1. The list in brief
2. Best overall
3. Best under $1,000
4. Best under $500
5. Best battery life
6. Best 2-in-1
7. Best for business majors
8. Best for engineering students
9. Recent reviews
10. How to pick the best college laptop
11. How we test college laptops
12. Why trust Laptop Mag
I know that picking the best laptop for college is one of the most important choices a student makes after school and major — so you want to get it right the first time. With that in mind, I've curated this guide to the best laptops for college to remove the guesswork from your search.
Your laptop is crucial to your studies and downtime, so consider everything you want and need to do with it. A law student's laptop requirements are drastically different from those of a chemical engineering student.
At Laptop Mag, my major is laptops, and we review more than 100 laptops from every major brand each year. My continuously updated list of the best college laptops results from all that hard work, so when you are ready to buy, you know you are getting the most up-to-date recommendations. I will help turn an endless sea of laptops into a simple multiple-choice test.
What are the key factors for a good college laptop? Long battery life and fast CPU performance are two. While a thin-and-light model won't cut it for every major, we'll try to avoid weighing you down too much. If you prefer to take notes by hand, a 2-in-1 laptop is for you.
The school year is almost upon us. Here are the best laptops for college available right now.
The Quick List
Have you got to get to class? Here's a quick rundown of our picks for the best college laptops. Follow the links to the full review if you want to know more about one.
The best overall
The MacBook Air M3 is the best laptop for college for most people. For just over $1,000, it offers over 15 hours of battery life, excellent performance, and a bright display.
The best under $1,000
The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED crushes almost every critical feature for a college laptop with nearly 16 hours of battery life, a gorgeous OLED display, and a powerful Intel Core Ultra CPU.
The best under $500
The Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus is an outstanding value, as it often dips below $400. It offers a versatile 2-in-1 form factor, nearly 10 hours of battery life, and an excellent keyboard.
The best long-lasting
The MacBook Pro M3 has a fresh MacBook Pro design and ports, but it doesn't sacrifice battery life, with 17 hours and 16 minutes in our testing. If you must go that long without plugging in, well, your professors are cruel.
Best 2-in-1 laptop
HP's 2-in-1 powerhouse is thin and sleek, with a gorgeous 2.8K OLED display and excellent speakers. Did I mention it has over 11 hours of battery life? If you need the flexibility of a 2-in-1, this is top of the class for 2024.
Best for business majors
Over 13 hours of battery life, off-the-charts productivity performance, a full keyboard with number pad, and a gorgeous 16-inch OLED display in a 3.3-pound laptop. This laptop deserves a promotion.
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Best for engineering students
Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is an excellent pick for engineering students. Its powerful RTX 4070 GPU and AMD CPU tick the boxes for most engineering programs. The gorgeous display, sturdy build, and exceptional keyboard round it out nicely.
Sean Riley has covered a wide variety of tech over his 13 years as a journalist but found his home at Laptop Mag in 2020. As the managing editor, he participates in every laptop review published on Laptop, whether as a reviewer or editor.
Best overall
The MacBook Air M3 is the best choice for most students in 2024. Starting at $1,099 ($999 for education), you get an outstanding keyboard, excellent performance, and remarkable endurance, which ticks all the boxes for college laptop shoppers.
The MacBook Air M3 lasted 15 hours and 21 minutes in our battery life test. With Apple's excellent build quality and strong support, this is a great choice for almost any college student.
Why buy the MacBook Air instead of the Pro? If you need more sustained performance or longer battery life, then by all means, the MacBook Pro 14 M3 is an excellent option that you'll spot a little further down this list. The main tradeoffs are weight and, of course, the higher starting price, around $1,500.
As long as macOS isn't a dealbreaker for you, college students will appreciate everything the MacBook Air M3 offers. If you need to save a little money, the MacBook Air 13 M2 remains a solid laptop available at $899 for education and sometimes less on sale. If you need a little more screen real estate, you can always check out the MacBook Air 15 M3, which is just $200 more. It has the same benefits as the Air 13 but a 15.3-inch display.
See our full Apple MacBook Air M3 review.
Best under $1,000
The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (Q425) was a hotly anticipated laptop this year, and it delivered on all fronts. The Intel Core Ultra CPU gives it outstanding performance, but the efficiency is even more impressive, with almost 16 hours of battery life!
For all of the details, you can check out our full review, but here's a look at a couple of critical benchmarks. In the multi-core Geekbench 6.2 test, the Zenbook managed to beat the MacBook Air M3 (12,707 vs. 12,087). And if you happen to need to create videos for school or as a part-time gig, in the Handbrake 1.6 test, the Zenbook converted a 4K video to 1080p in 6 minutes and 36 seconds, over a minute faster than the Air M3's 7:54.
The 1080p OLED display makes any content look fantastic, whether you're toiling away at schoolwork or taking a break to watch some streaming content. At 3 pounds, the Zenbook 14 OLED also won't overload your laptop bag, which you'll appreciate as you haul it around campus.
