Best laptops for students

Heading to uni or college brings new challenges, both academic and social. In our guide to the best laptops for students, we take you through some of the key laptop-buying decisions you'll have to make, and give recommendations for the best student laptops depending on your course and what you need your laptop to do.

We've also got expert advice on how to make the most of remote learning, including how to boost your wi-fi. Plus we reveal which laptops you should avoid.

See our top picks of the best laptops

5 questions to ask before buying a student laptop

1. What's the battery life like? If you’re going to be out at lectures and seminars all day, and you can’t guarantee you’ll have access to a plug socket, you’ll want a laptop that can manage at least eight hours of battery life in our realistic tests.
2. Does it need to be light? If you need to commute with your laptop, you’ll want one that weighs less than 1.5kg so it doesn’t start dragging you down late in the day.
3. What screen size is right for me? If you don’t plan on taking your laptop out of halls, go for a bigger screen size, from 15.6 to 17.3 inches.
4. How much speed do I really need? Don’t overspend on a laptop that’s far too powerful for your needs. If you’re only going to be working on basic essays, you don’t need to spend £1,000 on an ultra-premium, high-performance laptop. Similarly, you don’t want to underspend on a laptop that doesn't have the power you need if you’re going to be editing videos. Our guide on the best laptops explains more.
5. Which brand will go the distance? Knowing how long a laptop will last, which brands develop the most faults and when you can expect to see problems is invaluable when it comes to choosing a student laptop. This laptop will need to keep up with you and last the duration of your course (and then some) - and this is where we can help. We know which brands fit the bill as we asked more than 7,000 laptop owners to tell us about the experiences they’ve had with brands over the past eight years.  See our guide to the best laptop brands for the low-down.

We'll help you to buy the perfect laptop for students for your budget and reveal which brands last the longest - see our expert laptop reviews.

How much should you spend on a student laptop?

Generally speaking, these are the prices you can expect to see when buying a new laptop. This should help you to avoid overpaying or, indeed, underpaying for a laptop that won't meet your needs. The last thing you need when you're trying to study is a student laptop that's too slow and impacts your productivity. 

• Basic note-taking and occasional documents: £200-250 should be enough. Look out for Intel Celeron-powered Windows 10 laptops and Chromebooks.
• Heavy web browsing, documents: £300-500 will net you either an Intel Pentium Gold laptop with plenty of Ram, or even an Intel Core i3/AMD Ryzen 3 laptop. 
• Editing photos, videos: Beyond £500 you can start looking at laptops with Intel Core i5 and i7 processors that are capable of editing photos and videos without much lag. 
• Gaming: A good gaming laptop will set you back at least £600. The more you spend, the better graphics settings you can run your games with.

Best student laptops for essay writing and research

If your work will predominantly be making notes and writing essays, you won’t need a powerful laptop. In fact, you can get away with spending less if you simply need a machine for writing. 

Below, we’ve recommended a few options at different prices, depending on your budget.  

What to look for 

Windows 11 is the most common choice, but Chromebooks are usually excellent little writing devices with very basic operating systems and web-browser-based software. That said, very basic laptops struggle if they're pushed hard, so make sure your course isn’t going to become more technologically demanding later on. 

It pays to buy the best student laptop you can, especially if you know you're going to need extra power later. Your university or course may have a specific guide on the type of computer you're likely to need. 

On a tight budget and want to see more of our expert recommendations? Go to the Best cheap laptops under £200, £300 and £500

Best laptops for film buffs and media students

These laptops have excellent screens for eking out every last detail of your films. They also excel in other important areas, including speed and build quality, so are great all-rounders for any student. 

What to look for 

High-resolution screens and Intel Core or AMD Ryzen processors are the must-haves here. Lesser processors might not play high-resolution films so smoothly (although there are exceptions), and there’s nothing worse than watching an atmospheric film on a screen that lacks contrast and brightness. 

We've also picked out laptops that have good speakers, which is where most devices fall down. 

