Best Splurge Laptop For School
September 30, 2020 9:43 AM   Subscribe

You all helped me get back into college. Now help me get a decent laptop for said school! Details, as ever, abound.

it looks like the generous financial aid I received will stretch into getting a good new laptop for school. My current laptop takes thirty minutes to start and if it opens too many tabs it can't operate. I have not ever in my life had a decent new laptop, so I don't really know how to do this. I don't want to spend for the sake of spending, but I want kind of the nicest school laptop (that can maybe play some steam games) that I can afford.

What I know I need: needs to handle Zoom well (Camera, mic, audio)
Needs to be able to open and start without lag for those sleep-late days
Needs to be able to handle streaming video decently without pixeltown.
Needs to have a large memory for books, videos, etc.
Mouse on the laptop needs to work pretty easily
Needs to take it in stride when I open thirty tabs on a browser.

What I would like: Can play adventure steam games. (No FPS or cutting-edge stuff)
Comes already loaded with Microsoft Office Suite
Doesn't come loaded with ads for me to buy new virus protection.
Standardish interface.

But I'm sure there's a lot of stuff I'm totally not thinking of! Please help. What should I get? I would like this laptop to last me for the next five years, if possible.
posted by corb to Technology (22 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Is your college a large institution? I bought mine through the UNC bookstore for grad school and appreciated additional perks such as campus IT being able to help fix technical issues, offer loaner laptops if mine had an issue and coming preloaded with all the basic stuff I’d need. I also assumed that if it was one of the 5 laptops they chose to sell that it must be decently durable (and I’ve also always had thinkpads at work so I figured there was some durability there as well).

I’m unsure of all the specs but mine is a Lenovo Thinkpad and it does everything I need it to (and more that I hadn’t considered like when I enrolled in a GIS class that took way more computing power than I would have originally prepared for)
posted by raccoon409 at 9:54 AM on September 30, 2020


I'd think you either want a Macbook Air or in the Windows realm an "Ultrabook". Basically a portable, powerful laptop that is more than good enough for most software but a bit sluggish for things like video creation or gaming (because the added video power adds a fair bit to the cost so probably isn't worth it for you). A site like the Wirecutter will give recommendations for what ultrabook to get.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:03 AM on September 30, 2020


Do you have an upper bound on price?
posted by ShooBoo at 10:11 AM on September 30, 2020


I'm an Apple guy, so I can't say much about Windows, but a MacBook Air should do all of that. The big concern with Apple products is price, but your school probably offers you a student discount.
posted by kevinbelt at 10:26 AM on September 30, 2020


Not sure about your price limit, but check the Wirecutter. To boot fast, you need an SSD. 256 gigs minimum to make your life easier. And to open a whole bunch of tabs, 8GB of RAM. The rest is largely your preference and price. That article should be able to lead you through that.
posted by Pacrand at 10:55 AM on September 30, 2020


I'm generally a Windows user. There are a lot or consumer-grade laptops cheap at Best Buy or wherever. They use low-end components, aren't well-constructed, and often aren't usefully upgradable or repairable. You want a business-class laptop, and I recommend a Thinkpad. I generally recommend used Thinkpads, because companies lease them and return them after 2 -3 years; they're still in great shape, get refurbished and sold on ebay, newegg, etc.

You can buy a MacBook Pro from 1,300 to 2,000+. Your may be able to get a discount with a .edu email address or through the school. Macs have superior battery life, are built better, last well. Last I knew the screen wasn't covered by the warranty, and breaking a laptop screen is not uncommon.

A quick look on ebay finds the Thinkpad X1 Carbon for 1300 or less, and it is a very nice laptop. HP and Dell make business-class laptops, too, I'm not as up to date on their offerings. Here's a nice Thinkpad on Newegg.

Come back with some idea of price, and what you'll use it for. GIS/mapping, and heavy graphics need more power. Student activities of word processing, spreadsheets, web use, are standard.
posted by theora55 at 11:16 AM on September 30, 2020


Are you planning on carrying it around with you a lot?

Personally I'd get one where I could easily change out the hard drive and RAM if I needed or wanted to (at minimum), but YMMV. I would definitely max out the RAM. Also personally I'd get a business-class Thinkpad (X or T series, last I checked, but I'm not up to date) or a business-class Dell. And I'd go for as many USB ports as possible to avoid messing with annoying hubs and so forth.

Check out the screen, keyboard, and pointing device in person if you can - that can make a big difference to how much you enjoy using it.

I'd be shocked if any computer these days couldn't deal with 30 open tabs. I say this as someone who uses decade-old machines and usually racks up a few hundred tabs at a go.

