Which Laptop for secondary school student?

[chouglez]

Seasons greetings friends.

13 to 14 inch screen and around 1.25 kgs as the school bags these days need a forklift anyways.

Looking to buy a new laptop for my child who is in secondary school. Not planning to get a MacBook Air but a PC based laptop that would last her until she completes secondary school. Budget around £500 or lower if possible. Don’t prefer a Chromebook as prefer to use MS office installed products on the laptop.

Any suggestions or personal experiences are very welcome.

Happy holidays.

 

[Sangoma]

Seasons greetings friends.

13 to 14 inch screen and around 1.25 kgs as the school bags these days need a forklift anyways.

Looking to buy a new laptop for my child who is in secondary school. Not planning to get a MacBook Air but a PC based laptop that would last her until she completes secondary school. Budget around £500 or lower if possible. Don’t prefer a Chromebook as prefer to use MS office installed products on the laptop.

Any suggestions or personal experiences are very welcome.

Happy holidays.

You didn't say what year she is in, if she is in year 7 and planning to do A levels, that is a long time for a laptop to last

Having bought hundreds of laptops (worked in IT in schools) since 2002, the only make I would recommend and the only make I will buy for myself and family now is HP.
My daughter works for the local university, and I see that her work supplied laptop is also HP.

She should get MS Office through the school, so that should save a bit.

Some things to look out for generally.

I would suggest a 15" screen, it makes a big difference to eye strain prevention, and definitely if she wears glasses.

It seems that most new laptops are using M2 SSDs as their primary drive, and most come with a 256GB drive, which is not going to be big enough. (Unless she only uses it for school work without many photos)
Some laptops have provision to fit another internal drive (or remove the DVD drive and fit an SSD in its place) otherwise you will soon need to upgrade the M2 SSD, which means cloning or reinstalling everything if done after purchase. Presently Intel 1TB M2 drives are only about £70 (just done two of mine) so would be cheaper to do at the time of purchase.

Consider AMD Ryzen and Radeon graphics, I have found AMD very good all round and better value.

As you want it to last a long time, I would say 16GB memory, at least be able to upgrade to that (some makes have the memory soldered to the main board and can't be upgraded)

A USB C port, and 3 USB ports

External monitor connection (either HDMI or one that a cheap HDMI adapter can be used)

Built in card reader if she is doing photography (either at school or home)

At least DirectX 11 compatibility

Decent battery life

Full size keyboard with numeric keypad

If she will be logging on to the school network or VPN, check with the school what windows version she will need (Home version may not work)

If the school uses Smartwater, ask if they will mark and register her laptop (and put a small sticker on it. I put the stickers on the lid so that it can be seen easily)

If she needs to maintain competitive performance, maybe 4 years is as long as a good one will still be good, I find at home that 6 years old is starting to make a new one essential

I don't know if you will do it for £500, I would guess it will be more like £600 without making compromises, and £400 with more compromises, which may not show at first, but are sure to in a year or twos time.

It is also worth asking the school if they have any suggestions and if they can get you a more attractive price.

 

[Snapsh0t]

I agree with Steve that your budget is a little low for the requirement. My wife initially bought a £300 laptop and it was dreadful but upgrading to one at £600 got her a laptop that I'm happy to use. Both HPs, by the way. HP is good for laptops as they are upgradeable (as much as any laptop) and they publish the maintenance manuals to make it easier.

I currently have a pair of Lenovo laptops and I'd happily buy another. Again, the maintenance manuals are available. The Ideapad range is probably the most suitable and Lenovo often has good discounts on direct purchases.

@Sangoma - get up-to-date, man. It's been years since any laptop had a DVD drive.

 

[Sangoma]

@Sangoma - get up-to-date, man. It's been years since any laptop had a DVD drive.

Yes, you're correct of course , however the HP I am using now has a space inside for one, where I cut away some plastic from the bottom cover (Internally, unseen from the outside) and fitted another HD. An HP my son has has the same space inside, and I have seen some with a blanking cover where it used to go, and my guess is that they would probably have space inside too. It is worth looking for as a way to fit another hard drive.

 

[chouglez]

You didn't say what year she is in, if she is in year 7 and planning to do A levels, that is a long time for a laptop to last

Having bought hundreds of laptops (worked in IT in schools) since 2002, the only make I would recommend and the only make I will buy for myself and family now is HP.
My daughter works for the local university, and I see that her work supplied laptop is also HP.

She should get MS Office through the school, so that should save a bit.

Some things to look out for generally.

I would suggest a 15" screen, it makes a big difference to eye strain prevention, and definitely if she wears glasses.

