1. The list in brief
2. Best overall
3. Best under $1,000
4. Best under $500
5. Best battery life
6. Best 2-in-1
7. Best 17-inch
8. Best for engineering students
9. Recent reviews
10. How to pick the best college laptop
11. How we test college laptops
12. Why trust Laptop Mag
Picking the best laptop for college is arguably the most important choice a student will make after their school and major; it is the most vital tool for these years. No matter your college major, a laptop can help you ace your exams and classwork, and it can even let you unwind by watching streaming content or playing some games. Not every course of study is the same, so your exact needs will differ depending on your major, but even after narrowing that down, finding the best college laptop can feel like extra homework.
Well, good news: Here at Laptop Mag, our major is laptops, and we do the homework for you year-round by testing and reviewing over one hundred laptops from every major brand. Our continuously updated list of the best laptops for college in 2024 is the result of all that hard work, so when you are ready to buy, you know you are getting the most up-to-date recommendations.
What are the key things to look for when buying a college laptop? Make sure it has a long battery life and fast CPU performance. A thin-and-light won't cut it for every major, but even if you need a more powerful laptop, we'll try to avoid weighing you down too much. And if you prefer to take notes by hand, a 2-in-1 laptop gives a blended laptop and tablet experience.
Without further ado, here are the best laptops for college available right now.
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.
The Quick List
Have you got to get to class? Here's a quick rundown of our picks for the best college laptops. Follow the links to the full review if you want to know more about one.
The best overall
The MacBook Air M3 is the best laptop for college for most people. For just over $1,000, it offers over 15 hours of battery life, excellent performance, and a bright display.
The best under $1,000
The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED crushes almost every critical feature for a college laptop with nearly 16 hours of battery life, a gorgeous OLED display, and a powerful Intel Core Ultra CPU.
The best under $500
The Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus is an outstanding value, as it often dips below $400. It offers a versatile 2-in-1 form factor, nearly 10 hours of battery life, and an excellent keyboard.
The best long-lasting
The MacBook Pro M3 has a fresh MacBook Pro design and ports, but it doesn't sacrifice battery life, with 17 hours and 16 minutes in our testing. If you must go that long without plugging in, well, your professors are cruel.
Best 2-in-1 laptop
Lenovo crushed it with the Yoga 9i Gen 8 this year. It offers strong performance, an amazingly vibrant 14-inch touchscreen, and over 10 hours of battery life for under $1,500.
Best 17-inch
A gorgeous 17-inch display in a 3.2-pound laptop with excellent performance and long-lasting battery life? This is the best big-screen laptop for college.
Load the next laptop
Best for engineering students
Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is an excellent pick for engineering students. Its powerful RTX 4070 GPU and AMD CPU tick the boxes for most engineering programs. The gorgeous display, sturdy build, and exceptional keyboard round it out nicely.
Best overall
The MacBook Air M3 is the best choice for most students in 2024. Starting at $1,099 ($999 for education), you get an outstanding keyboard, excellent performance, and remarkable endurance, which ticks all the boxes for college laptop shoppers.
The MacBook Air M3 lasted 15 hours and 21 minutes in our battery life test. With Apple's excellent build quality and strong support, this is a great choice for almost any college student.
Why buy the MacBook Air instead of the Pro? If you need more sustained performance or longer battery life, then by all means, the MacBook Pro 14 M3 is an excellent option that you'll spot a little further down this list. The main tradeoffs are weight and, of course, the higher starting price, around $1,500.
As long as macOS isn't a dealbreaker for you, college students will appreciate everything the MacBook Air M3 offers. If you need to save a little money, the MacBook Air 13 M2 remains a solid laptop available at $899 for education and sometimes less on sale. If you need a little more screen real estate, you can always check out the MacBook Air 15 M3, which is just $200 more. It has the same benefits as the Air 13 but a 15.3-inch display.
See our full Apple MacBook Air M3 review.
Best under $1,000
The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (Q425) was a hotly anticipated laptop this year, and it delivered on all fronts. The Intel Core Ultra CPU gives it outstanding performance, but the efficiency is even more impressive, with almost 16 hours of battery life!