I'm not up to date with power adapters today, but if the computer you're interested in doesn't use some really common standard like USB for charging, then make sure to buy a few spare adapters. Sometimes adapter designs change over the years and if you're like me you'll find yourself stalking craigslist & co. trying to find genuine original adapters in decent shape, or sifting through 3rd party ones in hopes they can be trusted.

I think a long battery life probably has good implications for the battery remaining useful in 5 years.

Re: the MS Office requirement, is that to avoid having to buy it yourself or just the process of installing it? If the former, you might be able to download it for free through your university, so that might expand your options.
posted by trig at 11:18 AM on September 30, 2020


Response by poster: I guess the upper bound on price would be 2000$, but if I'm aiming towards the upper end of that, I'd like to know it will really, really, really do the thing I need and last the five years and I won't have to buy another computer in that time because I usually won't be able to afford this.
posted by corb at 11:34 AM on September 30, 2020


Macbook Air with as much RAM as you can give it. Buy office through your school for probably really cheap. You can probably get educational prices on Macs through a school email too. And free airPods right now I think too...

Best CPU and 16 GB RAM Macbook Air will leave you a couple hundred under your $2000 and it will definitely last you 5 years. In my household, two kids are using 10 year old Macs for remote school (a late 2010 Macbook Pro and an iMac) and both work fine for what my kids need to do.

My wife's Microsoft Surface Book is struggling and it is 5 years old. The 10 year old Macbook Pro that I swapped an SSD into feels better than it does.
posted by cmm at 12:00 PM on September 30, 2020


A Macbook air is indeed a pretty simple choice. I don't like Macs much, though. If you care, the Wirecutter article I linked above has a flowchart to help you make a decision. If I had your requirements, I'd get a Dell.
posted by Pacrand at 12:07 PM on September 30, 2020


Travel laptop or desktop replacement?

When I got my CIHR PGS I splurged and went Lenovo all the way. I still have the monitor from 13 years ago as my main desktop monitor (I don't know about the current quality, though). The laptops remain really solid. I have a X1 and a T480 at work. Had a Dell XPS but got that replaced.

For travel/ general - current gen X1 Carbon all the way.

For a desktop replacement, current gen T-series. The T4xxs cost a couple hundred more but clocks in a little slimmer (but the battery life might be compromised - order an extra battery to swap out if you still have something left in your budget).

If you have anything left over, get a good keyboard and mouse. The Logitech MX3 is incredible. I'm still on a couple of DiNovo Edges (one during production, one from eBay years after discontinuation) so not familiar with the current keyboard lineup from them.
posted by porpoise at 12:24 PM on September 30, 2020


I'd like to know it will really, really, really do the thing I need and last the five years

In that case, and if this is absolutely money that needs to be spent now on a single machine (and not, say, on a little herd of refurbished Thinkpads that will collectively last at least a decade) then maybe look into whether there's an insurance program that's not a ripoff and is worth buying. (Apple Care, maybe?) I say this because it's always a crapshoot; the one time I bought an expensive, brand-new top-of-the-line laptop, it lasted a decent amount of time but required a bunch of interventions and replacement parts to do so. (Its legacy is that I started just buying used but good machines with roughly equal lifespans for an eighth or tenth of the cost. The one time one died early, it didn't hurt too much.)

Anyway, whatever you get - enjoy it. It sounds like it'll definitely be an upgrade.
posted by trig at 12:24 PM on September 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


Agree. Check with university to see if they have a contract with some vendor. You might get discounts or extended warranty or the like because they buy tons of machines for faculty/staff/operations etc. Also a bit of a bonus if you have problems and call IT they're probably using the same machine and know all of the kinks.

The business models are generally a bit behind the state of the art, but are built to last because of those contracts and the 3 year life expectancy or even longer with extended warranty. The flashy gamer laptop type machines... it's fine if they blow up.

I've had fine luck with Dell (work vendor). Had one that went glitter-screen after 5 years but the others were just retired when warranty ran out and new batteries/disk/warranty wasn't worth just getting a new machine.

I can totally see a refurbished Thinkpad as being good, but if you're really aiming for next six years or so... buying direct and new from the business line and springing for the extended warranty (or applecare) can be a big bonus. Like budget your 2k appropriately so that a chunk of it goes into "if it breaks, it's replaced".
posted by zengargoyle at 12:32 PM on September 30, 2020


I feel a disturbance in the force.

