Laptop Buying Guide For College Students

Laptops buying guide for college students

College days are going to start and many would be planning to get a new laptop, this guide will help them to choose a good one.

Here are 5 things what students should consider while buying a laptop for them

1. Identify the purpose for which you would be buying a laptop : 

The most important aspect of making a wise decision while buying a laptop is to identify your needs and all the works you will do on your laptop. Most college students need an all round laptop which will suffice their basic needs like media consumption, mediocre gaming, browsing the internet, watching videos on YouTube or for their programming purposes. Most common Budget a student carries for a laptop is 40k-60k.

 

If you are not a serious gamer which means you are just fine playing some common titles at medium or low settings then put more emphasis on build quality, battery, display rather than just counting on raw performance. Most of the media consumers would be fine with i5 processors with 8 GB of ram and a 2GB or 4GB Nvidia 900 series of graphics card. 

If you are going to do a lot of programming on your laptop then consider buying laptops with good keyboards and back-lit illumination. I would advice you guys to step into local shops and feel the tactile feedback of keyboard in real. Many would argue that they can buy an additional keyboard but then whats the meaning of buying a laptop when you would be carrying a keyboard always with you.

Gaming is like a fantasy for students who are going to have their first laptop, so they just entirely focus on raw performance, but before doing that just think once and ask a question to yourself "are you going to buy the laptop for gaming of will game just because you will have a powerful laptop" if you think that you are sure and you will go for a gaming laptop then you will need to extent your budget to 70k for buying some basic entry level gaming laptops.

2. Display:

No matter for what purpose you are buying a laptop you will be going to watch visual content on it, so having a good display will just enhance the user experience. Currently, in the market there are two types of display panels used in laptops, one is TN panel and other is IPS panel. The basic difference is in the viewing angles of both panels, TN panels have poor viewing angles colors shift and fade highly when changing angles of viewing while in IPS panels colors don't tend to wash out or change hue while changing viewing angles. Prefer to have a FHD IPS display panel on your laptop.

If budget constraints you, then you can compromise on resolution but choose an IPS panel, that will make a huge difference in user experience.

3. Keyboard and Trackpad:

The main way you are going to interact with your laptop is going to be through keyboard and trackpad. A good keyboard should be tactile, have good key travel, should not feel mushy and should have back-lit illumination in it which will help you while working in nights. Track-pads which come with windows precision drivers are way better than normal track-pads so before buying must know that whether track-pad has windows precision drivers or some other drivers like Dell uses its own precision drivers which are almost equivalent to their windows counterpart. This the reason why Dell offers better track-pads as compared to other companies in same budget range. 

4. Build Quality, Weight and Battery Life:

Being a student you will spend a good amount of your time in your college campus, you will carry your laptop all the time with you, so it needs to be portable enough to be carried out easily after all the main purpose for which laptop exists is portability. And most of the students ignore these three factors, actually, most of the people out there going to buy a new laptop are so involved in those number of cores, hyperthreading, cache memory, overclocking speeds and what not. Design build quality and battery life should also be also considered as equally important as the performance of the device.

Try to go for a laptop which has a metal top or if possible metal uni-body design, this would increase your budget a little bit but it will be worth that extra money.

The laptop should be light enough to be carried easily in hands. An average laptop weighs around 2 Kg, which is a fair amount of weight and can be carried easily around with you.

Now coming to one of the most important aspects of a laptop i.e Battery Life. What is the meaning of having a laptop when you would be always searching for a charging socket nearby while using it, people utterly ignore this while making their decisions. Consider a laptop which at least claims a battery life of 6+ hrs, because then it will practically run through 4-5hrs without needed to be plugged in.

5. Brand Value and Warranty:

While spending such a considerable amount on a laptop it will the brand which will help you out in case of some miss happening. If your laptop meets some issues at some point of time you need a brand that will provide good customer service. Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Asus are renowned brands in India and they have good widespread service centers and doorstep assistance. Only Asus India provides 2-year warranty with their laptops other than this all provide one year along with some extended warranty at some extra cost. I suggest you to must buy that extra extended warranty.

I mentioned all the important factors a student should consider while buying a new laptop. These days refurbished laptops are making their way to India and are gaining popularity, if you are on a tight budget then you can also consider buying a refurbished laptop, not to mention from a reliable source and a reliable brand with at least brand warranty of one year. 

If all of above still didn't help you in choosing a suitable laptop for you then I have selected some laptops best for specific uses. 

Best all round laptop with good build quality, battery life, and display- Dell inspiron 7000 series

Best Performer on a budget- Asus R-Series

Best Media Consumption Laptop- Lenovo Ideapad 510 

Most Value for Money- HP Pavilion Series 

Best Gaming Laptop- Lenovo Legion Y-520 

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