For all of the details, you can check out our full review, but here's a look at a couple of critical benchmarks. In the multi-core Geekbench 6.2 test, the Zenbook managed to beat the MacBook Air M3 (12,707 vs. 12,087). And if you happen to need to create videos for school or as a part-time gig, in the Handbrake 1.6 test, the Zenbook converted a 4K video to 1080p in 6 minutes and 36 seconds, over a minute faster than the Air M3's 7:54.
The 1080p OLED display makes any content look fantastic, whether you're toiling away at schoolwork or taking a break to watch some streaming content. At 3 pounds, the Zenbook 14 OLED also won't overload your laptop bag, which you'll appreciate as you haul it around campus.
If you aren't a MacOS fan, this is easily the best laptop for college under $1,000. If you are an engineering student or creating content, this laptop may come up a little short on power, but if some presentations and papers are the heaviest lifting your laptop will do in college, this has you covered.
See our full Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (Q425) review.
Best under $500
The best college laptop won't do you much good if you can't pay for tuition, so if you're a bachelor of arts student who needs to keep things affordable, look no further than the sub-$500 Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus. While memorizing that long name may feel like an assignment, you'll appreciate everything it offers for typically less than $400.
As long as you don't need any specific Windows software for your major, Chrome OS will handle everything you need to do without a problem. While you may remember underpowered Chromebooks from grade school or middle school, times have changed, and the Flex 5i benefits from an AI-infused Intel Core i3-1315U chipset that will keep your productivity tasks running smoothly.
As the name suggests, the Flex 5i is a 2-in-1 laptop, which makes it perfect for streaming content in tent or presentation mode, whether it's lectures or Netflix. The 14-inch OLED touchscreen display could be brighter, but our reviewer found binge-watching content a great experience.
In our testing, we found the keyboard to be "clicky, super responsive, with excellent bounciness." While you can, of course, fall back on the touchscreen, the touchpad is spacious and accurate as well. Speaking of that touchscreen, you can also run Android apps if there's something that Chrome OS can't handle natively.
For around $400, the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus is an easy recommendation for budget-conscious college students.
See our full Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus review.
Best long-lasting
The MacBook Pro 14 M3 finally brings the updated Apple design to the most affordable "Pro" MacBook, starting at $1,599. That antiquated design was the one thing holding back a recommendation for the MacBook Pro 13 in 2023. Now you get all the outstanding performance and battery life without sacrificing those new ports and superior display.
The MacBook Pro 14 M3 is powerful enough to handle virtually any course load, including software engineering and other computing-intensive majors. Best of all, returning to the specific category we are talking about here, despite all that power, it still crushes it when it comes to battery life, with an incredible 17 hours and 16 minutes on our battery test, which simulates real-world usage.
If you have any remote courses, the upgraded 1080p webcam is vastly superior to the 720p camera in its predecessor. The icing on the cake is the comfy keyboard and gaming performance for one of the first times on a MacBook.
The MacBook Pro 14 M3 finally gives us a better entry point into the modern MacBook Pro design at a more palatable price. If the MacBook Air M2 just can't quite cut it for you, this is the clear upgrade option and one of the longest-lasting laptops on the market. If you need to "Max" things out, the MacBook Pro 16 (M3 Max, 2023) does outlast the Pro 14 by about 40 minutes, but at $3,499, it's Ivy League pricing that you can skip unless you need the added performance too.
See our MacBook Pro (14-inch, M3, 2023) review
Best 2-in-1
The Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 is back with a vengeance, delivering one of the best 2-in-1 laptops we've had the pleasure of using and unquestionably one of the most mesmerizing displays. Those would be strong qualifications already, but on top of that, it gives you excellent performance, otherworldly SSD speeds, and over 10 hours of battery life. Lenovo earned an "A" for this one.
Lenovo's consistently outstanding keyboard design is present and will ensure that you can comfortably write or research on this laptop for hours at a time. While you won't want to crank up its speakers everywhere, when you do it offers one of the better audio experiences our reviewer has encountered.
While it won't be able to keep pace with engineering or some computer science majors, the vast majority of college students would love to tote this little 3.1-pound powerhouse around campus. At around $1,500, it isn't exactly cheap, but it's worth the price of admission.
See our full Lenovo Yoga 9i (Gen 8) review.