It seems that most new laptops are using M2 SSDs as their primary drive, and most come with a 256GB drive, which is not going to be big enough. (Unless she only uses it for school work without many photos)
Some laptops have provision to fit another internal drive (or remove the DVD drive and fit an SSD in its place) otherwise you will soon need to upgrade the M2 SSD, which means cloning or reinstalling everything if done after purchase. Presently Intel 1TB M2 drives are only about £70 (just done two of mine) so would be cheaper to do at the time of purchase.

Consider AMD Ryzen and Radeon graphics, I have found AMD very good all round and better value.

As you want it to last a long time, I would say 16GB memory, at least be able to upgrade to that (some makes have the memory soldered to the main board and can't be upgraded)

A USB C port, and 3 USB ports

External monitor connection (either HDMI or one that a cheap HDMI adapter can be used)

Built in card reader if she is doing photography (either at school or home)

At least DirectX 11 compatibility

Decent battery life

Full size keyboard with numeric keypad

If she will be logging on to the school network or VPN, check with the school what windows version she will need (Home version may not work)

If the school uses Smartwater, ask if they will mark and register her laptop (and put a small sticker on it. I put the stickers on the lid so that it can be seen easily)

If she needs to maintain competitive performance, maybe 4 years is as long as a good one will still be good, I find at home that 6 years old is starting to make a new one essential

I don't know if you will do it for £500, I would guess it will be more like £600 without making compromises, and £400 with more compromises, which may not show at first, but are sure to in a year or twos time.

It is also worth asking the school if they have any suggestions and if they can get you a more attractive price.

Thanks for your reply. Steve. Year 9.
Would it be possible to suggest brand and their model numbers, please? Thanks

 

[Sangoma]

Thanks for your reply. Steve. Year 9.
Would it be possible to suggest brand and their model numbers, please? Thanks

As above, the only brand I would recommend is HP.

The HP Renew laptops offer a considerable savings with a 1 year warranty.

I would not suggest a specific model number, you would need to search and shuffle results, or ask retailers giving them essential and preferred requirements.

​

 

[Craig1912]

Bought my son a HP laptop when he was 14. It lasted 18 months and then the repair required was uneconomical. Bought him a MacBook Air and he is still using it for Uni six years later. 256GB is plenty when you have iCloud. Other son also has a MacBook Air which is eight years old and still used. Not had an issue with either.
if I was going to get a windows laptop I’d probably look at a Dell refurb.

 

[chouglez]

Bought my son a HP laptop when he was 14. It lasted 18 months and then the repair required was uneconomical. Bought him a MacBook Air and he is still using it for Uni six years later. 256GB is plenty when you have iCloud. Other son also has a MacBook Air which is eight years old and still used. Not had an issue with either.
if I was going to get a windows laptop I’d probably look at a Dell refurb.

Thanks for your comment. I too being a
Mac user and had one since 2014 and still going strong is so tempted to get a 2020 M1 MB Air…..

 

[chouglez]

As above, the only brand I would recommend is HP.

The HP Renew laptops offer a considerable savings with a 1 year warranty.

I would not suggest a specific model number, you would need to search and shuffle results, or ask retailers giving them essential and preferred requirements.

​

Will have a look at HP renews

 

[troutfisher]

Have a look on the HP site, they have some good deals at the moment , they also offer a care pack which from memory is quite good value and a lot cheaper than well known retailers

 

[Neilc28]

Dell Latitude 5000 or 7000 series from Dell Outlet, lots of great deals on there

Had many HP’s over the years and to be honest the quality has gone drastically downhill in my opinion.

Another option is a Lenovo Yoga or T series, great build quality!

 

[broc]

I managed a school network for around 10 years and over the years bought 600-700 DELL Latitude & Vostro laptops. These are robust business class laptops with a good after sales service & excellent spares availability. Their maintenance manuals are freely avaiable to download. You can still get DELL spares for >10 year old laptops...... some cheaper brands barely offer support within their initial warranty period.

At home my wife & I both have Vostro, Companies like EuroPC and ITCSales (no connection with either company) often have factory refurbished laptops on sale, many of which come with 3 year onsite next business day warranty support.

If not DELL, I would consider Lenovo, when I worked as an IT systems engineer & consultant we used IBM Thinkpads. Some years ago IBM sold off it's PC business to Lenovo which continues the strong after sales support delivered by IBM

My advice to anyone considering buying a laptop is to check out the manufacturers website for support. See how they handle BIOS & other firmware updates, provide device drivers & forum support, how easy is it to get spares etc & how do they provide defect support. Some brands expect you to ship the laptop back to them, sometimes to an address in the EU.