If you need an HDMI output, you'll need to use a dongle to connect to an external monitor, unlike Apple's latest MacBook Pros, which have it built in. The OLED display option is a treat, if you're willing to pay for it. The XPS 15 has a sturdy design with thin bezels around the display, making it easy to carry around and putting plenty of focus on your work. It ran for nine hours and 43 minutes on our test. We found the XPS 15 to offer a surprisingly long battery life considering its powerful components. (If you want an even bigger screen, consider the Dell XPS 17.) Students who are making in some sciences, those coding with deep learning models or arts or journalism students exporting video may appreciate the extra kick of performance.
For that, we like the Dell XPS 15, which is portable enough to carry around, but also goes up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti alongside 12th Gen Intel H-series CPUs. Some students may need a bit of GPU power. If you can find a deal, great school is expensive enough.
Others may just throw in a gift card or some free earbuds. It's also possible that your school will have a relationship with a vendor for deals on certain models.
An engineering major working with computer-aided design software might want a notebook with a discrete graphics card, while students who primarily do research and write papers may be fine with a thin ultrabook. Consider your major or specialization: Science majors and liberal arts majors may have different needs.Also, be on the lookout for student discounts. Tech products are easier to find now than they were earlier this year, but there may be some items that are still hard to come by. Going into the Fall 2022 semester, the latest parts in laptops include Intel's 12th Gen CPUs, AMD's Ryzen 6000 processors (though these have been difficult to find) and GPUs, Apple's M2 chips and Nvidia's RTX 30-series GPUs. There are so many on the market, so we recommend focusing on portability, battery life and then performance based on the recommendations of your school or department. Picking a college laptop can feel like homework in itself.