Its Intel 13th Gen CPUs can easily handle general productivity tasks however, don't expect to do anything overly intensive due to thermal throttling. There's Wi-Fi 6E, a fingerprint sensor and facial recognition camera, and a wide port selection that includes two Thunderbolt 4s and an HDMI. Don't worry about battery life even the QHD+ model lasts over 12 hours of light use. While there's an FHD+ display option, we recommend getting a QHD+ panel, which looks sharper and gets brighter to combat glare. This 2-in-1 convertible has a large 16-inch display, giving you plenty of room for side-by-side windows, making multitasking easier. If you want something less expensive than the Apple MacBook Air 13 (2022) but not overly cheap, check out the Lenovo Yoga 7i 16 (2023). It also has a smaller touchpad and a dimmer display. Build-wise, although it feels sturdy, its lightweight magnesium alloy chassis just doesn't feel as rigid as the MacBook Air's. Its wide port selection includes two USB-C/Thunderbolt 4s, letting you connect up to two 4k displays at 60Hz with a single cable.

It provides a good user experience with a sharp display, a comfortable keyboard, and good thermal and noise handling.

It's also a high-end ultraportable laptop, and as its name suggests, it's incredibly light, even lighter than the MacBook Air 13. It isn't as sleek as its M2 successor, but it's still a great laptop with incredible battery life.įor Windows users, get the LG gram 14 (2023). If you have a tighter budget but want to stay in the Apple ecosystem, there's the Apple MacBook Air 13 (M1, 2020), which you can easily find for as low as $750 USD during the back-to-school season. All this comes with a price increase of $200 USD over the 13-inch model. It's essentially the same laptop as the 13-inch model but with a larger 15.3-inch display and a few tweaks. You also get better speakers, a 35W dual USB-C charger, and an M2 chip with ten GPU cores. The downside is that it only has two USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports with support for a single external display.Īn alternative would be the newly-released Apple MacBook Air 15 (2023). Its M2 SoC is plenty fast for general productivity tasks like text processing and web browsing, and it can also handle some light video editing. It has a gorgeous display that gets bright enough for use outdoors in broad daylight, a comfortable keyboard that you can type on all day, and a gigantic and responsive haptic touchpad. Our best upper mid-range pick is the Apple MacBook Air 13 (2022), the best laptop for students with a light workload like text processing, web browsing, and video playback.

Best Upper Mid-Range Laptop For College.

Unfortunately, it has a bad 720p webcam and fewer ports, and its keyboard gets uncomfortably hot under load. You can also play more games than on a MacBook because there's a wider selection of Windows games, and the NVIDIA GPUs let you access DLSS and Frame Generation, features that can dramatically boost performance in supported titles. You can configure it with up to an Intel 13th Gen Core i9-13900H CPU and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 discrete GPU, giving you plenty of processing power for intensive tasks. Like the MacBook Pro, it's a premium model that provides a great user experience. The Dell XPS 15 (2023) is also a great choice if you prefer or need Windows. It's essentially the same device but has slightly better-sounding speakers and longer battery life. If screen real estate is more important than portability, you can get the larger Apple MacBook Pro 16 (2023). In addition to incredible performance, this laptop provides a fantastic user experience with its sharp Mini LED display, comfortable keyboard, and gigantic, easy-to-use haptic touchpad.

You can spec it with an M2 Pro or Max SoC (System on Chip), both of which can handle nearly every type of workload, making it an excellent choice for students in fields like graphic design, architecture, or engineering. Like its predecessor, this is a premium model with a sleek, compact design, sturdy build, and all-day battery life. The best laptop for college we've tested is the Apple MacBook Pro 14 (2023), a newer version of the M1 Apple MacBook Pro 14 (2021).

Geekbench 5 m1 pro