my main machine too, so that meant running 3D cad-like software, games, etc. so if that's what you're doing, then no I actually can't recommend anything in that price range for the next few years because it doesn't exist.  If you are just doing basic stuff though, there should be a number of decent options.

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We'll be doing some video editing via Premiere. Would an i5-5200U, 940M 2GB, and 4GB of RAM be enough?

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We'll be doing some video editing via Premiere. Would an i5-5200U, 940M 2GB, and 4GB of RAM be enough?

eh... I don't think so... I would want minimum 8GB of ram for that... or just anything really.  I got 8 gb in mine like 4+ years ago for about twice your budget so it shouldn't be that expensive to find a model with it

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Well, there's this second-hand Yoga 2 with 8GB of RAM, but it has dedicated graphics. Is this better than the one above?

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I'm a pretty small guy. I'm about a 5'3-5'4, skinny, 14-year old. Anyways, I'd almost always be carrying it everyday in my bag to school. What's the perfect size?

 

Also, can you guys recommend me a $500-$700 laptop that'll be reliable for the next few years?

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For students: Best laptop size?

 

This is a lame question.  There is no "best" laptop size for a student.  You buy what you can afford and what you feel comfortable using.

 

Do you want a large 17" laptop that may weigh a couple of kilos?  Or do you want something thin and light that may weigh under 1kg?  Are you going to be using it mainly for writing reports, browsing the web, sending emails?  Do you need to do some desktop publishing, image editing?

 

These are factors you need to consider and get one that is suitable for your needs.

 

A small 13" screen would be suitable for writing reports, browsing the web, sending emails.  Most 13" laptops are pretty thin and lightweight, something like the Asus Zenbooks or similar designs from other brands.

 

A 17" is better for doing more intensive work, such as video editing, desktop publications, because of the larger screen real estate and 17" laptops tend to have more room for a better GPU and a powerful CPU.  But it's larger and heavier.

 

15" usually sits midway between the two.

 

Of course these are just generalizations, there are smaller than 17" gaming laptops that come with powerful CPU and GPUs, but these are also heavy and unwieldy. They also cost more than your budget.

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13" is perfect IMO.

I bought a shitty HP 430 for college, but it's actually really convenient to travel with.

It's pretty compact and light as a feather.

Perfect to take to college everyday.

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13.3 ~ 14 is probably the most comfortable size of laptop that fits every usual student use

 

But if you are a big guy, 15.6 is good as well, I have no problem carrying my GE62 around

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Smaller the better.

However keep in mind of certain devices with special sizes. For example the Dell XPS 15 is not really 15inch, due to the super think borders. Or the Surface Pro line, where due to the 3:2 aspect ratio, the device is smaller than 12inch, as it is more tall, and has thin borders (Pro 4).

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13" and 14" (Yes, there is such a thing as a 14" laptop), 11"-12" is too small and too hard to get work done on, and 15"-17" laptops are too big and too hard to lug around, and it usually means the screen draws more power, which either means short battery life or a heavy and big battery and a thicker machine, meaning you can't fit it in a binder like I do with my 13" laptop. And 13" screen size is more reasonable for 2-in-1s which makes it extremely useful at school.

 

Of course the best option would be to have a smaller laptop and a second monitor. At our school, our IT left a display cable laying around, so I plugged it into the back of one of the monitors in our computer lab and when no one is using that computer I sit down and plug my laptop into it and enjoy doing school work on two monitors. At home my parents have a dual monitor computer and sometimes I just use their secondary monitor for school work.

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I'm a pretty small guy. I'm about a 5'3-5'4, skinny, 14-year old. Anyways, I'd almost always be carrying it everyday in my bag to school. What's the perfect size?

 

Also, can you guys recommend me a $500-$700 laptop that'll be reliable for the next few years?

 

Hey, I am in the same situation that you are in except I already have a laptop that is out of your budget, It has 8 GB of RAM an Intel i7 CPU, Intel 5500 graphics, a 13" screen, and it has a 256 GB SSD. And it is thin and light and it is AMAZING (let me repeat) AMAZING at school, and it is well worth the cost. As for video editing it pulls it off no problem (heck I've even done blender on it before) it is the HP Spectre x360 and it is basically HP's answer to the macbook air.

 

http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/Laptops/hp-spectre-x360---13-4103dx-%28energy-star%29

 

There is one with pretty much the same specs except with an i5 processor that wasn't available when I bought mine.

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I would say 13" is best for students. I have a 15" laptop and it's just too big for schoolwork, but I'm stuck with it until I graduate high school in 2018 :/

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I think 14 is pretty good overall. I have a 15 inch and it sucks to whip out in my classes that are in a lecture hall with the tiny desks attached to the seat. I wouldn't go smaller than 14 personally. 

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