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7 best budget laptops for college students

There's a thin line between price, quality, and transportability — and these laptops check all the boxes, great for today's virtual learning environment

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Whether you're heading out to college or about to start school virtually, a new laptop is almost a necessary school supply this year. Whether required or not, laptops certainly cost far more than a set of pencils and a notebook. But there are solid budget options that can certainly do the job of getting you online to attend class, finish a paper — and far more.

These laptops are all available now, and you can pick them up immediately without having to wait for pre-ordering. They start at $300 and go up from there, but not one of them will cost more than $1,000. Here are our picks then for some of the best budget laptops for any student.

ASUS ZenBook 13 — $699.99

Asus Zenbook 13

Asus

The Asus Zenbook 13 has a backlit keyboard

The Asus Zenbook 13 is — as the name suggests — a laptop with a 13.3-inch FHD display. It clocks in at just 2.6 pounds, and is 16.9 mm thick. Inside this Windows 10 machine is an 8th Gen Intel Core i5 quad-core processor, along with 8 GB memory and 512 GB of SSD storage.

Asus promises Wi-Fi at Gigabit speeds, plus up to 14 hours of battery life. There's also a backlit keyboard, and facial recognition baked inside so the laptop will truly only open for you and you alone. You can also run tasks through voice recognition as well.

There are multiple ports including a USB-A, a USB 2.0, and a USB 3.1 Type C ports, plus an HDMI port and microSD card reader. You get an HD camera and one more nice perk? Harman Kardon speakers inside.

Available on Amazon



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