Best Laptops For College Students Under $500

By: Amel Zaeem

Updated On:

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Best Laptops For College Students Under $500 | Best Laptops For College Students Under 500 | Best Laptop For College Students Under 500

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We have come up with the list of Best Laptops For College Students under $500. College life and academics are now way more different than high school.

It’s not easy to do loads of work by using notebooks but, laptops make it easy.

College students now need to buy laptops that are affordable with fast performance, and long battery life.

Best Laptops For College Students under $500

And now, due to pandemics, all the institutions started their online classes to continue with their academics.

Many students are working and studying from home and in this way, the need for suitable laptops has been increased.

So, if you have a budget of 500$ or lower, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have a good laptop with great quality.

So, without further ado let me give you my suggestion on college laptops that are great under $500 and are fully equipped with all the requirements.

Best Laptops For College Students Under $500

1. Lenovo Chromebook Duet a laptop for college students under $500

Best Laptops For College Students under $500

Lenovo chrome book duet acts as a tablet and has a separable keyboard.

It has fantastic battery life. It has also won the award for best budget chrome book/laptop. So, you can consider it as an all-in-one package.

Lenovo chrome book duet costs $257.19 at the time of writing this guide. This powerhouse came out in May 2020.

Talking about its design, it’s a little bit different but one will get used to its setup process. You have to attach the keyboard and the back cover piece to the tablet.

It has a display of 10.1 inches, 1920 x 1200 which completely works for binge-watching. It has 4GB RAM and a storage capacity of 64GB eMMC enough to carry important files and notes in it for college work.

GPU of ARM G72 MP3 making good graphics. It weighs around 2 pounds which makes it lightweight and easy to carry around.

In addition, It has a CPU of MediaTek Helio P60T which provides smooth work.

Pros
  • It has a sharp, colorful screen.
  • Battery life is more than 7 hours which is good enough to work in college hours.
  • Provides ChromeOS tablet optimizations.
Cons
  • It has a cramped keyboard which makes typing a bit difficult and has a flimsy hinge.

2. Samsung Chromebook 3

Best Laptops For College Students under $500

An affordable and decent laptop with a brighter screen and with qualities of multitasking. It uses Google Chrome OS operating system just like Chromebooks.

Cases of request overheating have been reported. So, users have to be careful not to use too many heavy programs.

As a bonus, you can learn how to fix an overheating laptop which be a handy skill when using this laptop.

It has a strong hinge and enables the screen to rotate up to 180 degrees. Overall, it is one of the best laptops for college students who are budget shoppers.

If we talk about its size (11.6 inches; 1,366 x 768) and weight (2.5 pounds), let me tell you that it is the twin of HP Stream 11.

GPU of Intel HD Graphics 400 makes outstanding clear graphics for entertainment purposes as well.

4GB RAM and with a storage capacity of 32GB which is a plus point for college students. CPU of Intel Celeron N3060 with a cost of US$287.

It also did a marvellous job in a Chrome drop test. We dropped it from 2.5 feet and after a few drops, it had a crack in case of a side drop.

Pros
  • It is very affordable as you can see the price.
  • Its bright screen with fast performance makes the work easier.
  • Battery life is really good.
Cons
  • It has some awkward button replacements which can makes one work slow but it takes time to get used to it.
  • It runs warm after long use.

3. Lenovo Chromebook C330 2-in-1

Best Laptops For College Students Under $500 | Best Laptops For College Students Under $500

If you get bored from a “lap” “top”, then you can have a “tablet mode” and a “tent mode” by changing the modes of the same device.

Yes, this is one of its unique features. That’s why it is called 2 in 1. We can bend it up to 360 degrees which makes it easily portable.

A plus point for college students to carry it around just like a tablet. And of course, we can’t ignore its stunning chassis and astonishingly low price.

It boasts a display of 11.6 inches; 1,136 x 768 – 1,366 x 768 which is bright and colourful and is normally one to suit college premises.

It has an integrated GPU with 4GB RAM and 32 to 64GB storage capacity which is good enough to handle the tough assignments and projects or word files regarding all the academics.

It has a CPU of MediaTek MT8173C good enough to multi-task and manage more than one web browser at a time.

It weighs around 2.82 pounds, the suitable range for every student making the device safe at the same time.

Pros
  • Its best feature is 2 in 1 working also as a tablet.
  • It has a mind-blowing battery life which works well for college students in their long and busy academic routines.
  • Comfortable keyboard.
Cons
  • It has a cloudy display with slow performance.

4.Apple iPad 2020 with Smart Keyboard

Best Laptops For College Students Under $500 | Best Laptops For College Students Under $500

iPad 2020 which is also known as iPad 8” is basically not a laptop. It’s a tablet ($329) with an additional keyboard ($159) making it under the $500 budget.

So, it is a hybrid (laptop and tablet both). It provides swift performance and very good battery time for college students to make it useful. And its aesthetic look keeps attracting people.

It has a 10.2-inch screen with bezels pronounced around it. Its display quality is impressive with 500 nits of brightness and 2160 x 1620-pixel resolution.

It has a CPU of 2.32 GHz quad-core 64-bit with a storage capacity of 32 or 128 GB and 3GB RAM weighing 1.4 lbs.

The additional device called the Apple pencil is remarkable and very precise.

It is rechargeable but easy to use. One will enjoy working with its marvellous responsiveness.

It attaches to the tablet chassis magnetically but there is no place for its attachment. We have to recharge it with a lightning port.

Pros
  • It has a bright and colorful display making us enjoy the visuals.
  • Fast chip and outstanding battery life which is much needed in college days.
Cons
  • There are some iPad OS limitations.