If you aren't a MacOS fan, this is easily the best laptop for college under $1,000. If you are an engineering student or creating content, this laptop may come up a little short on power, but if some presentations and papers are the heaviest lifting your laptop will do in college, this has you covered.
See our full Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (Q425) review.
Best under $500
The best college laptop won't do you much good if you can't pay for tuition, so if you're a bachelor of arts student who needs to keep things affordable, look no further than the sub-$500 Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus. While memorizing that long name may feel like an assignment, you'll appreciate everything it offers for typically less than $400.
As long as you don't need any specific Windows software for your major, Chrome OS will handle everything you need to do without a problem. While you may remember underpowered Chromebooks from grade school or middle school, times have changed, and the Flex 5i benefits from an AI-infused Intel Core i3-1315U chipset that will keep your productivity tasks running smoothly.
As the name suggests, the Flex 5i is a 2-in-1 laptop, which makes it perfect for streaming content in tent or presentation mode, whether it's lectures or Netflix. The 14-inch OLED touchscreen display could be brighter, but our reviewer found binge-watching content a great experience.
In our testing, we found the keyboard to be "clicky, super responsive, with excellent bounciness." While you can, of course, fall back on the touchscreen, the touchpad is spacious and accurate as well. Speaking of that touchscreen, you can also run Android apps if there's something that Chrome OS can't handle natively.
For around $400, the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus is an easy recommendation for budget-conscious college students.
See our full Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus review.
Best long-lasting
The MacBook Pro 14 M3 finally brings the updated Apple design to the most affordable "Pro" MacBook, starting at $1,599. That antiquated design was the one thing holding back a recommendation for the MacBook Pro 13 in 2023. Now you get all the outstanding performance and battery life without sacrificing those new ports and superior display.
The MacBook Pro 14 M3 is powerful enough to handle virtually any course load, including software engineering and other computing-intensive majors. Best of all, returning to the specific category we are talking about here, despite all that power, it still crushes it when it comes to battery life, with an incredible 17 hours and 16 minutes on our battery test, which simulates real-world usage.
If you have any remote courses, the upgraded 1080p webcam is vastly superior to the 720p camera in its predecessor. The icing on the cake is the comfy keyboard and gaming performance for one of the first times on a MacBook.
The MacBook Pro 14 M3 finally gives us a better entry point into the modern MacBook Pro design at a more palatable price. If the MacBook Air M2 just can't quite cut it for you, this is the clear upgrade option and one of the longest-lasting laptops on the market. If you need to "Max" things out, the MacBook Pro 16 (M3 Max, 2023) does outlast the Pro 14 by about 40 minutes, but at $3,499, it's Ivy League pricing that you can skip unless you need the added performance too.
See our MacBook Pro (14-inch, M3, 2023) review
Best 2-in-1
Our reviewer called the HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) a "near-perfect" laptop, which sounds like precisely the sort of thing you want to wield heading into college. Considering the laptop is typically just over $1,500, it serves up an incredible combination of features with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, 32GB of RAM, 2TB of SSD storage, and 11 hours of battery life with a 14-inch, 2.8K OLED touchscreen.
It's not the cheapest college laptop by any means, but you are getting excellent value. The sleek and durable build will hold up well in your laptop bag for four years or beyond. The 4K webcam and excellent built-in speakers could save you from buying an external webcam or speakers to augment your setup.
Digging into the specifics of that OLED display, the Spectre covered 85.8% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which surpasses competitors like the MacBook Air 13 M3 (77.8%). At 366 nits of brightness, the Spectre could be brighter, the MacBook Air turns the tables on it there at 476 nits, but it's still bright enough for use in anything but direct sunlight.
The Spectre held up well through our gauntlet of performance benchmarks. In the Geekbench 6.1 overall performance test, its multi-core score of 12,358 crushed the average premium laptop (8,443) and even outpaced the MacBook Air 13 (M3, 12,087). It also has a decent SSD speed, with a transfer rate of 1,362 megabytes per second, which is within the margin of error for the average premium result (1,378 MBps).
See our full HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) review.
Best for business majors
MSI isn't the first name you think of when you think about business laptops. But maybe that's time to change. The company's Prestige 16 AI Evo has a resume that will blow you away, including over 13 hours of battery life and prodigious productivity performance.
Battery life will be one of the big selling points for business majors and many others; our reviewer and lab tester were astounded to see the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H-powered laptop last up to 13 hours and 22 minutes in our Laptop Mag battery test. However, the part that is even more shocking is that given that excellent battery life, this laptop scored 13,310 in the Geekbench 6.1 overall performance test, surpassing Apple's MacBook Pro 14 M3 (12,024).
Business majors can still enjoy time off, and while the 16-inch 4K OLED panel gives you plenty of space for spreadsheets or presentations, you'll also be able to enjoy watching content on it when you're not studying to be a titan of industry. The Prestige 16 AI Evo's display covered 139.2% of the DCI-P3 color gamut in our testing. The average business laptop is closer to 80%.
