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Our top laptops for your college course

Struggling to pick a laptop for your course?

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College puts extra demands on a laptop so if you got one for school, it’s probably time to upgrade to a laptop that will best suit your course. The type of laptop you need varies greatly depending on whether you’re doing an Arts degree or a Data Analytics degree as every course has its own needs.

Here are our top laptops for each of the main college course categories…

All-rounder laptops

All-rounders are perfect for courses that are research and essay heavy like law or arts. You want something with plenty of processing power to handle a multitude of tabs, Word docs and background music while you study, but you don’t need the top end laptop.

The ASUS Vivobook 16 X1605EA 16" Laptop is a great option for an all-rounder as it has a large 16” screen, ideal for when you want to have two programs open side-by-side. It also has an Intel® Core™ i5 processor which gives you plenty of processing power to handle all-day essay writing sessions. It has up to 9 hours of battery from a single charge so you can bring it to college for the day and not worry about finding a socket nearby.

If your course is heavy on reading, a 2-in-1 laptop will be a lifesaver as you can flip it into tablet mode for reading journals and articles and then flip it back into laptop mode when it’s time to research or write. The HP Pavilion x360 14-ek1511sa 14" 2 in 1 Laptop has a full HD touchscreen for intuitive scrolling as you read and research, it has an Intel® Core™ i3 processor to power your studies and 8 GB of RAM to ensure your multitasking runs glitch-free. The HP Fast Charge gets your laptop up to 50% battery in just 45mins, ideal for getting it charged up before you leave for a day of lectures.

The Future Boss

Business, marketing or advertising, the Future Boss category of courses need to be a bit more powerful than the All-Rounder. You’ll need a good processor and plenty of storage space.

Ready for any spreadsheet or extensive presentation you throw at it, the HP 15s-fq5510sa 15.6" Laptop can handle any boss activity. With an Intel® Core™ i5 processor and 8 GB of RAM, it can handle multitasking and large files, giving you all the processing power you need to complete your college assignments and enjoy some relaxing streaming. The battery lasts for up to 7.5 hours and will see you through a day of lectures or an evening of group work.

The Creator

Doing a course like multimedia, graphic design or game development? For these courses, you need plenty of processing power and excellent graphics to deal with the hefty software programs you’ll be using on a daily basis. High spec laptops or gaming laptops are ideal for this kind of course.

The Acer Aspire Vero AV14-52P 14" Laptop has an Intel® Core™ i7 processor and 16 GB of RAM so you’re going to get a smooth experience no matter how many tabs are open or how many programs you run at once. During a creative course, you’ll end up creative a lot of large files and this laptop comes with 1 TB of SSD storage so you don’t have to worry about running out of space. It has up to 10.5 hours of battery life from a single charge to see you through a day on campus.

If you want something more flexible, a 2-in-1 laptop is perfect for these kind of courses as you can use as a tablet for reading articles or creating illustrations and flip it into laptop mode for bigger tasks like imaging or creating project presentations. The Samsung Galaxy Book3 360 13.3" 2 in 1 Laptop has excellent specs from OLED touchscreen to Intel® Core™ i5 processor and Dolby Atmos speakers. This laptop is perfect for creative courses as its Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics card helps power creative tasks. The battery on this laptop lasts for up to a whopping 20 hours.

The Coder

Delving into the world of analytics or computer science? Need something powerful to crunch numbers or process code? If so, you need a powerful processor and plenty of RAM to keep everything running smoothly.

For such a heavy-use course, investing in a robust laptop is key. Why not consider a Copilot + PC laptop? The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7X 14" Laptop is a Copilot + PC that combines top-class specs with AI to create a powerhouse laptop. This laptop has 16 GB of RAM, 1 TB SSD storage and the new Snapdragon X Elite processor, which gives it oomph when handling the largest tasks with emulated apps running x2 faster. The battery on this laptop lasts up to an impressive 23.8 hours - almost a full day! The screen is a 3K OLED touchscreen giving accurate colours and a more intuitive experience. The Copilot + PC AI features are designed to make your computing easier from Cocreator for prompt-generated graphics and visuals to smart recommendations to find your files faster.

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Laptops for your college course