Best laptops for college in 2023

If you're a student one of the best laptops for college can help you ace your exams and classwork, and then let you unwind by watching streaming content or maybe playing games. Now your course of study is going to dictate some of the requirements, but even after narrowing that down finding the best college laptop can feel like extra homework. 

The new school year is almost upon us and whether you are an incoming college freshman or need an upgrade before the 2023-2024 school year, our continuously updated list of the best college laptops is just the resource you need. 

What should you look for when buying a laptop for college? Make sure it has long battery life and fast CPU performance. A thin-and-light won't cut it for every major, but even if you need a more powerful laptop we'll try to avoid weighing you down too much. And if you prefer to take notes by hand, a 2-in-1 laptop gives a blended laptop and tablet experience.

Without further ado, here are the best laptops for college, including one college laptop under $500 to make sure you can still make your tuition payments.

The Quick List

Got to get to class soon? Here's a quick rundown of our picks for the best laptops for college, follow the links to the full review if you want to know more about one.

Best overall laptop for college

If you prefer macOS to Windows 11, then go with the Apple MacBook Air. While the MacBook Air M2 is now available, many users will still be perfectly happy with the MacBook Air M1, which comes in under $1,000 and is available for $899 to students even when it's not on sale. 

That affordable pricing mixed with its outstanding performance along with 14 hours and 41 minutes of battery life make it hard to beat for college students that are looking to get the most bang for their buck.

Why buy the MacBook Air instead of the Pro? While the Pro has better sustained performance, the MacBook Air is cheaper and is pin-drop silent because it doesn't have a fan. And, of course, Apple's least expensive 13.3-inch model is the most portable, coming in at only 0.6 inches thick and 2.8 pounds. 

The MacBook Pro is a strong option as well, it appears later on this page, but considering all of the factors for a college laptop, the MacBook Air is going to be the better choice for most macOS fans looking for their perfect college laptop.

See our full Apple MacBook Air (M1, 2020) review.

See our full Apple MacBook Air M2 review.

Best Windows laptop for college

The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (UM3402), packed with an AMD Ryzen 7 7730U CPU, blew us out of the water with over 11 hours of battery life, solid performance, an attractive design, a sharp 2.8K OLED touchscreen, all at a palatable price tag. This is one of those rare laptops that ticks just about every box that you are going to care about.

If you aren't a macOS fan this is easily the best laptop for college under $1,000 and if your laptop doubles as a content consumption device this obliterates any of the MacBook Air models. If you are an engineering student or doing any content creation 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 (UM3402) review.

Best laptop for college under $500

If you're a Chrome OS user in need of an upgrade for your college laptop or are considering Chrome OS, then don't hesitate to buy the Acer Chromebook Spin 714. This excellent 2-in-1 laptop delivers a gorgeous 14-inch touchscreen and fast performance thanks to its Intel Core i5-1235U CPU. Hovering at right around $500 it is also one of the most affordable options for students.

The sturdy and flexible design make it a perfect fit for hauling around campus and getting work done anywhere. Add the stylus and you can easily add diagrams or handwritten sections to notes if you prefer, while the excellent keyboard will let you keep hammer out papers or keep pace with your professors.

Battery life is the one middling spec for the Chromebook Spin 714, at just over 7 hours in our testing, so if you are frequently spending your entire day without access to an outlet you may need to consider another option.

See our full Acer Chromebook Spin 714 (2022) review. 

Best long-lasting college laptop

While the design is unchanged, the M2 inside the MacBook Pro 2022 gives another performance and battery life boost to Apple's already outstanding laptop.

The MacBook Pro is more powerful than nearly every PC on the market, including some workstations. And despite cramming so much power into such a slim and sleek chassis, the Pro lasted for a ludicrous 18 hours and 20 minutes on our battery test, which simulates real-world usage.

Thanks to the image processing unit, the webcam (sadly, still 720p) is better than its 720p rivals and since it runs on Apple's ARM-based architecture, iPad and iPhone apps are available on Mac. 

While the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models may tempt some users with high-end needs, the MBP 13-inch with M2 remains a strong option at a far more affordable price point for those that need just a bit more juice than the MacBook Air.

See our MacBook Pro (13-inch, M2, 2022) review

Best 2-in-1 laptop for college

The Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 this year is back with a vengeance this year delivering one of the best 2-in-1 laptops we've had the pleasure of using and unquestionably one of the most mesmerizing displays. Those would be strong qualifications already, but on top of that it gives you excellent performance, otherworldly SSD speeds, and over 10 hours of battery life. Lenovo earned an "A" for this one.

