How to Choose A Laptop For College: The Ultimate Guide

On your first day at college it is necessary to buy a laptop to support you with all those various assignment preparation. You will also be busy everyday with your college’s day to day homework getting done.

To do all those work carefully and properly, a good laptop will support you like no other electronic device does. And because of this very reason, a reliable laptop can be a great choice to give you all the benefits you might need on a daily basis with your college productivity.

To understand a bit deeper about which laptop to invest in, let’s understand today’s ultimate guide of choosing the right college laptop. Without elaborating further, let’s jump right into today’s “How To” guide:

Things to Consider for Choosing a Laptop For College

There are certain factors to understand first before you make that purchase decision. This can be dependent on the overall internal parts or size of the laptop that you will be needing for your college life. Down below are the 6-core points to notice before buying a laptop, if you are a college goer. They are explained down below:

Design & Build:

During college life, it is obvious you will be carrying light, as you will always be on the move. Too much weight might obviously make you tired and lose focus while going to classes. That’s why carrying a lightweight build laptop would be ideal. Try to choose a laptop less than 1.5-1.8 kilograms of weight. 

Besides that weight factor, there’s also flexibility of the laptop that’s also important. Few laptops comes flip mechanism, that literally lets you up to 360° flipping capability with the durable hinge of a laptop. You also won’t like laptop with thicker body, so make sure you buy a laptop that has slimmer profile and easy to handle or walk around from your college dorm to dorm or classrooms. 

Display:

Most of your college assignments and professor’s course presentation slides will be on the display of your laptop. Higher resolution or rich colors containing display is highly appreciated while choosing a laptop. Make sure you have at least a FHD panel if you are low on budget.  Although if you happen to have higher budget, then getting a high-res panel like AMOLED or 2K resolution display will definitely provide crisp contrast while doing your assignments or even side projects like video editing or photoshop works. 

Performance:

You might think that, to run every day college applications a decent Intel Core i3 or AMD’s Ryzen 3 would do the job. Actually, in reality this is the mistake you make while purchasing your first college laptop. 

Besides running day-to-day college applications like docs, sheets, presentations, powerpoints and data assignments and so on, you might need extra power to run your operating system at ease. It is highly advisable to at least get an Intel i5 or Ryzen 5 laptop that has the power to run most apps but also happens to provide an ease of running. One thing that’s worth noting is that, try to choose the latest generation in the market while choosing a new laptop.

Although do remember, if you are planning to study media or film and even digital art creation courses in college, then don’t hesitate to buy a Intel i7 or Ryzen 7 series processor with at least 8GB to 16GB ram & as well as a minimum of 512 SSD storage on board. As you will be doing a lot of video editing, Adobe photoshop works, animation and so on during your creative courses period.

Don’t be so bored already, we know how much you love playing games during your leisure moments of your college life and play games with friends as well. But you don’t need a gaming laptop all the time, you can play general AAA games on a business class laptop. But if you are a pro-gamer then  do remember, you might need a good graphics card as well if you plan to play high-intense graphics games. 

Battery Life:

Enough power means you will get enough time to do your everyday college assignments and projects further. Without the proper amount of battery capacity or service hours, a laptop does not meet its purpose, as you won’t be always plugged in to your college electric outlet. Try to choose at least 60-70 hours of working hours to give you the support that you really require. 

Port:

Believe it or not guys, but due to lack of ports you might face a terrible level of trouble and hassles during your college. Sometimes sharing files and project documents from your laptops to your classroom’s projector can be a bit hard if you don’t have enough USB-A ports. So in the end, choosing a laptop that comes with a decent amount of ports, that includes, USB-A, HDMI, USB-C or even a microSD slot would be appreciated. 

Price:

After understanding all the major factors about the laptop itself, here’s an important factor that is the price you are willing to invest on. As depending on the price, you might get a good laptop or an average one for your next college life. 

If you happen to have low on budget, then go for a Intel’s i3 Version with latest generation, and it goes for the same as AMD chipset. On the other hand, if you have enough cash to invest in, make sure it’s the best performing laptop for your college life.

Our Suggestions:

After understanding the 6-core factors about choosing a good laptop for college goers, we have come to a suggestion that suits the best option for you to invest in your first college laptop. As it holds most of the specifications quite well while looking and performing the great result you really need. 

Talking about the ASUS Zenbook 14X, which comes at the one of the latest processors from Intel, which is the i7-13700H, a reliable processor with maximum power delivery. You also get 16GB of ram to swift performance and an amazing viewing from the 2.8K OLED Panel.

To support you all day, this very laptop gives you around 70 hours of working time without facing any hassles. To know about the laptop a bit technically, here’s a mini specification for you, for your better understanding.

Mini Specs:

Processor: Intel 13th Gen Evo Platform i7-13700H

Ram: 16GB LPDDR5 | 4800 megahertz

Storage: 512GB | PCIe 4.0 SSD 

Graphic: Integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics

Display: 14.5″ 2.8K OLED Touch Screen| 120Hz Refresh Rate |550 nits

Other Features: Backlit keyboard | harman/kardon Audio | Wi-Fi 6E

Verdict

In the end, it is an obvious thing to say that no laptop purchase decision would be perfect if you don’t know what you will be working on. As it’s up to you and your productivity level that makes the right choice laptop.

Choosing the right productivity tool, in this case a laptop, is quite an important decision that can make your life much easier or in another way can make your life much more difficult if you choose it wrongly. 

Depending on your activity or working activity, projects, assignments, homeworks and portability requirements a good laptop can really have an impact on your overall college study lifestyle. Again, it’s worth mentioning that make sure your every penny counts, as your college life depends on the person you want to be in your next career life.