8 best student laptops for school, college and university

Steve Hogarty
·8 min read
Whether you’re spending £100 or £1,000, there’s a laptop to meet your academic demands (iStock/The Independent )
Whether you’re spending £100 or £1,000, there’s a laptop to meet your academic demands (iStock/The Independent )

Whether you’re starting sixth form or you’re working on your final year dissertation, you need a reliable laptop that’s up to the task. The best student laptops are fast enough to handle academic work, easy to carry between lecture halls and home, and affordable enough to be gentle on the bank balances of skint university students.

With a giant array of student laptops to choose from it can be hard to know where to begin. If you have a preference for MacBooks, your decision is easier – we think the 2020 version of the MacBook air (£999, Apple.com) walks the line between price and performance – but look beyond the Apple-dome and you’ll find a huge variety of excellent Windows laptops and Chromebooks to suit different needs.

Not everyone needs a fast student laptop. If your coursework involves jobs like complex computation, multimedia editing and sound engineering, you’ll obviously want a laptop with a decent CPU that won’t buckle under the strain.

But for less specialist uses like web browsing, emails and penning essays, a cheap and cheerful Chromebook with a display that’s comfortable to look at during long writing sessions could be perfect for you.

How we tested

We’ve spent weeks testing all of these laptops, considering their suitability for a range of different types of users. Value for money was our primary consideration for most students, but we also took into account each laptop’s potential for watching entertainment, gaming, and handling specialist tasks like programming and graphic design.

The best laptops for students in 2022 are:

  • Best for programming – Dell XPS 13: £949.01, Dell.com

  • Best for graphic design – Apple MacBook air (M1, 2020): £999, Apple.com

  • Best all-round – Acer swift 3: £599, Amazon.co.uk

  • Best Chromebook for students – Lenovo ideapad duet: £259, Amazon.co.uk

  • Best for entertainment – Asus vivobook 15: £449.99, Amazon.co.uk

  • Best for university – Lenovo yoga slim 7: £479.97, Box.co.uk

  • Best cheap laptop for students – Lenovo ideapad 3i: £219, Currys.co.uk

  • Best gaming laptop for students – Asus TUF gaming A15: £649.97, Box.co.uk

Dell XPS 13 (2022)

The 13in variant of Dell’s flagship laptop is a showcase of everything the manufacturer can pack into a single device. The Dell XPS 13 is one of the best Windows laptops you can buy, and pairs a minimalist, no-fuss design with top-level functionality and performance.

In our review of the 15in model, we said “if you’re in the market for a high-performance and productivity-focused Windows laptop with a spectacular next-generation display, the new Dell XPS 15 is the best you’ll find. This is about as close to perfect as laptops get.”

The bright, crisp touchscreen is one of the best displays on any laptop, while under the hood, the 12th generation Intel processor packs more performance than the average desktop computer.

Buy now £949.01, Dell.com

Apple MacBook air (M1, 2020)

While the new 2022 version rocks the latest M2 processor, we still recommend the cheaper M1 version for the budget-conscious student. When it first hit the market, Apple’s thinnest, lightest MacBook transcended the tech world to become an instantly recognisable design icon, the profile of which many rival laptops have since followed.

If you’ve ever held one, you’ll understand why it’s such an alluring device: the 2020 MacBook air is an elegant piece of engineering, weighing just 1.29kg and measuring 4.1mm at its thinnest point. The M1 processor is an ARM-based chip that unlocks notable performance boosts and better battery efficiency over the older Intel CPU seen in previous generations, making it the ideal study partner for everyday use.

Buy now £999.00, Apple.com

Acer Swift 3

The Acer swift 3 is a lighter, more portable and more premium feeling alternative to the Acer aspire 5 (was £699.99, now £579.99, Amazon.co.uk), and still manages to pack in all of the features you might need in a Windows 11 laptop. Weighing just 1.2kg and measuring 16mm thin, it’s straightforward to pop into and out of a bag when you’re working on the go. The AMD Ryzen 5 and 8GB of memory keeps performance fast, even while you’re juggling a hundred open Chrome tabs.

The mid-range AMD processor isn’t the latest chip on the market, but it’s fast enough for this price range and more than capable of handling everyday tasks. The all-day battery life, the option to upgrade to a generous 1TB of SSD space and the plentiful array of connectivity options makes the Acer Swift 3 a versatile piece of kit.