5. HP Chromebook 11

Best Laptops For College Students Under $500 | Best Laptops For College Students Under $500

It’s very cheap and affordable for college students with all the qualities they need to survive loads of academic work.

HP Chromebook 11 comes with a micro-SD card reader and a couple of UBC Type-A ports, and two USB-C ports. See not bad for a Chromebook. 

If you’re on a budget and want a laptop that can meet your web browsing and light productivity needs, look no further than HP Chromebook 11.

It’s an attractively priced laptop with 32GB of eMMC, and best of all it includes an Intel Celeron N3350 CPU which can run apps with a good speed at a RAM of 4GB.

That makes the  HP Chromebook 11 one of the best values we’ve seen, coming in at hundreds of dollars less than competitive laptops once you spend the money on a keyboard cover.

Performance is mediocre, but it’s fast enough for the tasks you’ll ask it to perform, and the display is surprisingly good for the money.

It’ll run your favourite software’s easily, and offers one of the best browsing experiences to you.

The Intel Celeron N3350 CPU run apps with a good speed at a RAM of 4GB. Not that good when it comes to storage but I’m sure that 32GB of eMMC will definitely work for academic projects.

It has a display of 11.6 inches, 1366 x 768 and with a GPU of Intel UHD Graphics 500. It weighs 3 pounds at a price of US$147.

These are some of the best suggestions I can give. So, grab a device and gear up for college with the best one.

Pros
  • What’s better than a device with quality and less expense making it ideal for college, work places and travelling as well.
  • It has plenty of ports as well.
Cons
  • It has dreadful display bezels and all-over weak specs.

Things to consider before buying Laptops For College Students Under $500

In spite of the fact that we previously launched laptops were not able to cope with the latest technology. When buying a laptop you should always consider several things.

Processor:

Processors decide how flawlessly your PC performs – assuming they aren’t exceptional or quick enough with what we want today then our list of laptop
will solve your problem of deciding which laptop you should buy.

Focus on the quality of your laptop’s processor. Most current laptops feature an Intel Core i-Series processor with two cores at least (four recommended)

However, you can find another model as well in which you can considerably focus on buying a model which runs with an AMD processor.

Laptop Weight:

Your laptop needs to be quite light in weight so you can manage and carry your laptop inside the college.

A light-weighted laptop will help you move around in the college easily.

If your laptop is light in weight you can carry it easily with your notebooks as well during the class.

Keypoint is that lighter laptops are typically easier on battery life.

So this should be another factor considered when looking at models from different manufacturers, especially if they both offer similar performance specs otherwise.

Display Size & Resolution:

As a college student, you should always focus on your needs, you need to do projects like making diagrams and drawings on your laptop so for this you need to have a large display in which you can save necessary information. 

A laptop with a high-quality screen display will give you excellent display results. Such as Quad HD 2560x1440p or Ultra HD 3840×2560 pixels.

Storage Capacity & Type:

A lot of laptops have built-in storage drives made up of either an SSD (solid-state drive) or an HDD (hard disk drive).

SSDs are faster and offer more storage space for the price while HDDs have roomier capacities but aren’t as fast.

Many models also include both so you can choose which to configure your computer with depending on how much storage space is necessary versus speed prioritized in various tasks.

Two primary types of RAM: SDRAM and DDR. Different speeds, voltages and other factors determine which one will work best in a given laptop model when deciding upgrades later down the line too if need be.

Many laptops feature upgradable memory by way of an access panel on the bottom where it’s easily accessible without breaking open the entire machine like some do not- look carefully at this before buying.

Graphics Card:

As a college student, a dedicated video card inside your laptop is necessary for displaying all those lines, diagrams and equations clearly on the screen.

For most models that feature Intel HD Graphics or AMD Radeon R-Series cards, these should be fine.

But look into getting a laptop with something faster such as NVIDIA GeForce GTX Series processors if possible to future-proof your notebook computer against new versions of Windows which may require even stronger graphics processing power going forward.

Our Conclusion on Best Laptops For College Students

Buying a laptop as a college student or for a college student is quite a mess and so most of the time brainstorming is required.

In order to fulfil your needs, you need to broaden up your mind to understand truly what will be the need of a college student and what will be his/her budget.

That’s why we recommend you do a lot of research when buying laptops for college students under $500.

We have analyzed some of the best laptops from the 2022 laptops list and mentioned some of the above so you can choose which one you will need without thinking twice.

Understand the need of your college faculty and consider your own interest.
We hope that you find this article helpful and you find the details of the best laptops for college students under $500.

There is a large range of best laptops for college students when you look for a good one. So, we have tried our best to choose the best affordable.

Lenovo laptops come in a wide range of shapes, sizes, and displays. Lenovo laptops are always the first choice of college students because of their easy handling and speed.

We hope that this detailed review has helped lead you down at least one step of your buying journey.

We understand how tough it is to find the right fit which caters to you and the laptop work you like to do in future.

With the variety of decisions above, you have countless various blends of highlights to look over.

You will undoubtedly observe one to be that accommodates your choices, and regardless of whether you’re not, you certainly will have gained some idea that what type of product you want in your laptop bag.

I hope these tips help you narrow down exactly what kind of laptop will best suit your needs.

If not then don’t forget that we’re always here at thedigitalanu ready to answer questions or offer advice if needed.

We have suggested to you the best laptops under $500, whose features you can look at and afterwards select one laptop for yourself.

We have attempted to incorporate with the best laptops for college students under 500 however there are a few laptops that you can find more durable and effective.

it depends upon the features and price of the laptop you choose for yourself.

They are likewise worth a try and when you concentrate on their features you will be able to choose the best one for yourself.

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