Speaking of spreadsheets, the full keyboard with a number pad is a data-entry dream, our reviewer loved the comfortable and speedy chiclet-style keys.
While you perhaps are less security conscious at this stage in your career, the MSI Prestige is outfitted with robust protection, including a fingerprint reader and Windows Hello login support with the IR webcam.
At 3 pounds the MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo isn't a featherweight, but it's not a spine-compressing beast either, and well worth its weight considering everything on offer.
Read our full MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo review
Best for engineering students
The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is among our best gaming laptops of 2024, and the features that made it stand out make it a fine choice for engineering students. The affordable price is a welcome start, as a laptop with a dedicated GPU can climb north of $2,000 to $3,000 quickly, but the Legion 5 Pro is available for under $1,500.
Inside, the Legion 5 Pro should tick the boxes for most engineering programs, with an AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX CPU and an Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU. Are these the bleeding edge of performance? No, but they are plenty fast enough to handle any software or tasks that come your way.
Sometimes, affordable gaming laptops are cheap out on other aspects of the laptop. Still, the Legion 5 Pro crushed more than the internal specs with an outstanding keyboard that our reviewer called her keyboard soulmate. It didn't skimp on the display, reaching 82.4 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut and 319 nits of brightness. Those are unheard-of marks for a gaming laptop at this price.
There are more powerful systems if you want to spend more or are close to graduation and looking to step up to something more professional. Still, the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro will complete the job for most engineering students and let you have fun gaming in your downtime.
See our full Lenovo Legion 5 Pro review.
Recent reviews
We review dozens of laptops every year that aren't admitted into the prestigious best laptops for college page. While some simply didn't have what it takes, others are still strong options. Here are some of our most recently reviewed laptops that didn't make the cut.
How to choose the best college laptop
There are several factors students should consider before buying a laptop for college.
The first is portability, which goes hand in hand with screen size. Thirteen- and 14-inch laptops are popular among college students because they balance screen real estate and portability well. Ideally, you'll stay below 3 pounds as well, although budget or more powerful systems may have you go higher.
Battery life is another critical component of any good college laptop. If you plan to take the notebook to class or the library, don't count on there being an outlet! Choose a laptop with at least 9 hours of battery life, which should be enough to get you through a couple of classes with enough juice to hit the library, too.
Regarding specs, we recommend buying a laptop with an Intel 13th Gen Core i5 CPU, AMD Ryzen 7000 series, or Apple M2. You should also look for at least 8GB of RAM (16GB if you can afford it) and a minimum of 256GB of storage.
Don't be afraid to go with a Chromebook if you want to keep things affordable and don't have specific Windows or macOS software requirements. Chrome OS can handle typical tasks for university students, and Chromebooks tend to be cheaper and require less support.
Other things that will help you punch up a successful report or research complex topics include a comfy keyboard and a sensitive touchpad. And when it's time to relax, get a laptop with a vivid and bright display.
How we test college laptops
We put each laptop through extensive benchmark testing — both synthetic and real-world—before we send it to our reviewers. We evaluate each aspect of the laptop, including its performance, battery life, display, speakers, and heat management.
In our benchmark testing, we use a Klein K10 colorimeter to detect the brightness and the sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamut of the laptop's display. For performance testing, we run the laptop through a gauntlet of benchmarks, including Geekbench 5.4 and 3DMark professional graphics tests.
To determine real-world performance, we task the laptop with converting a 4K video to 1080p resolution and duplicate a 4.97GB multimedia file. Our real-world graphics test is Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm benchmark with medium settings at 1080p and 4K resolution.
We also run heat tests by playing a 15-minute full-screen video and measuring temperatures in different areas of the laptop. Last but not least, our battery test consists of continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. For MacBooks and premium Windows 10 or Windows 11 laptops, a runtime of over 9 hours is considered a good result, whereas gaming laptops and workstations that can stay powered longer than 5 hours deserve praise.
These tests are complemented with extensive hands-on testing from our reviewers who critique everything from the laptop's materials to the feel of its touchpad.
Why Trust Laptop Mag
Laptop Mag reviews over a hundred laptops yearly, from paperweight ultralights to everyday workhorses to lumbering gaming notebooks that scorch the frame rates of even the hottest AAA games. We're not just experts in the laptop field, as we go one step further by meticulously testing smartphones, tablets, headphones, PC accessories, software, and even the latest in gaming.
We are 100 percent independent and have decades of experience to help you buy with confidence. Laptop Mag has been testing and reviewing products for three decades and continues to deliver trustworthy reviews you can rely on.
Our experienced team of writers and editors scour the available information about the laptop and put it through its paces to determine which is best for you. But before they start, the testing team subjects each system to a rigorous regimen of synthetic and real-world tests to see how a system handles the type of work and games you’re most likely to throw at it.
Future Publishing, one of the world's largest technology publishers, enforces our editorial trustworthiness. As a company, we have unrivaled experience across every tech sector — and we're the group's specialist for all things mobile tech.