Buy now £599.00, Currys.co.uk

Lenovo ideapad duet Chromebook

An affordable 2-in-1 from Lenovo, the ideapad duet is a zippy little Chromebook-tablet that doubles as a laptop thanks to its included magnetic keyboard cover and stand. As a Chromebook it runs on ChromeOS software, meaning you can’t install Windows or MacOS applications on here. That’s fine for everyday use – word processors, spreadsheets, even photo editing can all be done in a browser window – but it could be an issue if there are any specific Windows applications you need to install as part of your work or study.

The crisp 1920 x 1200 resolution screen is pretty much unheard of at this price, and is excellent for getting some work done while on the go or watching Netflix shows in your downtime. We chose the Lenovo ideapad duet as our best buy in our list of the best Lenovo laptops, where our reviewer described it as “a quick, sleek and versatile piece of kit.”

Buy now £259.00, Amazon

Asus Vivobook 15

Asus consistently makes excellent mid-range Windows 11 laptops at affordable prices, and the Asus vivobook 15 is no exception. The Intel Core i5 processor is designed to breeze through everyday use cases like taking notes, web browsing and researching, but is just about powerful enough to cope with more demanding tasks like photo editing, audio engineering and graphic design when it needs to be.

The high-definition screen and slim bezels also make the Asus vivobook 15 a superb device for streaming episodes of House of the Dragon while hungover in bed.

Buy now £449.99, Amazon.co.uk

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7

A premium ultrabook without the premium price tag, right now, the Lenovo yoga slim 7 is the best laptop you can buy for under £600. For the last few years, Lenovo has been quietly turning out laptops and tablets that offer smart design and decent specs without costing the earth, and this model is the culmination of the Chinese manufacturer’s best work.

This super-thin laptop is powered by an AMD Ryzen 5 processor tuned for laptops, giving you enough grunt to handle CPU-intensive tasks like photo and video editing and even some lower-end games. The Full HD screen has excellent colour reproduction and contrast, and the long-range microphones with active-noise cancellation are well-suited to Zoom calls.

Buy now £479.97, Box.co.uk

Lenovo ideapad 3i

Laptops don’t get much more affordable than the Lenovo ideapad 3i. Perfect for churning through written homework, watching the odd YouTube video and firing off emails, this Windows 11 laptop keeps things simple with a cheap and cheerful Intel Pentium Gold processor and 4GB of RAM.

That means you won’t be playing any Call of Duty on this thing – which could be a positive, depending on your perspective –but the slim design and 1.4kg weight make the Lenovo ideapad 3i perfect for chucking in a backpack.

Buy now £219.00, Currys.co.uk

Asus TUF gaming A15

Downtime is just as important as work, and a good gaming laptop for students can kill two birds with one stone. Powerful enough to run the latest games, the Asus TUF A15 is also specced to handle more academic pursuits such as video rendering, graphic design, audio editing and complex computational programming.

The Asus TUF range sports a 144hz screen for silky smooth framerates, while this particular model comes equipped with a high-performance GTX 3050 graphics card, an AMD Ryzen 7 CPU and 8GB of RAM.

Buy now £649.97, Box.co.uk

Student laptop FAQs

Can students get discounts on laptops?

Yes. Most of the big laptop brands offer discounts to current and newly accepted university students, as well as teachers and staff, so it’s always worth checking if the laptop you’re buying can be made cheaper with your student ID.

Apple’s discount is the best known and can be accessed through the Apple Store for Education, where you can save up to 10 per cent on most Apple products. Other companies have also followed suit: ASUS offers up to 15 per cent off some laptops; Dell offers students 20 per cent off electronics; and HP offers up to 40 per cent off a selection of its products.

Verification is either manual, or through partnerships with student deals sites like Unidays and Student Beans.

The verdict: Laptops for students

The 2020 MacBook air is our pick of the best laptops for students. At £999 it’s an investment, but Apple’s thinnest laptop is stylish, powerful, and will continue meeting your needs long after you’ve chucked your mortar board into the sky.

On a budget? We recommend the Lenovo ideapad duet. A zippy little Chromebook with a detachable keyboard that doubles as a tablet, it’s ideal for slogging through late night workloads and wasting hours watching YouTube videos in the bath.

To print wirelessly with ease, try one of our picks of the best home printers