Going to college is exciting. Your school structure is gone, and you become your own boss, you’re creating your own schedule, and learning about things you’re truly interested in. For the three or four years you’re in college, your laptop will become an extension of you. From taking notes and writing essays to streaming your favourite shows, you’ll be using it for most of the day so it’s important to make sure you’re getting the right laptop to suit your course and needs.
There are an endless number of laptops to choose from so we’re going to help narrow it down by looking at the specs you’ll need for your course.
The All-Rounder
Will you be studying arts, law or a course that will be research and essay heavy? If so, your future college laptop falls into our ‘All-Rounder’ category.
For these courses you don’t need the most powerful laptop, we recommend looking for ones with an i3 or Ryzen 3 processor. It has enough processing power to handle multitasking, streaming, hours of research and hours of essay writing. Our All-Rounder laptops generally have 128 GB of SSD storage so you’ll have plenty of space to saving documents.
If you’re looking for something super light and easy to carry with you, Chromebooks should tick all your boxes as they’re slim, cloud-based so all your work is safe and have a high level of security.
If your course requires a lot of reading, you’ll also find a lot of 2-in-1 laptops in this category. These laptops can be used in traditional laptop mode, flipped into a tablet, or used in tent mode for watching videos. They also tend to have touchscreens so it’s more intuitive as you scroll through journals or lengthy articles.
The Future Boss
Will you be studying business or marketing? If so, your future college laptop falls into our ‘Future Boss’ category. These laptops are a little more powerful than the All-Rounder with some added processing power and larger storage space.
For these courses, you’ll need a little bit more processing power to help you create marketing campaigns or complex spreadsheets. We recommend looking for an i5 or Ryzen 5 processor as it’s able to handle more demanding tasks.
Our Future Boss laptops tend to have larger memory than the All Rounders as you’re more likely to be dealing with bigger files. These laptops generally have either 256 GB or 512 GB of SSD storage so you don’t run out of space when creating a cool marketing graphic.
The Coder and the Creative
Will you be studying media, computing, or design? If so, your future laptop falls into our ‘Coder’ and ‘Creative’ categories.
During these courses you’ll be learning how to use different software like Photoshop, Illustrator and CAD. These are big programs that require a lot of processing power and plenty of space. For these courses, we recommend looking for an i7 or Ryzen 7 processor.
The MacBook Pro and gaming laptops are perfect for these courses as they’re powerful and built to deal with large files. They tend to have larger storage starting at 512 GB up to 1 TB so you can seamlessly open, edit and save large files without your laptop slowing down or lagging.
You can find the perfect laptop for your course and shop all our student laptops deals here.
