While we are almost halfway through the school year, it's a great time to pick up a new MacBook for a college student thanks to end-of-year sales. Finding the best MacBook for college students requires careful consideration depending on the major, how frequently the MacBook will be toted around campus, and how long it needs to last between charges. In addition to all of these concerns, MacBooks can get expensive, so value is another prime factor.
The good news is that there are basically no wrong choices among the current MacBook lineup. Apple laptops in 2023 are outstanding from top to bottom with an A+ blend of performance and battery life with the M1, M2, or M3 chipsets inside. We're just trying to make sure that we find the perfect fit for you. For most students, any Apple laptop can handle their course load, but majors like engineering, computer science, design, and film can benefit from the higher-end performance of the MacBook Pro lineup.
If you are in the market for a new Apple laptop right now, again it's a perfect time to buy with MacBook deals available from most major retailers as we close out the year.
So whatever the field of study, we've got you covered, let's take a closer look at the best Macbooks for college students and find the perfect fit.
The MacBook Air M1 remains the best MacBook for most college students. For the majority of students the upgrades found in the Air M2 aren't crucial and the M1 maintains that sub-$1,000 starting price with MacBook deals often dropping it to $899 or less.
The performance still outclasses most comparably priced thin-and-light Windows laptop and it delivers 14 hours and 41 minutes of battery life in our testing. For any typical computing task, the MacBook Air M1 is more than equal to the challenge and will outlast virtually every competitor on a charge.
So 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.
As long as you don't mind the older design, the MacBook Air M1 remains one of the best laptop deals even when it's not discounted and should draw strong consideration from anyone considering a new MacBook for college.
See our full MacBook Air with M1 (2020) review
While most college students will be happy with the MacBook Air M1, there's no denying the appeal of the updated design and chip inside the Air M2. The notch in the display takes a minute to get used to, but the rest of the changes are welcome with the addition of MagSafe charging freeing up those two Thunderbolt 4 ports for other purposes.
The M2 gives you a reasonable performance bump, bringing it roughly on par with the M1 Pro and it still delivered 14 hours and 6 minutes in our battery life test. The fact that it does all this while staying whisper quiet and cool without fans remains astounding.
The list of upgrades also includes a brighter display, a quad-speaker array and a new 1080p webcam. That first will be particularly welcome to students that are using the Air M2 in classrooms, coffee shops or a corner of the library with less than optimal lighting conditions.
The biggest consideration with the Air M2 is the price if you need to upgrade much from the $1,199 base model. As I mentioned, the Air M1 is Apple's trick for keeping the $999 price point, so you are paying a premium for the M2 model. If you find yourself cresting the $1,499 mark for your configuration then you may want to consider the base 14-inch MacBook Pro, which can regularly be found for $1,799.
See our full MacBook Air M2 review.
It may just be a bigger MacBook Air M2, but who said that was a bad thing? A larger display and an extra hour of battery life? Sign me up.
The other good news is that Apple didn't slam you with a significant price bump either. The MacBook Air 15 delivers everything that was excellent about the MacBook Air 13 M2 while giving you almost an extra hour of battery life and a 1.7-inch larger display, starting at $1,299.
That's a solid value, particularly when you consider getting a MacBook with a 15-inch+ display has historically cost you $2,500 or more. Finally, we have an affordable big-screen MacBook that delivers all of the performance that the average user needs for work, school, or general use.
See our full Apple MacBook Air 15 M2 review.
After rumors abounded that the M3 MacBooks weren't coming until 2024, Apple surprised us all with a new round of MacBook Pros to close out 2023. Most notably for college students we got a new 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M3 chip starting at $1,599.
That base M3 is going to offer plenty of performance for almost any college student and it still boasts incredible longevity with 17 hours and 16 minutes of battery life in our testing. While the M3 Pro or M3 Max models may be calling to some power users, take a long and hard look at that base model as the prices escalate quickly. However, if shaving minutes off projects is going to make a big difference for you, there's no question you do get a performance boost from the higher-end chips.
Our complaints with the 14-inch MacBook Pro are nothing new, the notch still isn't our favorite design choice and it still stings that they are using up all that display real estate without giving us Face ID. However, these are minor quibbles regarding an outstanding laptop that is now available for a more affordable price.
See our full 14-inch MacBook Pro (2023, M3) review.
We called the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M3 Max the "new king of MacBooks" and if that sounds like overkill for most college students then you heard us correctly.
Starting at $2,499 for the M3 Pro model and $3,499 for the M2 Max model, the 16-inch MacBook Pro isn't for everyone. However, if you are a college student in a particularly intensive major or are on the verge of moving on to the professional realm, this might be the right investment for you.
The notebook’s design is still virtually identical to the 2021 and early 2023 models, but that's not a complaint just yet. That means the new model retains the blessedly returned full HDMI and SDXC card reader. Battery life is mind-boggling for a laptop this powerful at just over 18 hours on a charge in our test, it also delivers that show-stopping Super Retina XDR mini-LED display, a super comfortable keyboard, and an excellent audio system.
Overall, the 16-inch MacBook Pro is one of the best laptops on the market, so if you have lofty needs and that price tag isn't going to prevent you from paying your tuition, it could be the right choice for you.
See our full 16-inch MacBook Pro (2023) review
How we test MacBook laptops
Why you can trust Laptop Mag Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
We put MacBooks through extensive benchmark testing — both synthetic and real-world — before they end up in the hands of our reviewers. We evaluate everything from speed and battery life to display brightness, speaker volume and system heat.
We use a Klein K10 colorimeter to detect the brightness and DCI-P3 color gamut of a laptop's display. For performance benchmarking, 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 25GB multimedia file. Our real-world graphics tests include Assasin's Creed Valhalla, Far Cry New Dawn, Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm and Shadow of the Tomb Raider with 1080p or higher resolution when the display supports it.
We also run heat tests by playing a 15-minute full-screen video and our battery test consists of continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. We consider everything over roughly 10 hours to be a good result. Of course, these tests are complemented with hands-on testing from our reviewers.
