The best student laptops in Australia for 2023: the top back to school options (2023)

Whether you're a student looking for a new laptop, or a parent looking to kit their kid out with the tech they need for their studies, there are plenty of challenges to overcome in the vast sea of solid options.

One of the major considerations, for both student and parent alike, is to find a laptop that doesn't cost the planet, but simply finding the cheapest available machine isn't likely to be a worthwhile investment either way.

Thankfully, here at TechRadar, we get to review a vast majority of the laptops that hit shelves, and in doing so we get a great idea of the products that are worth their asking price –particularly when it comes to paying for features and specs that actually matter.

With that said, below are our recommendations on the best value laptops for students, no matter your budget and needs, we'll have a laptop to meet the demands of your study (and wallet).

Best student laptops at a glance

1. Apple MacBook Air (M1, 2020)
2. Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2
3. Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook
4. Dynabook E10-S
5. Microsoft Surface Go 3
6. Acer Aspire 5
7. HP Chromebook 14
8. Dell Inspiron 15
9. Acer Chromebook Spin 311
10. Asus Vivobook 15

Best student laptops in Australia 2023

Apple’s late 2020 MacBook Air might seem a little dated in 2023, but the M1 silicon chip was powerful enough when it was released to hold up well today… especially when you factor in battery life. Apple’s first Reduced Instruction Set Chip (the M1) is still the most powerful we have on this list of student laptops, and with a pricetag of under $1,500 before any student discounts it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch for many student’s budgets. This gets you an impressive colour-accurate HDR screen, a powerful CPU capable of any modern workload and a GPU that can offer light gaming capabilities.

Read the full review: MacBook Air (M1, 2020)

The original Surface Laptop Go was an impressive budget-conscious device and the Surface Laptop Go 2 has made some major improvements to make it even better. It keeps the 12.4-inch PixelSense display, and offers a similar compact and ultralight profile, but has updated the processor, keyboard and storage options. The new processor is 15-30 percent faster and the Gen 3 PCIe storage offers read and write speeds over 3000/1500 MB/s respectively. The device also offers a full work day battery lifespan, a fingerprint reader, and solid audio and web -conferencing capabilities.

Full review still to come.

While the hardware is not quite as suave as Microsoft's competing Go ranges, Lenovo's IdeaPad Duet Chromebook is even more affordable and includes a whole lot of value in its tiny cost. Chief among them is Chrome OS, which we find to be a richer experience when using a lightweight 2-in-1 (particularly compared with Windows 10S), especially if you're already in on G Suite apps like Gmail and co.

The Duet's 10.1-inch display has a 1920x1200 resolution and looks vibrant and bright, while the keypad isn't quite as nice as the likes of the Surface Go 2, it's fine to type on and is particularly comfortable for the price. Internally, it's not the most powerful unit on the market, but with a battery that lasts almost 8 hours in straight 1080p movie playback, this is a perfect portable machine for those that aren't looking to put the unit through its paces and are happy with mostly browsing and document processing.

Read the full review: Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook

The Dynabook E10-S is compact, durable and affordable… basically everything you’d be looking for in a device for young kids to learn on. The E10-S is powered by a low powered dual-core Intel Celeron N4020 CPU, paired with 4GB of RAM and an integrated Intel UHD Graphics 600 GPU, all of which are components that you shouldn’t expect too much from. Web browsing, document editing and very light browser based games are about all this device can handle, but it’s enough to achieve all you’d need to in most young learning environments.

Battery life is decent at 11-plus hours and there’s Ethernet, USB-type A, HDMI, USB-C and MicroSD Card interface options. The full Windows 10 Pro Education OS is great for compatibility, but there’s not a lot of processing overhead so we suspect it’ll seize up when trying to use more demanding applications.

The screen is also little under specced compared to something like the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook , but it’s at least functional for an 11-inch device.

Full review still to come.

The Surface Go 3 uses the same 10.5-inch PixelSense display with a 3 by 2 1920x1080 pixel resolution touchscreen display as its predecessor. This screen has a 400 nit typical brightness with a 1:1500 contrast ratio and 10-point capacitive touch, so you don’t really need much more in terms of visual quality or usability than what’s already on offer.