Also budget a chunk of that for external drives and online storage for backup. Start planning now that if your machine goes up in a puff of smoke that you still have everything.
posted by zengargoyle at 12:37 PM on September 30, 2020


My 2014 MacBook Air was a great computer with zero issues and I just replaced it with a new Air. The new Airs are great all-around machines, with top notch screens and keyboards. Definitely get the quad-core CPU (the i7 CPU is only marginally faster and not as good a deal) and with 16GB of RAM it should be a great/light/competent computer for another 5 years. You can still install Windows on it if you want, as well. Apple still makes the best trackpads out there - in day-to-day use the trackpad on MacBooks is just so much better than the PC side.
posted by homesickness at 12:45 PM on September 30, 2020


So I see your budget is quite hefty, I would just say that buying an external monitor last week (a 32" curved one) has changed my life. You could throw $300-500 into a really nice external monitor too. It will make doing remote school work and stuff on the laptop a lot more pleasant when you're at home.

I got a pretty nice mid-range gaming laptop in December but only now do I really actively want to sit and use it. If I can get a great gaming laptop for $1,000, I'm confident you can get the perfect machine for you for under $1500.

(If it matters, this is the monitor I got.)
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 12:57 PM on September 30, 2020


$2000 is a shitload in the laptop market right now. IMHO the sweet spots are in the $1000-1500 range.

Not taking half an hour to start = do not even consider anything without an ssd. A machine with an ssd and a regular hard drive is okay, but you gots to have windows on an ssd

30 browser tabs open = 16GB of memory (in two sticks or slots, if they ask)

Durability = thinkpad, though you're always rolling the dice within any manufacturer's reputation

Light gaming = amd ryzen cpu+gpu. The cpus are generally noticeably better than the equivalent intel cpus and the gpu side of them are substantially better than intel integrated gpus, which might make a difference in which newer games you're able to play.

But if there is *any* realistic danger that you're gonna get sucked into Cyberpunk when it comes out or older AAA games like Witcher3, you'll probably want a beefier gpu than that and are looking in the budget gaming world with discrete gpus. There's an embarrassing amount of choice at the $1200-1500 point right now and an annoying number of tradeoffs to decide between.

Comes loaded with MS Office - check your new school's site license page; odds are this is avail for free anyhoo.

Doesn't come loaded with bullshit - this is harder. The good news is that the way windows licenses work it's... free, and easy enough but still annoying?... to just blow the OS for a totally clean Windows install.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:28 PM on September 30, 2020 [2 favorites]


Before you buy a mac, you might want to consider that Apple is transitioning its computers to Apple silicon. While no one can predict the future, there is some speculation about some possible negative impacts for consumers.
posted by oceano at 1:43 PM on September 30, 2020


I would consider the Thinkpad T4x0s series (x is ever increasing with year). they are built like tanks.
also the dell XPS 13" is great and gets better every year.
posted by evilmonk at 3:12 PM on September 30, 2020


I asked a similar question two months ago, after I decided I needed to upgrade my WFH laptop. I was leaning towards a ThinkPad but ultimately splurged on an XPS 15 and have been thrilled with it. It's a fair bit more money than I usually spend on laptops (~$1500 with discounts), but considering what a huge step up it is from my last laptop I think it was money well spent. Only drawback I see from your requirements is that it does have McAfee installed by default, but it can be removed fairly easily.

Definitely recommend the Wirecutter for other recommendations.
posted by photo guy at 5:47 PM on September 30, 2020


If you want to use Windows, go with a Thinkpad. I think I have had four over the last ~22 years, and the only real disappointments were: 1) one time they ran out of the one I ordered on the outlet, so I had to pick another one (nearly identical), and 2) one of them was stolen from my apartment. I currently have an X1 Yoga, which I highly recommend if you want to also do any tablet-style things (like taking notes with a stylus) without dealing with multiple devices.

I always buy from the outlet, and that has turned out fine. (Shipping can be slower than the regular site, but if you don't need it in a time crunch, no big deal.) My most recent one was about $1500 with taxes, and it's three years old now and working just fine. The one before still works fine; it's just a bit slow and a little clunkier.

I do recommend some external accessories -- definitely an optical mouse, and probably an external microphone for Zoom calls. (Especially in tablet mode, I used to accidentally cover the built in microphone a lot, making for really crappy sound quality, but a $20 USB mic fixed that.)
posted by ktkt at 7:54 PM on October 1, 2020


The built in camera on X1s are more than adequate. You can also flip a hard cover over it, too.

The microphone on those are good, but as someone with a set of really acceptable speakers with bluetooth input, it hooks in seamlessly.
posted by porpoise at 1:11 AM on October 2, 2020


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