Best laptops for production and design students

If your course involves editing multimedia or 3D work – such as media production, audio production, architecture, engineering software or fashion design – you’ll benefit from picking a pricier laptop. 

These have higher-end specs that step up to the plate whenever you need them to. The other benefit of these laptops is that you can use them for gaming – perfect for a bit of downtime. 

What to look for

Intel Core i5 or AMD Ryzen 5 processors are the bare minimum if you want a smooth experience editing multimedia projects. 

An added bonus would be a laptop with so-called ‘dedicated’ graphics from a brand such as AMD or Nvidia. Our reviews will mention if a laptop has dedicated graphics to help you with whatever 3D task you're doing and some of the models mentioned below may be available in a higher specification that includes a dedicated graphics card. 

Want to kit out your desk even further? See our guide to the best computer monitors

Laptops to avoid

Not all laptops are created equal. Here are some models that don't score well in our tests and aren’t worth your money.

Student laptop tech deals

Read our tips below to get the best deal on your new laptop, or check our pick of laptop deals from major retailers.

If you’re looking for a higher-end laptop — perhaps you’re doing a course that requires video or photo editing, for example — you could opt for a deal from either Apple or Microsoft, both of which offer discounts to students. Alternatively, you can save money and get a good model if you're willing to consider buying a second-hand or refurbished laptop.

Microsoft student laptop discounts

The Microsoft Store website offers a discount of up to 10% to students (and parents) buying devices from its Microsoft Surface laptop range, including the Surface Laptop, Surface Pro or Surface Book. Bear in mind that the price reduction might not apply if there’s already another offer on the product you’re buying.

• You’ll need to verify that you’re a school or university student, but beyond that you won’t have to jump through any hoops to get the discount – it’s applied at checkout.
• Students at eligible institutions can also get Office 365 free.

Already know you want to go with Microsoft? Go straight to Microsoft's student deals on its website.

Apple student laptop discounts

Apple also offers discounts on Mac products to university students and parents buying for them, as well as teachers and other staff. 

• If you’re a verified university student, you can get up to 10% off all new Apple products and iPad models.
• Depending on the time of year, you'll see bonuses like discounted AppleCare+ or an Apple Store gift card.

If you know you want Apple products, go to the Apple educational site.

Other laptop brand deals

All these laptop brands offer discounts if you buy direct from their online stores.

• Dell: Up to 20% off - visit Dell's Student Store
• Lenovo: Up to 10% off laptops at Lenovo Student Store
• Samsung: Up to 15% off tablets and 10% off laptops - see Samsung student offers

While you can get some great discounts directly from most laptop brands, other online retailers might have better prices on products, and might be doing their own limited-time student (or non-student) deals.

Student software deals and free alternatives

If your course requires (or recommends) that you use certain software, check whether any discounts or free offers are available.

For example, if your university subscribes to Microsoft Office 365, you should be eligible for free Office software downloads, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint. You can find more information on the Microsoft website.

You can also subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud for just over £16 a month, which includes 20+ apps such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects and Premiere. Each Creative Cloud app is also available to buy on its own, with prices from £4.98.

The 3D design software firm Autodesk also offers a one-year free license to some of its software packages if you’re a student.

If you don’t want to pay for anything, there are free, open-source alternatives to popular software packages. These include GIMP or Pixlr for image editing, LibreOffice for productivity, Google Drive or Office 365 Free for web-based word processing and spreadsheets, and Blender for 3D modelling.

We test laptops more thoroughly than anyone else

Our tests go further than those carried out by other organisations, and because Which? is independent and doesn't accept advertising or freebies (we buy all the products we test , unlike other sites), you can trust our reviews to give you the full, honest and impartial truth about a product.

When testing laptops in the Which? test lab, we monitor, measure and test against more than 260 different criteria to ensure we have every base covered. This includes everything from battery life and screen brightness to button dimensions and USB data transfer rate.

Whether you're a student who has to submit essays, video-editing projects or graphic design assignments, there's a laptop for you. See our expert laptop reviews.