Gadgetory

welcome back to Hard Rock's one of the things I get asked a lot is to recommend a laptop for someone who is a student whether that's a school college university or whatever I was a student myself not that long ago and trying to find a good laptop for not much money that was suitable for student life was always a bit of a struggle particularly as there are so many options on the market on top of that I found that a lot of websites would make lists talking about the best laptops for college students only to include a bunch of really expensive options that don't deliver great bang for your buck but in this video my rendition of the best laptops for students I'll be focusing on great value pics that hit some of the key features students tend to look for not every laptop in this collection is dirt cheap but I have covered a range of price points from below $500 to something the rich kids can buy as well so let's get straight into it probably the most important feature for students is portability you really don't want to be lugging around a massive laptop to and from class on top of having to carry textbooks and all sorts of other stuff so sides and way too often super important I've tested a lot of ultra portable laptops over these and the clear standard in the portability category is the LG gram 13 as the name suggests this variant of the LG gram is 13 inches in size so it's already down in the more compact end of the laptop size spectrum it also has pretty slim bezels so not a lot of space is wasted but crucially this 13 inch system weighs just 965 grams well under the 1.3 to 1.5 kilograms of most other ultra portables of this size the LG gram 13 also ticks off one of the other key aspects for students and that's battery life if you're at class all day you need good battery life we'll have to carry around a charger well the good news if the gram 13 has a huge 72 what our battery despite its low weight and that leads to some of the best battery life I've tested especially considering it has a touchscreen you'll get a day's worth of usage from a single charge with that much worry and then you also end up with pretty decent specs the base model packs a Core i5 8250 u quad core eight gigabytes of RAM and 256 gig of storage plus you get full size USB ports and a 1080p display the more expensive models aren't worth buying in my opinion just stick to the base model and upgrade the RAM more storage itself if need be because this laptop sticks a lot of the category students need it's not the cheapest in this list going for it a thousand US dollars but if you have that amount to spend this is the best option out there and honestly many laptops that are priced up to $1500 or so won't provide what the Graham does so I think it's really worth it for the price the other thing that students might find useful is a laptop that supports an active stylus for easy note-taking annotating our equation solving a lot of student focus laptops are now supporting this feature everything from the surface pro down to pretty cheap devices but the HP Envy x-360 13 I'm recommending here is great for a number of reasons it's competitively priced it has decent hardware inside it's portable and it comes with a pen included in the price HP is just about to release the 2018 model of this laptop but having used the previous model and the larger 15 interruption from this year is looking like the more portable 13-inch parent will be a winner for just seven hundred and sixty dollars you can get this laptop with a 1080p display a quite powerful Rison five 2500 you processor 256 gig of storage and eight gig of ram in fact even if you don't need the pen support for note-taking the envy x-360 13 is one of the best options you can get for around the seven hundred and fifty dollar mark there's a couple of reasons I prefer this sort of device to the stylus equipped tablets out there like the surface pro for one the envy x-360 13 has a 360 degree hinge so you can easily flip around the display into a tablet mode for note-taking but because the envy has a full keyboard built-in and works well as a laptop you get an uncompromised typing experience the keyboard covers that come with the surface pro and other tablets aren't that great and typing on a laptop those devices there is no such problem with the convertible laptop it's built as a laptop first but because of the hinge you can still easily use the styles for annotating and drawing the envy x-360 is also a good option because of the AMD risin 5 processor it uses which has integrated graphics capable of playing popular games like 49 and that's not something you'll get with equivalent Intel CPUs for the price I think a lot of students will be really happy with what the envy x-360 13 provides though you shouldn't expect portability or battery life as good as the LG gran if you are really set on a tablet form factor though and a drooling over something like a surface pro I'd actually recommend the Eevee instead the entry-level Eevee is similar to the entry-level surface pro from a hardware standpoint but the Eevee is cheaper and it includes both