I have a budget of around $750 and I expect to be able to code in it. I honestly have not much idea what the ideal requirement of a laptop for a college student should be, which is why I am asking here to get an estimate of the specs I should be considering while choosing one. I would advice against naming any specific laptop as I have no guarantee of its availability in my region.
Edit: Seeing some of the comments, I have decided to add some context and additional constraints:
- Fit for Computer Science: I wish for the laptop to handle all the tasks expected from the course with reasonable efficiency first and foremost. Gaming support (at least Minecraft) may be desirable but completely optional.
- Windows only: I am completely inexperienced with Linux and college life, and I want to prioritize my studies over setting up and learning a completely new OS until I am sure I can find enough time to consider switching, so for the time being I am going with Windows. Moreover, the cheapest models among the Macbooks available here cost way above my budget and aren’t feasible either.
- Newly purchasable models only: My college is offering a grant for newly bought laptops and it is in my best interest to avail the offer to get the most capable model possible, so I will not be purchasing any used laptop.
- Price matching allotted budget: For the same reason above, I will not be deviating from my budget by more than $100 from either side.
I understand that these constraints narrow down my options by a large margin. If no one can offer something that fulfills the above criteria, that’s OK. I will ask someone else or simply buy one by my own intuition. I will only request you to comment if you actually have a suggestion that respects the above constraints and not just to complain about them.
You can code pretty much with every laptop.
ThinkPad is always a solid choice.
It seems to me that the quality of Thinkpads have decreased the past few years, though I would still choose that over a Dell or HP. Thinkpads are best when buying used from companies replacing their computer fleet.
Refurbished ThinkPad, old body newish guts, will always be the best laptop
I think it would be prudent to look for 32 GB of RAM. 16 is comfortable, and 32 is good for if you will be working on larger projects.
DDR 5 is the current standard
I wouldn’t go under 500gb for a SSD. Windows 11 64 requires 64 GB of storage. More than 1 TB isn’t bad to consider, but you can also shuffle massive projects off to external storage.
Do not use a HDD. Use SSD or NVMe. NVMe is more expensive.
USB 3.2 is the most recent iteration of the USB standard. It’s OK to settle for 3.0 and no USB C if cost is an issue. You can buy adapters, and unless you are constantly moving huge files via USB, it doesn’t matter.
If you can get WiFi 6, 802.11ax, go for it.
Whatever you do, do NOT buy a gaming laptop. They usually have utterly terrible battery life and are very noisy.
If you are planning to code then for your own sanity, install Linux or get a Mac.
get a Mac.
No. Please stop supporting their soldered-in designed-ewaste ways
Just install Linux OP, you’ll get far more computer for the money AND you’ll be able to upgrade it in the future by avoiding a Mac
There are legitimate reasons to buy a Mac. For example I knew a guy in university who, in addition to being a computer science major, was an avid amateur filmmaker and frequently took filmmaking classes as electives. For that, he needed Premier Pro which doesn’t run on Linux, but does run on Mac. So he bought a used MacBook Pro.
Yes but the reasons to do so are specific and few and far between. OP did not say anything about Filmmaking, which is one of the few areas that there aren’t a whole lot of alternatives.
You definitely don’t need a Mac for CS/coding and nearly all other college work which is what OP mentioned.
And a used MacBook means you are a lot closer to a SSD failure, that you can’t easily replace because it’s all soldered just like Apple wants
For that, he needed Premier Pro which doesn’t run on Linux, but does run on Mac.
Kdenlive and Davinci Resolve say hi.
Industry standards and class requirements say “hi”.
Well fuck so called Industry standards and class requirements.
The digital world should be built upon non proprietary “standards”.
That’s a nice speech but if your boss tells you to use Premier Pro and you don’t, you get fired. If the assignment says to use Premier Pro and you turn in a Davinci Resolve project, you get a zero.
I don’t disagree that the status quo is bad, but you can’t pretend that the standards as they are don’t exist just because you don’t agree with them.
Well fuck that teach if they require you to use proprietary shit.
And fuck that company as well.
Yes the status quo exist and I refuse to accept it.
Besides to circle back, if company and course require software they need to have to provide it and hardware to run it on.
You had me in the first half
I would go for AMD ThinkPad, have the P14s Gen4 here and I love it.
