The ideal laptop for college students give the most value at a great price. They work well - take notes, write papers, edit photos, or just play games to unwind. Their battery life is solid. Finally, good value college laptops are easy to lug around.

The nine things that matter in a laptop: Value, battery life, size and weight, keyboard and trackpad, performance, storage, screen, and ports. These features are prioritized differently, of course, depending upon the need of the individual student.

A decent laptop for a college student should last a full day of classes. It has 13-inch IPS screen and weighs around three pounds or less. It has at least 4-8 GB RAM and at least 128 GB SSD storage. It has at least a couple of USB 3.0 Type-A ports, and some also have SD card slot.

A student of film, music, photography / graphics would need a quad-core processor, higher resolution screen and more memory and sturage.

The best laptop for college students: Asus ZenBook UX330UA (thin, light, longest battery life of any Windows ultrabook)

Thhe best laptop upgrade for college students: Dell XPS 13 (great battery life, light chasis)

The best Mac laptop for college students: MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017) with 128 GB storage ( two Thunderbolt 3 ports)

The best Windows laptop for film and photo students: Dell XPS 15 (powerful processor, great 4K screen, many ports)

The best Mac laptop for film and photo students: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (15-inch, 2017) (the best screen and trackpad)

The best laptop for college students who play games: Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming (great price, long battery life)