Best laptop for students UK 2024: Our favourites, all tried and tested
Looking to buy a laptop for note-taking research and working on your coursework? We’ve tested hundreds and these are our favourites
What’s the best laptop for students? It may be trite, but the answer is the same as for any laptop buyer on a budget – it’s the laptop that best serves the needs of the student at a price that doesn’t break the bank.
We’ve tested hundreds of laptops over the years and here we’ve used that experience to pick out a list of laptops we think are best suited to student life. If your budget isn’t so limited, you can also read our best laptops roundup for the best of the best.
However, don’t make the mistake that any laptop will suit; your course, what you’re studying and your budget are all key factors in determining which laptop is right for you. We’ve also included a buying guide detailing all the key things to consider when buying a laptop for school, college or university.
Best laptop for students: At a glance
| Best student laptop overall | M2 MacBook Air (from ~£900) | Check price at Amazon |
| Best budget laptop | HP Pavilion 14 SE (14-ep0524sa) (~£449) | Check price at Currys |
| Best for creative tasks | Asus Vivobook S15 OLED (~£900) | Check price at Amazon |
| Best Chromebook | Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 (~£300) | Check price at Amazon |
How we test laptops for students
At Expert Reviews, we have decades of experience reviewing laptops so we can intuitively tell a good laptop from a bad one. However, we still need to be sure we’re being as unbiased as possible in our assessments, and to do that we run every single laptop we’re sent through a series of benchmark tests.
We test performance with a combination of in-house benchmarking software, third-party benchmarking tools and games tests. We also measure a laptop’s screen using a colorimeter and the DisplayCAL software. And we test storage speed, too, recording sequential transfer speeds.
Of course, no suite of laptop benchmarks would be complete without some kind of battery life assessment, and we test this by playing a video on loop and seeing how long it takes to run the battery flat from 100%.
We also ensure we actually use every laptop to write on, watch videos, browse the web, carry out video calls and more. To find out more about how we test, read our in-depth how-we-test article.
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The best student laptops you can buy in 2024
1. M2 MacBook Air: Best student laptop overall
Price when reviewed: From £900 | Check price at Amazon
- Great for… portability, battery life, coffee-shop credibility
- Not so great for… storing lots of big files
With the introduction of the M3 MacBook Air models, our long-standing favourite, the M1 MacBook Air has been discontinued and in its place we have the M2 MacBook Air. The price on the base configuration has been reduced to around £900 and we reckon you’ll struggle to find a better all-round laptop for that money.
Windows laptops do tend to come with more storage space and memory. Some might have OLED displays or better performance. But the M2 MacBook Air will compete with most of them on those fronts, and you get stunning battery life (it lasted an incredible 17 hours in our tests), sleek good looks to boot and excellent build quality to boot.
If you’re the sort who likes to tinker, you might want to skip this machine as you can’t upgrade it yourself easily, and it’s hard to repair as well, but for everyone else, it’s brilliant. If you’re lucky enough to have £900 to spend on the laptop that will carry you through your A-Levels and university, there is no choice than this.
Read our full Apple MacBook Air 13.6in (M2, 2022) review
Key specs – Processor: Octa-core Apple M1; RAM: 8GB; Storage: 256GB SSD; Screen size: 13.6in; Screen resolution: 2,560 x 1,600; Weight: 1.29kg
2. Acer Nitro V15: Best budget gaming laptop for students
Price when reviewed: £699 | Check price at Currys
- Great for… good gaming performance on the cheap
- Not so great for… playing games with low fan noise
The Nitro V15 is Acer’s entry-level gaming laptop and comes with AMD Ryzen CPUs and discrete Nvidia GPUs, including the RTX 2050, RTX 3050 and RTX 4060. The RTX 3050 machine, now with 6GB of vRAM, can usually be found for under £700 making a great balance between performance and price.