the keyboard cover and styles in the price I love a good bargain and I reckon the Eevee is one such device flying under the radar the two laptops I've recommended so far are my top two picks for students but understandably not everyone has $1,000 or 750 dollars to spend on a laptop for school for those on a tighter budget I'll point you towards two configurations of the Acer Aspire a 15 a laptop I've actually recommended before the deliver is basically the best hardware you can get for an entry-level to mid-range price the aspire a 15 isn't a pretty laptop it's thick most amount of plastic has large bezels and isn't super portable it also won't deliver you particularly amazing battery life but it lacks in those areas it makes up for in its hardware for just $600 this laptop will deliver you a quad core Core i5 8252 processor eight gigabytes of ram nvidia geforce MX 150 discrete graphics a 256 gig SSD and a 15.6 inch 1080p display that's just as powerful as the other two laptops we've mentioned so far but at a significantly reduced price it's actually quite impressive that a laptop of this size has managed to include an SSD and discrete graphics both of which have a significant impact on performance the MX 150 might not be amazingly fast but it's able to play fortnight and overwatch and that's not bad for a $600 laptop if your budget is even tighter there's a 380 dollar model of the aspire a 15 that cuts things even further you get just a dual core Core i3 8130 you processor 6 gig of ram and no discrete GPU or SSD but you do get a one terabyte hard drive and a 1080p display crucially despite being so cheap this variant does not leave you with a painfully slow Pentium Celeron or Atom processor which are often found in $400 laptops it's also possible to add in an SSD later to get a handy speed bump if you want between lectures assignments studying and of course parties you might want to fit in a bit of gaming but you only have a relatively tight budget enough to buy just one system and you want it to be capable of handling your schoolwork plus today's high end games well there's one standard option that provides affordable gaming hardware in a decent laptop form factor and that's the ace of predator Helios 300 like the budget laptops I was just talking about the 15 inch Helios 300 isn't super portable and won't give you outstanding battery life at least compared to assumingly price 13-inch ultra book but ultra ebooks are basically useless for triple-a gaming while the Helios 300 packs respectable mid-range hardware that's easily capable of playing today's games at 1080p with decent quality settings I'd recommend one of two options here for a touch over $1000 you can get the last gen model which packs a quad core Core i7 7700 HQ nvidia geforce gtx 1066 gigabyte graphics 16 gig of ram and a 256 gig SSD along with the 1080p 60 Hertz display you'll get a great gaming experience and while it is $1,000 us it delivers basically the best value for money in this product category if you have the budget to spend 150 dollars more you can grab the latest Helios 300 which pumps you up to a six core Core i7 8750 H and wins a high refresh 1080p 144 Hertz display this new model is about 10% faster in games thanks to that new CPU and cost roughly 15% more giant reckon is about fair considering that high refresh display it also brings you might not be the coolest guy ever for lugging around a large gaming laptop to lectures but it is still portable and can be run on the battery for a few hours and if you carry it around everyday you might be able to ditch that gym membership and save some cash if you're a rich kid and money isn't as much of an obstacle for you look no further than the Microsoft Surface book - this thing is very expensive but it packs a lot of handy features into the one portable package want to take notes well the surface book - supports one of the best active pens on the market and the screen detaches from the base so you can use it as either a legitimate tablet or as a fully fledged laptop want something portable the 13.5 inch model is reasonably thin and light particularly for the hardware you get and if you need good battery life well the surface book is one of the best performers in that department and even if you want a game well the core i7 models PACCAR discrete gtx 1050 GPU which isn't the fastest GPU out there but it's basically the fastest you can get in a 13-inch device and can actually play modern games but to get all these features it will cost you a pretty penny the gtx 1050 is only available in mul starting at 2000 US dollars and I'd actually recommend the 2500 hole model so you can get a decent amount of storage and RAM yep that is a lot of money but it's an impressive little machine that's it for this look at the best laptops for students right now if you have any other good recommendations be sure to leave those in the comments below and you'll find links to check the prices for these laptops in the description consider supporting us on patreon as well to get access to exclusive behind-the-scenes videos and I'll catch you in the next one you