It’s also got pretty much the same RAM options and while the Intel Pentium Gold 6500Y is technically a new processor released in 2021, it's built from the same components as the Intel Core m3-8100Y that were on the most expensive Surface Go 2s. The only significant difference then is that there’s no longer an LTE option, which if we think about it, was an unnecessary premium feature that those looking for a budget 2-in-1 can easily live without.

While the new processor offers 20 to 40 percent performance improvements on CPU heavy tasks, it takes a pretty big hit in GPU performance dropping by up to 78 percent of the previous generation.

The Surface Go 3 runs on Windows 11 S Home, which should offer faster performance, but a reduced set of available applications. This is still a solid option, the competition has just developed quickly around it.

Read the full review: Microsoft Go 3

The Acer Aspire 5 comes with the option of either a 5000 series AMD or 11th Gen Intel CPU and 8 or 16GB of RAM locally and now that these aren’t the current generation they’re pretty affordable.

The full-size processors mean that whatever device you opt for here it’ll be one of the more powerful devices offered in this roundup. The device is more than capable of powering through most tasks on the Windows 11 Home OS it's packaged with, with enough overhead to download a wide variety of applications for stuff like light photo editing and browser based and older-title gaming.

Battery life isn’t quite a full day, but it’ll get you most of the way when you forget your charger lasting around 6.5 hours. It’s not the most portable offering here, but its the biggest device in the top half of this list, so a little extra bulk is to be expected.

The Acer Aspire 5 has all the essentials of a work/ study laptop at a much more affordable price, and you can even nab some decent sales on them these days.

Read our full Acer Aspire 5 review

The HP Chromebook 14 may not be as powerful as other Chromebooks, but this tiny laptop has a few aces up its sleeves, helping it secure a well-deserved spot on our best laptops for students list. Those aces include striking a good balance between ample screen space and portability, as well as a surprisingly excellent keyboard, a decent trackpad, a vivid display, and of course a very low price.

Read the full review: HP Chromebook 14

The Inspiron 15 from Dell is a great device for those on a student salary. With proper AMD and Intel CPUs on offer this unit is again one of the more powerful here and shouldn’t have any trouble tackling light photo editing and and other slightly more demanding tasks.

The keyboard isn’t ideal feeling a bit spongy and lacking a backlight, but the full HD screen is decent, and even offers 120Hz refresh rates on the AMD model. The onboard PCIe SSD is fast enough with 3500MB-plus read and 1000MB/s-plus write speeds. GPU was ok on the i5 model, but it’ll be better on the Ryzen and i7 Intel devices. Connectivity is pretty good if you ignore the omission of a USB-C port and 6.5h battery life will get you out of a bind when needed.

Read the full review: Dell Inspiron 15

If versatility is a top priority, then look no further than the Acer Chromebook Spin 311. This all-rounder has all the makings of a great student laptop, from its good battery life to its robust build and solid usability. However, the Acer Chromebook Spin 311 takes it further with its impressive levels of versatility, thanks to its abundance of ports considering its size, 2-in-1 design, portable size and excellent touchscreen display. It also boasts a keyboard and a touchpad that are not only reliable, but also satisfying to use. That’s a rare thing in a machine at this price point. It's worth noting this machine isn't sold locally in Australia, but there are plenty of ways to buy it from the US or importers without raising its cost all too much.

Read the full review: Acer Chromebook Spin 311

There’s really only one Vivobook 15 we’re including here since the others start creeping up into premium Ultrabook territory. The entry Vivobook 15 has an RRP of $1,099 and it comes with a 12th Gen Intel Core i5-1235U Processor. This new CPU offers many more cores and significantly improved performance in some tasks and will be capable of doing basically any work you throw at it. The 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSDs aren’t huge, but they’re pretty standard in the student department, but they’re as fast as anything you’ll find on premium units. The FullHD display is pretty standard and battery life is a bit behind what you’d want, lasting just 5 hours and 20 minutes of light web browsing, but it’s perfectly usable if you have your charger handy.

Full review still to come.

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