The RTX 3050 may lack support for the latest version of Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling, but performance is still solid with Cyberpunk 2077 running at 55fps on the Ray Tracing Low setting with DLSS set to Balanced.
Post-purchase upgradeability is excellent for a cheap gaming machine with two SODIMM mounts and two 2280 M.2 SSD bays easily accessible when you remove the base plate. Battery life is good too: despite the lowly 58Wh capacity it ran for nearly ten hours in our battery life test.
The two biggest failings with the Nitro V15 are a drab screen and loud fan noise when running in performance mode, but the same can be said about almost all entry-level gaming laptops. On the plus side, the speakers are surprisingly tuneful.
Key specs – Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS; GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050; RAM: 16GB; Storage: 512GB SSD; Display size: 15.6in; Display resolution: 1,920 x 1,080; Display type: IPS, 144Hz; Dimensions: 362 x 240 x 24mm (WDH); Weight: 1.9kg
3. HP Pavilion SE 14 (14-ep0524sa): Best budget laptop for students
Price when reviewed: £449 | Check price at Currys
- Great for… decent PC performance on a tight budget
- Not so great for… a full day without charging
If your course merely requires you to have access to a half-decent laptop and you don’t want to pay more than £500, then HP’s 14in Pavilion SE is certainly worth looking at. For your money, you get a very decent compact machine with modern underpinnings, no serious flaws and rather stylish looks.
The keyboard is excellent, the display is competent – although our tests revealed it to be a little dull – and, given the low cost, the configuration is surprisingly modern, with an Intel Core i5-1335U CPU, 8GB of RAM and a capacious 512GB of SSD storage. We were also surprised at how good the 1080p webcam and the speakers are.
Its main weakness is its battery life, which in our testing only reached 6hrs 30mins before dying. It’s also slightly disappointing that the keyboard doesn’t have a backlight. Still, given the low price, it’s very hard to complain. This is a great all-rounder at a very tempting price.
Read our full HP Pavilion SE 14 review
Key specs – Processor: Intel Core i5-1335U; GPU: Intel Iris Xe; RAM: 8GB; Display size: 14in; Display resolution: 1,920 x 1,080; Display type: IPS 60Hz; Storage: 512GB; Dimensions: 324 x 215 x 18mm (WDH); Weight: 1.4kg
4. Lenovo LOQ 15IAX9I: Best student laptop with discrete GPU
Price when reviewed: £650 | Check price at John Lewis
- Great for… 3D modelling on a budget
- Not so great for… high-detail Triple-A gaming
If you want a laptop with a discrete GPU for the lowest possible price you can’t do much better than the LOQ 15IAX9I. It combines an Intel Core i5 CPU with an Arc A530M GPU and comes in at a price of just £650. The GPU is a little puny for serious AAA gaming at anything less than the lowest detail levels, but for the creative work and 3D modelling/rendering it does just fine.
For a cheap laptop, LOQ 15IAX9I has great upgrade options. Once you’ve removed the base panel you can access two 2280 M.2 SSD bays as well as two SODIMM slots. The battery and wireless card are also easy to remove. And while the 12th-gen Intel Core i5-12450HX CPU isn’t the latest word in modernity, it provides more than enough performance for most tasks.
The keyboard is very high quality, redolent of one of Lenovo’s much-lauded ThinkPad laptops while the 144Hz Full HD IPS screen makes a good case for itself, with 101% sRGB colour reproduction and a maximum brightness of just over 350cd/m2. The speakers are easy on the ear too with plenty of detail and even some bass.
