1. The list in brief
2. Best for Most Students
3. Best Budget
4. Best Affordable Big-Screen
5. Best Portable Powerhouse
6. Best All-Out Performance
7. How We Test MacBooks
8. Why Trust Laptop Mag
Finding the best MacBook for college students requires careful consideration, depending on the major, how frequently students will tote the MacBooks around campus, and how long they need to last between charges. Beyond these concerns, MacBooks can get expensive, so value is another prime factor.
Apple's current lineup is outstanding across the board, and there are no wrong choices among the current MacBook lineup. Apple earns an A+ for the blend of performance and battery life offered by its M2 and M3 chipsets. As your dean of laptops, we're here to help you find the perfect MacBook, no matter the course of study. For most students, any Apple laptop can handle their course load. Still, majors like engineering, computer science, design, and film can benefit from the higher-end performance of the MacBook Pro lineup.
Two notable shakeups following the arrival of the MacBook Air M3 models in March are the discontinued MacBook Air M1 and MacBook Air 15 M2. They've been removed from this list for that reason, but if you can find a deep discount on either of our best MacBook deals, that could be a great value. If you can see the M1 for $699 or less and stick to primary productivity and web work, it will be fine for your needs. The 15-inch Air M2 will hold well for four years, but try to find it for under $999 for the base model.
Whatever your college major, we've got you covered; let's look at the best Macbooks for college students and find the perfect fit.
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. Sean has owned and reviewed numerous MacBooks over the years, so is well-positioned to help you find the best MacBook for college.
The best MacBook for college
Best for most
The MacBook Air M3 is the best MacBook for most college students in 2024. For just over $1,000, it offers over 15 hours of battery life, excellent performance, and a bright display. Add in its light and durable chassis, and you can see why it should earn a spot in your laptop bag.
Budget buy
The MacBook Air M2, at its $999 price point, is the best budget MacBook for college students and an excellent choice for many students. Over 14 hours of battery life paired with Apple's latest design, a comfortable keyboard, and incredible performance make it an outstanding campus companion.
Budget big screen
The MacBook Air 15 arrived last summer as a fantastic addition to the MacBook lineup for college students, and the M3 continues that tradition. It has a larger display and over 15 hours of battery life, and it is $1,000 cheaper than previous big-screen MacBooks.
Performance on the go
The MacBook Pro 14 M3 finally brings the latest MacBook Pro design at a more affordable price. This is still more than most college students need, but the endless battery life and incredible performance are with it.
Top-of-the-line
The MacBook Pro 16 M3 Max is overkill for the vast majority of college students, but for those who need maxed-out performance and battery life, there is no substitute. It offers over 18 hours of battery life and unmatched performance.
Best MacBook for Most College Students
For most college students in 2024, the MacBook Air M3 is the best Apple laptop. Use your college email address to bring the $1,099 price down to $999 for education (or the same $100 discount on higher-end models). This laptop will fly for typical college tasks like writing papers, researching on the web, watching videos, or performing myriad other productivity tasks.
If you have a writing-intensive major, you'll appreciate the outstanding keyboard, which will prevent finger fatigue during long typing sessions. No matter what your major, the 15 hours and 21 minutes of battery life in our Laptop Mag battery test will come in handy. If you're studying long enough to kill this laptop in a single session, you need to take a break.
The MacBook Air M3 also boasts a fantastically bright display if you work in less-than-ideal lighting conditions. At 2.7 pounds, it won't leave you dragging it around at the end of a day in your laptop bag.
Scroll down to see the rest of Apple's offerings. If you need a larger screen or have specific graphics or performance-intensive tasks you will face in college, then the larger Air M3 or one of the Pro models may be the right choice for you, but for most students, look no further.
See our full Apple MacBook Air M3 review.
Best Budget MacBook for College Students
The MacBook Air M2 is the best budget MacBook to choose in 2024. While the M3 has eclipsed the M2 chip, it still delivers plenty of power for most users. While the updated design with the notch remains slightly controversial, you get over it quickly. MagSafe charging freeing up those two Thunderbolt 4 ports for other purposes was a great addition.
The M2 performs roughly on par with the M1 Pro, which will cover the needs of the average student. It still reached 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.
Add on a bright display, a quad-speaker array, and a solid 1080p webcam. That display will be particularly welcome to students using the Air M2 in classrooms, coffee shops, or that one table in the library that is flooded in sunlight.
If you are just starting college, you may want to opt for the M3 to ensure that you'll feel no desire to upgrade in the next four years. However, with the M2 Air often dipping to $849 or below for the base model, it remains a strong economical choice.
See our full MacBook Air M2 review.
Best Affordable Big Screen MacBook for College Students
You can have the big MacBook on campus without spending over $2,500. Sure, in many ways, the MacBook Air 15 M3 is just a larger MacBook Air, but that's a good thing. You get a 15.3-inch display and improved performance for sustained tasks like video editing.
Starting at $1,299, the Air 15 M3 also blessedly doesn't command a ridiculous premium on the standard Air, so you aren't left feeling like you are being fleeced for the extra screen real estate. If you want to play when you're done with your studies, the Air 15 isn't ideal, but Nvidia can make MacBook gaming happen for you.
Gaming aside, the MacBook Air 15 is more than powerful enough for typical student tasks, and its battery should cruise through even the worst cram sessions with just over 15 hours on a charge in our testing.
See our full Apple MacBook Air 15 M3 review.
Best Portable Powerhouse MacBook for College Students
The new M3 MacBook Pro models surprised us to close out 2023, and while not every college student needs this kind of performance, the latest MacBooks are fantastic laptops. Most notably, we got the new 14-inch M3 model, which starts at $1,599, replacing the outdated 13-inch MacBook Pro.
That base M3 offers 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 will make a big difference for you, there's no question you do get a performance boost from the higher-end chips.
Our complaints about 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.
Best All-Out Performance MacBook for College Students
The "new king of MacBooks" is the 16-inch MacBook Pro M3 Max, and if that sounds like overkill for most college students, then you heard us correctly.
For the base M3 Pro model, you are starting at $2,499 and jump that up to $3,499 for the M3 Max model. There is no reason for most college students to spend that kind of money on a laptop. With that said, there are specific majors where this kind of performance is necessary, or if you are on the verge of moving on to the professional realm, this might be the right investment.
On the outside, things haven't changed much from the previous iterations. We aren't to the point of complaining about that just yet; we still appreciate the full HDMI and SDXC card reader. Apple Silicon battery life remains otherworldly at over 18 hours. The gorgeous Super Retina XDR mini-LED display, uber-comfortable keyboard, and excellent audio system are the icing on the cake for college students who may be using their laptop as their primary device for watching content.
The price is the biggest hurdle to clear with the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Rest assured, nothing new is coming to replace it soon, so now is the best time to make this investment if it's the right pick for you.
See our full 16-inch MacBook Pro (2023) review
How we test MacBooks
We put MacBooks through extensive benchmark testing—both synthetic and real-world—before they are handed to 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 a laptop's display's brightness and DCI-P3 color gamut. 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 with converting a 4K video to 1080p resolution and 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, we complement these tests with hands-on testing from our reviewers.
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. In fact, 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.
One of the world's largest technology publishers, Future Publishing, 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.
