HP Pavilion Aero 13
Best lightweight laptop for students under $800
HP Pavilion 14
Best 14-inch laptop on a budget
It’s nearly impossible to get through college without a laptop, and that’s why you want the best one possible for the job. Taking notes the old-fashioned way just isn’t feasible anymore, but with so many laptop options on the market, it can be difficult picking the right one for you. We’ve done research and testing to find the best laptop for college in 2023.
With the supply chain issues and chip shortages we’ve seen over the last few years, you might think it’s hard to get your hands on a decent budget-friendly laptop for school. However, it’s still possible to find laptops and two-in-ones with the latest processors from AMD and Intel, which help performance and battery life over previous generations.
What’s the best laptop for college?
Right now, Apple’s MacBook Air M1 is the best laptop for most college students. But if that doesn’t meet your needs, we’ve rounded up several college laptop picks that will serve most students well in school and beyond. The majority of our picks for the best college laptops run between $500 and $1,000. If you’re looking for a more affordable laptop — or if you’re open to an alternative to Apple’s MacOS and Microsoft Windows — we recommend checking out the best Chromebooks for students (just make sure any software you need for classes is supported). On the flip side, if you’re searching for a more powerful laptop, or a gaming laptop that doubles as one for college, we have some suggestions for those, too. So if you’re ready to upgrade your tech, keep reading our list of the best laptops for college.
Best laptops for college
Despite the availability of the bigger and better M2 MacBook Air, the M1 MacBook Air (one of the first to switch from Intel to Apple silicon) is sticking around and that’s a good thing. Apple’s entry-level laptop is still our go-to recommendation for a MacOS laptop for basic everyday use. It has great performance and long battery life — up to 18 hours — and is a solid choice for school and entertainment anywhere.
HP packed a lot of value into the Aero 13: Eye-pleasing magnesium-aluminum chassis, strong processing performance, long battery life, a bright, colorful display and a weight of just 2 pounds (0.94 kilograms). Amazingly, considering all that it offers, it has a regular starting price of less than $800 but it’s regularly on sale for less than $700.
The HP Pavilion 14 is a budget laptop that looks and performs above its price. At 3.2 pounds (1.4 kilograms), the laptop can easily be a daily carry for school or work. It could also be a good home office laptop that can be easily connected to a monitor, keyboard and mouse at a desk, but also has a screen that’s comfortably large enough for full-time use. It’s just a solid everyday laptop with a clean design. The starting price is $650, and the configuration we tested is normally $830, but it goes on sale for much less (most recently it was $580).
This thin, 3-pound convertible is a solid choice for anyone who needs a laptop for office or schoolwork. The all-metal chassis gives it a premium look and feel, and it has a comfortable keyboard and a responsive, smooth precision touchpad. As a two-in-one, you can use it as a laptop or tablet and it supports pen input with Lenovo’s optional Active Pen. It also has a physical shutter for its webcam that gives you privacy when you want it. And it has a long battery life to boot at 12 hours, 45 minutes in our tests. The latest version with 12th-gen Intel processors starts at $999 (although you can find it on sale for less). However, 2021 models with 11th-gen Intel processors are great performers, too, and can be found at a discount.
Like
- Amazing battery life
- Excellent 3:2 display
- Sturdy, fanless body
- Backlit keyboard and USI pen support
Don’t like
- Slower eMMC storage
- Thin audio quality
Acer’s Spin 513 is an update of sorts to one of the best Chromebooks from 2021, the Spin 713. It’s a two-in-one convertible Chromebook with a 13.5-inch display that has a 3:2 aspect ratio. The extra vertical space means less scrolling when you’re working. The screen size is also close to that of letter-size paper, making it comfortable for notetaking in tablet mode with a USI pen. Compared to the 713, it drops a couple of noncritical features like an HDMI output in favor of a more affordable price. It has amazing battery life, though, and a sturdy fanless design, making it silent — perfect for quiet classrooms, lectures or video calls.
How we test computers
The review process for laptops, desktops, tablets and other computer-like devices consists of two parts: performance testing under controlled conditions in the CNET Labs and extensive hands-on use by our expert reviewers. This includes evaluating a device’s aesthetics, ergonomics and features. A final review verdict is a combination of both objective and subjective judgments.
The list of benchmarking software we use changes over time as the devices we test evolve. The most important core tests we’re currently running on every compatible computer include: Primate Labs Geekbench 5, Cinebench R23, PCMark 10 and 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra.
A more detailed description of each benchmark and how we use it can be found in our How We Test Computers page.
Primate Labs Geekbench 5 test
We run both single-core and multicore CPU tests, and either the Vulcan (Windows) or Metal (MacOS) Compute test. On Android, Apple devices and Chromebooks, we run the CPU tests and the Compute test. Geekbench’s CPU tests measure the performance of a mixed workload.
Most college students use one laptop for everything from schoolwork in and out of class to music and video streaming to plain ol’ web browsing. Unless there are specialized applications you need to be able to run for your major, a reliable laptop for mixed-use is important. Our best college laptops list has models at a range of prices maxing out at around $1,000.
Battery life test
When you depend on having a charged laptop to get schoolwork done in classes, long battery life becomes very important. For all computers with a battery, we change the settings to keep the system from going to sleep or hibernating, disable pop-ups and notifications that may interfere with the test, and set screen brightness and volume (output to earbuds) to 50%. We then stream a looped, custom YouTube video over Wi-Fi in Chrome and use a timer app to track how long the system remains active.
Best Laptops for 2023
A selection of the best laptops you can buy right now.