Read our full Lenovo LOQ 15IAX9I review
Key specs – Processor: Intel Core i5-12450HX CPU; GPU: Intel Arc A530M; RAM: 16GB; Storage: 512GB SSD; Display size: 15.6in; Display resolution: 1,920 x 1,080; Display type: IPS, 144Hz; Dimensions: 360 x 259 x 23.9mm (WDH); Weight: 2.4kg
5. Asus Vivobook 16X: Best multi-purpose laptop for students
Price when reviewed: £1,299 | Check price at Asus
- Great for… work and play
- Not so great for… fans of Asus’ OLED displays
Asus offers a Vivobook 16X to suit most pockets, depending on how much GPU grunt you want. Opt for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU and you’ll pay £799. Upgrade to the RTX 4050 and the price jumps to £1,299, while the range-topping RTX 4060 model costs £1,349. No matter which GPU you pick you get the same Intel Core i7-12650H ten-core processor, 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD.
The 16in 1,920 x 1,200 IPS display is colourful and bright and impressively accurate – we measured an average Delta E variance of just 0.94 vs the sRGB profile – making this the ideal laptop for creative tasks. With a 120Hz refresh rate, the screen runs animations smoothly, too.
There’s a comprehensive range of ports, we love the keyboard, you get a MUX switch to make the most of the GPU and battery life is good at over 12 hours. All in all, this is a killer laptop for those who need a little extra grunt, and it comes in at a reasonable price as well.
Key specs – Processor: Intel Core i7-12650HX CPU; GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050; RAM: 16GB; Storage: 512GB SSD; Display size: 16in; Display resolution: 1,920 x 1,200; Display type: IPS, 120Hz; Dimensions: 359 x 249 x 19mm (WDH); Weight: 1.83kg
6. Apple MacBook Air 15in (M2, 2023): Best big-screen laptop for students
Price when reviewed: £1,399 | Check price at John Lewis | Amazon
- Great for… performance, battery life, screen size and quality
- Not so great for… DIY upgrades and fixes, price
The newer M2-based MacBook Air has replaced the M1 in our affections now that the latter has been discontinued by Apple, and this 15in model is our choice as the best all-round machine for those seeking more screen real estate.
Battery life is astonishing – it lasted 15hrs 42mins in our tests – meaning it’s ideally suited to life on campus, where you’ll be traipsing from tutorial to library to lecture hall, and may not have the opportunity to plug it in and top up the power.
We love this laptop for other reasons, too. The speaker system and microphones are hard to beat – perfect for creative projects, podcasting and video voiceovers, not to mention video calls back home – and the large 15.3in IPS display gives you plenty of space to multitask.
Sure, it’s pricey, but think of it as an investment. This is a laptop that will last you for years, is a pleasure to use and keeps going for an age away from the mains. It’s absolutely worth saving up the extra cash for.
Read our full Apple MacBook Air 15in (M2, 2023) review
Key specs – Processor: Apple M2; GPU: Apple M2 8-core; RAM: 8GB; Display size: 13.6in; Display resolution: 2,560 x 1,664; Display type: IPS 60Hz; Storage: 256GB; Dimensions: 304 x 215 x 11.3mm (WDH); Weight: 1.24kg
7. Asus Vivobook S15 OLED: Best laptop for student creatives
Price when reviewed: £900 | Check price at Amazon
- Great for… performance, screen quality and battery life
- Not so great for… surreptitious gaming
If you thought OLED laptops were expensive and out of your reach as a student, then prepare to have the Asus Vivobook S15 prove you wrong. This machine is packed to the gunnels with high-powered hardware, has a vibrant display that’s perfect for working on creative projects, and yet it’s not that much more expensive than an M2 MacBook Air.
It comes with a 15.6in Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) OLED display that, in our tests, reached superb levels of brightness. The display also covers 100% of the DCI-P3 colour space, making it the perfect companion not only for those creative projects, but also for bingeing on Netflix shows when you get back to your student accommodation in the evening.
Add long battery life (it lasted 10hrs 39mins in our video playback test), a decent keyboard and a very good 1080p webcam and you have a superb all rounder. For less than £1,000, it’s a very tough package to beat.