Remember that the slimmer it is the more expensive it is (like, by a lot).Be warned that most AMD options from Lenovo have soldered ram.
Not the gen 2 L15 with Ryzen 5 though, I just upgraded mine about a month ago. Not sure if op can find it new though :/
Second hand / off-lease ThinkPad. They’re available in many countries.
As others have said, a t Thinkpad. I bought a Thinkpad E14 Gen 2 for $150 and it’s just awesome. I use it for school right now.
You could get a last generation AMD laptop with 16GB of RAM for about $500 USD in the states. I’ve seen some from Acer for ~$400 USD that’s pretty decent. Aim to get something with upgradable RAM if you can
I expect to be able to code in it
What kind of student? Computer science? Engineering?
Please see edit
Ok then. I’ll echo what some others are saying about 16GB being sufficient. If you were in engineering every now and then it’s not enough but I don’t think its the case for comp sci. I’d leave the door open and get one in which you can upgrade the RAM though.
One thing to look out for is CPU performance. I find the laptop CPU market is a disaster right now in which you really don’t know what you’ll get. LTT has a recent video on the topic. For most courses it won’t actually matter that much. Some examples of the ones where it could make a difference are numerical linear algebra courses, machine learning (classical, not neural networks), and computer vision (again, classical). In some of these extra RAM might also be helpful but I’d prioritize a better CPU over the RAM. You may look at CPU benchmarks to get an idea of their performance.
In terms of GPU… I don’t think you’ll get anything capable enough for training neural networks at this price point, which is the only thing you may need it for in comp sci. But it’ll help with light gaming (but I imagine integrated graphics is good enough for minecraft these days—but dont quote me on that).
Also lastly, I would still recommend finding something with decent Linux support even if you dont want to use it (yet), you may choose to install it down the line. My Dell XPS/Precision has pretty poor linux support with buggy trackpad issues which has caused issues for me in the past. Many comp sci students end up switching to Linux/dual booting for a good reason.
Worth noting that a GPU could be useful if they want to do game development courses but realistically you should be fine.
I’m a rising senior in college for CS and the only thing I’ve ever had that was remotely hard on my PC was my poorly-optimized freshman year assignments and an intro to cyber security assignment that had us using password hashing tools (it was a really cool assignment but kind of sucked for people who didn’t have access to a computer with a decent GPU)
I bought a 13" AMD Lenovo Yoga for about $750 last year to get through my senior year, and it’s legit one of the best college laptops I’ve ever had. The AMD APU is powerful enough to run most moderate games, I can play minecraft and space engineers fine. It ran Inventor and Creo just fine when I needed to do CAD work for classes. And the folding 2n1 touchscreen tablet was actually a game changer for digital notes. Battwry easily lasts 6 hours in light use and maybe 2 doing CAD. I’d buy it again in a heartbeat.
Since specific model availability might be a problem for you, just make sure you get a model with a minimum of 16gb RAM and a 1TB SSD. Im now a fan of the folding 2n1 form factor so give those a look- taking notes digitally is legitimately nice. Do not buy an Intel laptop, their mobile chips suck bad these days.
If you have a desktop at home, what was working super well for me was to just get a cheap laptop, and figure out Wake on Lan through RPI. When I needed to do anything that demanded more than running a simple text editor from my laptop, I just WoL my desktop and connected using Parsec. I never ran into issues, but it depends on WiFi you have (or having an unlimited mobile data plan, which I also have).
I could play any game through Parsec without any issues, and when they asked us to work in Unreal Engine, I was one of the only ones actually being able to run it without major stuttering and such a long loading times.
If you do end up getting a MacBook and want to run Linux on bare metal, you might want to get a slightly older one that has an Intel chip. Running Linux on Apple silicon is a slightly more involved process.
Just look for any generic OEM brand laptop like dell, Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo. Then look into both the price to performance in that laptop. And what is upgradable.
If your course allows it, an m1 macbook air might be within your price range if you shop around.
It would be better to get just about any other laptop and just install Linux. At least OP could get a laptop specced lower on ram and storage and upgrade later unlike Apples entire M line of MacBooks. No upgrades, and when (Not if, when) the storage dies you’re just screwed.
Plus, you just get more computer per dollar when you don’t have to pay the Apple Tax
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