As soon as the school year comes, so many students think about choosing a good laptop for study. This is right, because it is unreasonable to buy the most expensive gadget, and sometimes there is no money for it. Let's figure out how to choose a good laptop for study and what characteristics should it have?
The size
One of the determining factors is size. A large laptop with a huge screen is heavy, and it will be very difficult for a student to drag it along with him. Perhaps the most optimal will be a device with a screen diagonal of 14 inches. Models with 15.6-inch screens, of course, cannot be considered large, and they are also often used by students as educational tools, but such a laptop can cause discomfort. At least it is difficult to put in a backpack, and its weight can be quite large. The gadget with a screen diagonal of 14 inches is ideal for study, it easily fits in a backpack with notebooks, it is lightweight and its screen is comfortable for typing / reading text, working in Autocad and other training programs.
As for laptops with screens of 17 inches and above, they are absolutely not suitable for training. Such models are very heavy, carrying them along is terrible discomfort. Most often, such large laptops are bought for home or office. It is assumed that he will not have to be carried too often.
The so-called netbooks lost their popularity about five years ago, they can not be recommended for study. These are too small devices on which it is uncomfortable even to read the text, not to mention working with specialized programs.
Display type
When choosing a laptop, most users pay a little attention to the display. Meanwhile, this is one of the most important characteristics. Choosing a laptop with a poor display, a student can spoil his eyesight, and a good bright screen will provide more training convenience than a dim one with poor color reproduction and low viewing angles. A suitable option for the student is a matte screen, on which there is always little glare compared to glossy.
Matrix type
It is also important to pay attention to the type of display. The worst are TN-matrices, which poorly transmit colors and even distort them when viewed at an angle. An IPS matrix would be a good option because it will provide good colors. However, laptops with IPS-matrices are more expensive, which does not fit well with the option of "a good laptop for study." But the TN matrix is ​​not an option at all. This technology is obsolete, and it is completely irrelevant to buy such a gadget, even for little money.
Brightness
Last of all, pay attention to the brightness of the display. Even the best laptop for study will be completely uncomfortable when working, if its brightness is set to 200 cd / m2. It should be borne in mind that the laptop will have to be used in bright classrooms, and sometimes even on the street, and with direct sunlight on the display, the contents of the screen will be difficult to distinguish. Therefore, the brightness should be 300 cd / m2. This is the most preferred option for the best laptop for work and study.
Resolution
Resolution plays an important role. Full HD screens greatly increase the price of gadgets, but individual pixels on the screen will be visible on the low-resolution display, which is annoying and very annoying when reading text. So with a screen diagonal of 14 inches, the resolution of 1366x768 is ideal. It is also suitable for a screen with a diagonal of 15.6 inches. You should not chase Full HD-displays (that is, with a resolution of 1920 Ă— 1080), since laptops with such screens will be very expensive.
Well, the last tip about choosing a display - when buying, be sure to check the screen for broken pixels. It will be a shame if idle "points" are present on the display, and you find them late. Of course, almost any product can be returned, but paperwork is always unpleasant.
Equipment
Previously, if the buyer asked which laptop is better for study, the seller recommended the model with a drive to him. Today, this element is not just unnecessary. Its presence is detrimental as this large module increases the size of the laptop and its weight. In no case should you choose a laptop with a drive. Speaking about which laptop is better for studying at a university, we can distinguish models that have:
- 3-4 USB interfaces for connecting different flash drives, mice, mobile phones.
- Card reader that reads SD memory cards and micro-USB.
- Wi-Fi module for connecting to the Internet through the institute’s wireless network. Presence of devices of standard N or AC is desirable. The latter is able to provide data transfer rates up to 1300 Mbit / s. And although today there is no such fast Internet near, this module is necessary in the future. Of course, Wi-Fi standard N is also suitable, although it is absolutely in all modern laptops.
- Bluetooth In some laptops, it is missing, but this module can be useful for connecting a wireless mouse, for example.