Read our full Asus Vivobook S15 OLED review
Key specs – Processor: Intel Core i7-13700H; GPU: Intel Arc 350M; RAM: 16GB; Display size: 15.6in; Display resolution: 1,920 x 1,080; Display type: OLED 60Hz; Storage: 1TB SSD; Dimensions: 356 x 229 x 18mm (WDH); Weight: 1.7kg
8. Asus Zenbook S 16 (UM5606): Best premium laptop for students
Price when reviewed: £1,699 | Check price at Asus
- Great for… just about everything
- Not so great for… a cool lap and a full bank account
Trouncing the 15in MacBook Air in the premium category is the new Asus Zenbook S16. It’s a masterpiece of design that delivers effortless performance, a superb display, great battery life and the ubiquity of x86 Windows. In short, this is the best general-purpose laptop… in the world.
For a laptop without a discrete GPU, the Zenbook S16’s performance is nothing short of staggering; it’s even capable of running Triple-A games, albeit at low detail settings. Impressively, the battery life is truly Mac-like: it took over 14 hours for our video rundown test to put the lights out.
The 120Hz 2.8K OLED display is a strong contender for the best laptop display around, too. Supremely colourful and very accurate, it’s nigh-on perfect. The speakers are good, too.
All this technical goodness is wrapped up in a super-stylish 1.34kg chassis made from something Asus calls Ceraluminium. Silly name aside, it boasts all the physical and aesthetic benefits of aluminium and ceramic. The only downside of the Zenbook S 16 is that it gets rather hot under stress leaving you with warm legs if you use it on your lap.
Key specs – Processor: AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 CPU; GPU: AMD Radeon 890M GPU; RAM: 32GB; Storage: 1TB SSD; Display size: 16in; Display resolution: 2,880 x 1,800; Display type: OLED, 120Hz; Dimensions: 354 x 243 x 13mm (WDH); Weight: 1.34kg
9. HP Envy x360 14-fc0009na: Best convertible 2-in-1 for students
Price when reviewed: £1,249 | Check price at HP
- Great for… versatility and artistry
- Not so great for… outright performance
If you want your laptop for sketching or other arty pursuits, you’ll need one that has a good quality touch display that folds through 360-degrees and comes with a decent stylus. That’s a good description of the HP Envy x360 14.
This is a supremely versatile laptop. You can use it in laptop, tablet, A-frame (or tent) or easel form to suit exactly what you are doing. Granted as a tablet it’s a bit heavy (two iPad Pro 13in tablets weigh slightly less) but not unusably so.
Other highlights include a fabulous 14in 2.8K OLED screen, which is pin sharp at 185ppi and very colourful – it produces 113% of the colours in the Adobe RGB gamut.
The speakers are great, too, making this a superb media machine for use in your student digs. Our video rundown test took an impressive ten hours to drain the battery, although performance from the Intel Core Ultra 7 is good rather than exceptional.
Read our full HP Envy x360 14 review
Key specs – Processor: Intel Core Ultra 7 155U CPU; GPU: Intel Iris Xe (integrated); RAM: 16GB; Storage: 512GB SSD; Display size: 14in; Display resolution: 2,880 x 1,800; Display type: OLED, 120Hz; Dimensions: 353 x 227 x 16.9mm (WDH); Weight: 1.39kg
10. Asus Chromebook Plus CX34: Best Chromebook for students
Price: £400 | Check price at Amazon | Currys
- Great for… fans of the cloud, Google and Linux
- Not so great for… running Windows apps
Chromebooks are a lot more capable than they used to be and, thanks to Google’s latest minimum spec “Chromebook Plus” category of machines, they’re easier to buy, too. This Asus is an example of the new breed. It’s a fairly basic 14in laptop but it’s got it where it counts. It has a Full HD 1080p IPS display and an Intel Core i3 CPU, as per Google’s requirements. There’s a healthy 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, too.
Our reviewer said the keyboard was a “rather fine piece of work” and it even comes with a backlight, which is not a given, even on much more expensive laptops. There’s a sharp 1080p webcam for video calls, and in combination with Google’s “Temporal Noise Reduction” system this works well in most conditions, even low light. Even battery life is good: it lasted a solid 9hrs 11mins in our testing.
