One of the best of its kind, easy laptop buyer’s guide so you can make your own decision when buying a new laptop. A few Basic things you should keep in mind when buying a laptop are;
- Performance
- Memory (Disk Space)
- RAM
- Screen Resolution
- Colors
Laptop Performance
The first and most important thing you need to decide is how much performance you actually need as well as your budget because these two factors will determine what type of laptop you’re looking at.
Be honest with yourself. If you don’t really need a top-of-the-line RTX 3080 GPU, sacrificing some FPS could either save you a ton of money or get you a better-built machine that’s more comfortable to drive daily.
If Performance at Priority!
With that said, if performance is your top priority, you’re probably going to want a gaming laptop.
Generally speaking, they have the best cooling, they feature the fastest processors, and they’re cheaper than equally powerful laptops that are marketed at professional creators.
Things To Look For When Buying Laptop For College?
If you primarily want a laptop for school or work that has enough grunts to game on your brakes, you’ll be perfectly fine with either a GTX 1650 or an RTX 3050.
Here are a couple of budget-friendly options
Lenovo Ideapad – Intel Core i5-11300H
| Processor | 3.1 GHz core_i5_family |
|---|---|
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 |
| RAM | 8 GB SO-DIMM |
|---|---|
| Hard Drive | 512 GB SSD |
| Color Panel | IPS technology |
|---|
ASUS Vivobook Pro 15 – AMD Ryzen 5 5600H
| Processor | 4.2 GHz ryzen_5_5600h |
|---|---|
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 |
| RAM | 8 GB DDR4 |
|---|---|
| Hard Drive | 512 GB SSD |
| Color Panel | OLED |
|---|
Lenovo IdeaPad L340 – Intel Core i5
| Processor | 2.3 GHz core_i5_family |
|---|---|
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 |
| RAM | 8 GB |
|---|---|
| Hard Drive | 256 GB SSD |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 Pixels |
|---|
Any of these should serve you very well.
Then,
How Much Memory Giga Bites Should I Look For?
You’re probably going to want at least 500 GB for your SSD, but if a 256 GB one is all that you can fit in your budget, just make sure that the laptop you’re considering can be upgraded in the future.
“Something you might have realized by now, though, is that since Intel didn’t do a whole lot to improve their laptops between 8th and 10th generations, it is entirely possible that someone might think that their old laptop is slow, but it actually just needs a little bit more storage or Ram.”
Neither of them is super expensive these days, so tucking 16 GB of Ram into a 3-year-old laptop, maybe with a battery refresh that can usually be found with a quick part number search on eBay, could give it a whole new lease on life.
While you’re in there, by the way, make sure to blow out the cooling system because overheating is the biggest cause of premature laptop failure.
Should I Go For MacBook?
Now to address the elephant in the room. The MacBook Air and Pro are in almost every way the best thin and lights on the market.
They’re extremely snappy, feel great to use, have excellent screens, and the battery life is unmatched by anything that shows this logo on the boot-up. But they aren’t perfect.
MacBook vs. Chromebook
If you’re on a budget or you already have access to a powerful desktop, 95% of the time, a Chromebook is going to do everything you need it to do.
But if a Chromebook is your only computer, your professor or your boss could easily provide you with some mandatory piece of software that you either can’t run or are going to have to install in a hacky, time-consuming way.
And at that point, you’ll probably wish that you’d saved up another $100 and got a Windows device or spent the same amount and gotten a used ThinkPad.
Does Screen Resolution Effects System’s Performance?
Having the fastest laptop around, though, means nothing If the screen sucks. But seriously, the screen is the thing you will interact with most on your laptop, so it rarely makes sense to skimp on it.
There are three main panel types;
- TN
- IPS
- OLED
TN looks terrible by today’s standards and should basically be devoted at all times.
OLED panels look amazing, with crisp blacks and vibrant colors and incredible saturation, but they’re normally not super bright, which kind of matters if you’re taking this thing into bright areas like outside. They struggle with reflections, and they’re terrible for battery life.
VA Vertical alignment (VA) panel technology was developed to improve upon the drawbacks of TN. Current VA-based monitors offer much higher contrast, better color reproduction, and wider viewing angles than TN panels.
This leaves us with IPS and IPS-type panels since LG trademarked IPS, so other brands have to use different names for the same tech.
What About Colors?
Once you know the panel type is okay, the color space is the next key thing.
This describes how many different colors your monitor can produce.
It can get a bit confusing since there are a bunch of different standards, but unless you know you need something else, aim for near 100% coverage of sRGB.
Pretty basic.
The vast majority of applications, web pages, and games are tuned for sRGB, so unless you’re doing professional color work, going beyond that to Adobe RGB or DCIP 3 is not a requirement.
More expensive machines may come factory calibrated to account for the slight differences from one panel to the next, but there are quick and dirty ways to calibrate it yourself, using test patterns that are good enough.
If you’re not doing color-critical work, something you cannot change after the fact is your panel’s brightness. It’s tough to recommend a single brightness number since 250 units might be fine on a matte display.