Speed ​​and performance
If you choose a laptop for games, then productivity should be the most important factor in choosing. But speaking of which laptop is better for studying at the institute, performance can be mentioned almost in the last turn. But it is worth noting that it all depends on the programs that the student will use to work due to the specifics of their specialty. Most often used programs such as Word, Excel and other office applications. A simple 2-core processor from Intel or AMD is enough for them, as well as 2-3 GB of RAM. Most often , study programs are undemanding to performance, so there is no need to buy a powerful laptop. An indirect advantage of a “weak” computer is the lack of temptation to install new games and lose valuable time on them. Indeed, quite often students ask their parents to buy them a powerful laptop, which, they themselves claim, will be used for training. But in fact, the laptop is used for another purpose.
Video card
However, it is worth noting that some students, due to the specifics of their specialty, need to install programs for working with video files, 3D-graphics and drawings. In this case, a cheap low-performance laptop does not have to choose. It will require a more or less powerful system with a discrete graphics card. But even in this case, it is worth giving preference to a model that does not have such a powerful and productive graphics card as graphics with a large amount of memory. For example, when working in the same Autocad, cards with a large memory size are required. High performance graphics cards are most often needed in games and may also be required to process or convert video.
HDD
There is no much talk about hard drives. It is difficult to imagine a student who can carry dozens of gigabytes of data necessary for study. Electronic lecture notes, drawings and other similar documents do not take up much space, so it’s enough to have a hard drive with a memory capacity of 100 GB. Even this will be a lot, but now it’s quite difficult or even impossible to find a hard drive with less memory. Most likely, even a 100-gigabyte drive will not be able to be found, since manufacturers usually install 250-gigabyte versions. So much the easier.
As for the type of hard drive, the HDD will do. This type of drive is gradually losing its relevance and is becoming obsolete today. However, the HDD is still very popular among users. Faster SSDs provide a very high data access speed, but most often they are not required for study. In addition, such a drive is expensive and greatly increases the cost of any laptop. However, practice shows that even inexpensive modern gadgets are equipped with SSDs, although most often they are not needed in cheap models.
So, we almost figured out which laptop is better for study, but that's not all. We missed something.
Battery (battery)
The battery has a direct impact on the autonomy of the laptop, and this is very important for the student, since at the institute most often the laptop will work on battery power. Extremely rare cases in which students can connect their laptops to sockets in classrooms. If there is one or two outlets, then their location will be extremely uncomfortable, and the cord will not reach the corny.
Manufacturers indicate the autonomy of laptops for hours, during which the device can work without recharging. Most often it is 2-3 hours, although in fact the laptop sits down in just an hour. Therefore, it is worth choosing a model whose characteristics indicate a battery life of at least 5 hours. There are a lot of offers on the market from well-known companies that offer inexpensive and practical laptops with good autonomy. Gadgets that can work 10 or more hours cost 3-4 thousand more, but they themselves are the best. But we need an inexpensive laptop to study, so we miss such models. What can we say about very expensive laptops with batteries that allow you to work over 18 hours. So good laptops for study should have batteries that provide 4-5 hours of trouble-free operation without recharging. Anyway, this is useful for other purposes.
Best 2017 Notebooks to Study: Ranking
And now, based on the parameters mentioned, you can consider the best laptops that are inexpensive and suitable for study. The rating includes real laptops that are currently on sale, and their price does not exceed the mark of 10 thousand rubles.
Prestigio Smartbook 141A01
One of the best budget notebooks for study, which will cost 9500 rubles. This is a weak device that will allow you to use the Internet, work with office programs, but he can hardly pull out video and graphics processing programs. You can generally forget about games on such a laptop, because its hardware is rather weak.