While it's not going to be able to keep pace with engineering or some computer science majors, the vast majority of college students would love to tote this little 3.1-pound powerhouse around campus. At around $1,500 it isn't exactly cheap, but it's worth the price of admission.

See our full Lenovo Yoga 9i (Gen 8) review. 

Best premium Apple college laptop

The MacBook Pro 14 M2 Pro continues what Apple started with its massive redesign in 2021 and it remains an outstanding laptop. For the average student this is massive overkill, but if you need this kind of performance and either prefer or require macOS software, it's hard to beat. 

The notebook’s design is lightweight and sleek with plenty of room for a full HDMI and an SDXC card reader. And the M2 Pro chip brings even more power, while serving up over 14 hours of battery life with a formidable quick charge, a show-stopping display, a super comfortable keyboard and an excellent audio system. 

What's the catch? As per usual with Apple it's the price tag, the $1,999 starting price is a lot to swallow and if you need more storage, RAM, or want that M2 Max chip instead of the Pro it escalates quickly. It would have been nice if Apple would have offered a lower-end option, maybe one with last year’s M2 chip, but for everything the MacBook Pro 14 is bringing, it’s a worthwhile investment. 

See our full 14-inch MacBook Pro (M2 Pro, 2023) review

Best 17-inch college laptop

The LG Gram 17 earned our Editors' Choice badge and 4.5 out of 5 stars with our reviewer particularly blown reviewer by its lightweight design, excellent battery life, and gorgeous 17-inch display.

For college students that value color accuracy; whether you are doing graphic design, illustration, photo editing or video editing the LG Gram 17 is an outstanding choice. Even if your course of study doesn't need it, you are still going to love the big accurate display, the rich speakers, and if you are a casual gamer the RTX 3050 inside will let you dip your toe into anything but the most intense AAA titles.

If a big screen is important to you then there is no better college laptop than the LG Gram 17, it ticks that big screen box without making you regret it every time you have to carry your laptop in your bag thanks to its 3.2 pound weight.

See our LG Gram 17 2023 review

Best gaming laptop for college

The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 is among our favorite gaming laptops of 2023. If you're looking to stand out with your gaming laptop the AniMe Matrix Display lets you create pixelated masterpieces that scroll across the lid, which is impossible to miss. Opening the laptop, the 16-inch (2560 x 1600p) ROG Nebula HDR Mini LED display with its 240Hz refresh rate is hard to look away from.

Inside the M16 features up to an Nvidia 4090 GPU, which allowed it to crush our benchmarks. For example, the Zephyrus M16 produced 30,152 on the 3DMark FireStrike test, which is comically beyond the 5,643 premium gaming average. When we ran the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark, the M16 reached an excellent 69 fps at 1080p and 56 fps at 1600p. The Intel Core i9-13900H CPU also served up the wins, sailing past the Geekbench 5.4 category average and its competitors, including one decked out with an Intel Core i9-12900HX processor. 

Top configurations are expensive, but if you can afford it, the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 is a heavy-duty powerhouse in a lightweight, glittering frame. 

See our full Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) review.

How to choose the best college laptop

There are a number of factors students should consider before buying a laptop for college. 

The first is portability, which goes hand-in-hand with screen size. 13-inch laptops are popular among college students because they offer a good balance between screen real estate and portability. The Dell XPS 13 is a great example. It weighs around 2 pounds and is just 0.5 inches thick, yet you get a 13.3-inch edge-to-edge display.  We're also seeing more and more 14-inch laptops, like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which is remarkably portable for the screen size. 

Battery life is another key 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!  Consider a laptop that gets at least 9 hours of battery life, which should be enough to get you through a couple of classes with enough juice for studies. 

When it comes to specs, we recommend buying a laptop with an Intel U-series or H-series Core i5 CPU, at least 8GB of RAM (16GB is great) and a minimum of 256GB of storage. AMD's chips are strong contenders in this arena as well, anything with a 4000-series or newer processor is going to be a great fit. Apple's M1 or newer M1 Pro and M1 Max naturally fit the bill as well, although the latter push the price up considerably. On the budget end, Chromebooks like the Pixelbook Go offer excellent value for college students. 

Other things that will help you punch up a successful report or research complex topics include a comfy keyboard and sensitive touchpad. And when it's time to relax, be sure to get a laptop with a vivid and bright display (like any of those listed here). 

How we test college laptops

We put each laptop through extensive benchmark testing — both synthetic and real-world — before they end up in the hands of 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 to convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution and to duplicate a 4.97GB multimedia file. Our real-world graphics test is the 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 for 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.