With a robust design that meets US MIL-STD 810H durability standards, this practical machine was well priced at its launch price of £429 but we’ve seen it regularly dip below that to £300 and even as low as £250, at which price it’s an outright bargain. If your needs are fairly basic when it comes to doing your school or university work and you don’t want to push the boat out to a more expensive Mac or Windows machine, the Asus Chromebook CX34 is well worth a look.
Read our full Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 review
Key specs – Processor: Intel Core i3-1215U; RAM: 8GB; Storage: 128GB UFS; GPU: Intel Iris Xe; Screen size: 14in; Screen resolution: 1,920 x 1,080; Dimensions: 326 x 214 x 19mm (WDH); Weight: 1.29kg
How to choose the best laptop for school, college or university
How much should I spend on a student laptop?
Depending on what your studies involve and whether you plan on using your laptop for play as well as work, you can spend anywhere between a couple of hundred and a couple of thousand pounds on a student laptop.
However, if you want your laptop to last you longer than a couple of years, we recommend you avoid the very cheapest machines at £300 or less. Above this price, laptops tend to be much more capable and pleasant to use, and the more you spend, the better they become.
Indeed, we recommend spending between £500 and £1,000. In this price bracket, you’ll find laptops that offer impressive performance coupled with attractive build quality.
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Do I need a fast processor and loads of RAM?
Processors and RAM aren’t too important if you just want a laptop for writing essays on – even a cheap Chromebook is good enough for Google Docs and searching the internet.
However, if your studies require the use of more demanding software for photo or video editing, 3D design or crunching databases, it’s worth putting money towards a more powerful CPU. Intel’s 11th-, 12th- and 13th-gen Core i5 and i7 processors are what you want here, or the more recent Core Ultra 5 and 7.
Meanwhile, AMD’s Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 range of processors often rival Intel’s in terms of performance (look for laptops with at least a 5000-series CPU), but come with a smaller price tag, while Apple’s M2 and M3 processors can give some Core i7 CPUs a run for their money.
More RAM is always welcome, as it means you can leave more applications and browser tabs open before your laptop grinds to a halt. You should look for a laptop with at least 8GB of RAM, and 16GB is even better if your budget allows it, but our advice is to avoid anything with 4GB or lower if you can possibly help it.
How much storage do I need?
This will be determined by how you plan on using your student laptop. If you’re going to be saving lots of documents locally and plan on downloading numerous apps and working on video or audio files, you’ll find storage gets eaten up pretty quickly.
A laptop with 256GB of storage will suffice for most students, but 512GB is a safer bet if you don’t want to have to uninstall and delete things a year or two after buying your new device, and 1TB is even better but a rarity at lower price points.
It’s important to look at the type of storage a laptop has in addition to how much of it you’re getting. A student laptop with a proper SSD (solid-state drive) is preferable to one with a cheaper eMMC flash drive.
What else do I need to look out for?
If you can try out a laptop before buying, then do so. Everyone has a different idea about what constitutes a comfy, usable keyboard or touchpad, and while we pay close attention to those aspects in our reviews, it’s well worth trying it out for yourself. Equally, what some people might consider a heavy, bulky laptop might be entirely manageable by other people’s standards.
Similarly, it’s worth keeping an eye out for the number of USB-C or USB 3 ports. The faster USB 3.2 Gen 2 versions are worth paying extra for if you need additional storage or backup through a fast external drive, and you’ll also have more options for connecting monitors and other devices.
It’s well worth leaving some room in your budget for a good external USB hard drive or SSD, or just making sure you use a cloud storage service such as OneDrive or Google Drive to keep your documents backed up. Even the best laptop for students can be damaged, lost or stolen, so it pays to make sure your coursework doesn’t disappear along with it.