The system uses a 14.1-inch display with a resolution of 1366 Ă— 768, a 4-core Atom processor with a frequency of 1.3 GHz, 2 GB of RAM and a 32 GB SSD drive. As expected, there is Wi-Fi standard 802.11n and preinstalled Windows 10. As for autonomy, the laptop bypasses its competitors in this parameter. The 10 thousand mAh battery allows it to work for 7 hours without recharging.
Unfortunately, the screen in a laptop such as TFT TN, which is its drawback. We mentioned above that such displays are worse in comparison with other types of matrices, but, taking into account good user reviews and optimal characteristics for studying, we can recommend this laptop as one of the best laptops for studying at the institute.
4Good Light AM500
The cost of this model is lower - only 9000 rubles. However, the characteristics of the model do not differ completely from the parameters of the laptop above. It uses the same processor, the same amount of RAM, and even an SSD hard drive with 32 GB of memory. The screens in the models are identical and even the battery has a capacity of 10 thousand mAh, providing 7 hours of continuous operation. Card reader, Wi-Fi module, Bluetooth included.
This is a lightweight and compact laptop that you can carry with you to the institute every day, it easily pulls office applications, is suitable for work and study, watching movies, and thanks to the large battery capacity you can not worry that the laptop will be discharged while studying.
Digma EVE 1400
The next laptop, which can be attributed to the rating of the best laptops for studying at the institute, will cost 9,100 rubles. This is a compact and small device with a screen diagonal of 14.1 inches and a classic resolution of 1366x768. It uses a more powerful Intel Atom X5 processor (4 cores) with a frequency of 1.44 GHz. Other characteristics are the same as in previous models in the rating. That's just the battery fails a little. This model uses a battery of 8 thousand mAh, which on average can provide 5-6 hours of continuous operation.
Wi-Fi module, card reader, Bluetooth, as well as a camera for communicating via Skype - all this is included.
More powerful graphics laptops
The above models have built-in video cards, therefore, they are not suitable for video processing, working with 3D graphics, etc. And if the student’s specialty involves the use of graphics processing programs, then the laptop should be more powerful.
The following models have more powerful hardware and have discrete graphics cards. Such laptops will pull demanding programs, but their price is higher.
HP 15-ac113ur
This laptop has a larger screen compared to previous models. Here a 15.6-inch matrix with a resolution of 1366 Ă— 768 is used. Therefore, this laptop will be heavier.
Iron pleasantly surprises: 2-core Intel Pentium 3825U processor with a frequency of 1.9 GHz, discrete graphics Radeon R5 M330 with 1 GB of memory and a 500 GB hard drive. 2 GB of RAM is also available. The price of the laptop is 17 thousand rubles. It’s about 2 times more expensive than the model prices above, but it's worth it. Thanks to a more powerful hardware, this laptop will allow you to comfortably work with programs for processing 3D graphics and video.
Lenovo G50-45
22 thousand rubles - that’s how much you will have to pay for this model with discrete graphics Radeon R5 M330 with 2 GB of memory. It also uses a good AMD A4 6210 processor with a frequency of 1.8 GHz, 4 GB of RAM and a 500 GB disk. Such a system will allow you to play even modern games, however, at low graphics settings. But for learning the potential of this laptop is more than enough.
Lenovo G50-30
For 16 thousand rubles in the market you can find a budget laptop from Lenovo with a discrete graphics card NVIDIA GeForce 820M, a Pentium N3540 processor and 2 GB of RAM. Among the models with discrete chips, this is one of the weakest, but it is quite suitable for study. In addition, the low price of 16 thousand rubles makes this laptop very popular among students.
Conclusion
The above models have discrete graphics cards - they are preferable for students who are trained in working with video or 3D graphics, building drawings in programs like Autocad or Compass.
Now you know which laptop is better to choose for study. Do not chase high power and performance. It is advisable first of all to select a model that will be convenient, light, small. There are a lot of cheap and expensive laptops on the market, but before you select a specific model, you need to read reviews about it. It also happens that even a powerful and expensive laptop breaks and “slows down” during operation, and a cheap and simple device works for years without problems.