Best 17-inch
The LG Gram 17 earned our Editors' Choice badge and 4.5 out of 5 stars. Our reviewer was particularly impressed by its lightweight design, excellent battery life, and gorgeous 17-inch display.
For college students who value color accuracy, whether they are doing graphic design, illustration, photo editing, or video editing, the LG Gram 17 is an outstanding choice. Even if your course of study doesn't need it, you will still love the big, accurate display and the rich speakers, and if you are a casual gamer, the RTX 3050 inside will let you dip your toe into anything but the most intense AAA titles.
If a big screen is essential to you, then there is no better laptop for college than the LG Gram 17. It ticks that big screen box without making you regret it every time you have to carry your laptop in your bag, thanks to its 3.2-pound weight.
See our LG Gram 17 2023 review
Best for engineering students
The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is among our best gaming laptops of 2024, and the features that made it stand out make it a fine choice for engineering students. The affordable price is a welcome start, as a laptop with a dedicated GPU can climb north of $2,000 to $3,000 quickly, but the Legion 5 Pro is available for under $1,500.
Inside, the Legion 5 Pro should tick the boxes for most engineering programs, with an AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX CPU and an Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU. Are these the bleeding edge of performance? No, but they are plenty fast enough to handle any software or tasks that come your way.
Sometimes, affordable gaming laptops are cheap out on other aspects of the laptop. Still, the Legion 5 Pro crushed more than the internal specs with an outstanding keyboard that our reviewer called her keyboard soulmate. It didn't skimp on the display, reaching 82.4 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut and 319 nits of brightness. Those are unheard-of marks for a gaming laptop at this price.
There are more powerful systems if you want to spend more or are close to graduation and looking to step up to something more professional. Still, the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro will complete the job for most engineering students and let you have fun gaming in your downtime.
See our full Lenovo Legion 5 Pro review.
Recent reviews
We review dozens of laptops every year that aren't admitted into the prestigious best laptops for college page. While some simply didn't have what it takes, others are still strong options. Here are some of our most recently reviewed laptops that didn't make the cut.
How to choose the best college laptop
There are several factors students should consider before buying a laptop for college.
The first is portability, which goes hand in hand with screen size. Thirteen- and 14-inch laptops are popular among college students because they balance screen real estate and portability well. Ideally, you'll stay below 3 pounds as well, although budget or more powerful systems may have you go higher.
Battery life is another critical component of any good college laptop. If you plan to take the notebook to class or the library, don't count on there being an outlet! Choose a laptop with at least 9 hours of battery life, which should be enough to get you through a couple of classes with enough juice to hit the library, too.
Regarding specs, we recommend buying a laptop with an Intel 13th Gen Core i5 CPU, AMD Ryzen 7000 series, or Apple M2. You should also look for at least 8GB of RAM (16GB if you can afford it) and a minimum of 256GB of storage.
Don't be afraid to go with a Chromebook if you want to keep things affordable and don't have specific Windows or macOS software requirements. Chrome OS can handle typical tasks for university students, and Chromebooks tend to be cheaper and require less support.
Other things that will help you punch up a successful report or research complex topics include a comfy keyboard and a sensitive touchpad. And when it's time to relax, get a laptop with a vivid and bright display.
How we test college laptops
We put each laptop through extensive benchmark testing — both synthetic and real-world—before we send it to our reviewers. We evaluate each aspect of the laptop, including its performance, battery life, display, speakers, and heat management.
In our benchmark testing, we use a Klein K10 colorimeter to detect the brightness and the sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamut of the laptop's display. For performance testing, 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 4.97GB multimedia file. Our real-world graphics test is Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm benchmark with medium settings at 1080p and 4K resolution.
We also run heat tests by playing a 15-minute full-screen video and measuring temperatures in different areas of the laptop. Last but not least, our battery test consists of continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. For MacBooks and premium Windows 10 or Windows 11 laptops, a runtime of over 9 hours is considered a good result, whereas gaming laptops and workstations that can stay powered longer than 5 hours deserve praise.
These tests are complemented with extensive hands-on testing from our reviewers who critique everything from the laptop's materials to the feel of its touchpad.
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. 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.
Future Publishing, one of the world's largest technology publishers, 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.
