Back to School with BuyDig: What Laptop Should I Get for College?

All good things must eventually come to an end—and that includes summer vacation, but that doesn’t mean that trading beaches and sunshine for the school library has to be a complete bummer. Whether you’re heading off to college for the first time, are a returning upperclassmen or still in high school, a new school year is the perfect excuse to upgrade to a new laptop. Here’s how BuyDig can help you head back to school in style.

Dell XPS 13

Need a solid Windows machine that can get the job done? The Dell XPS 13 is one of the first ultrabooks to sport Intel’s 5th generation Core i5-5200U processors. Clever engineering packs a full 13 inch 1,920 x 1,080 resolution screen into the compact body of an 11 inch notebook, by doing away with the border around the edge of the screen. The bevel surrounding the screen is a mere 0.2 inches, as opposed to the standard half an inch allotted most designs. If you’re coursework involves managing multiple spreadsheets and pages at a time, your eyes will thank you for picking the Dell XPS 13.

Asus Zenbook Infinity UX301LA Utrabook

Looking for a laptop that combines the long battery life, fast boot times and high performance specs of a laptop with the ultraportable size of a netbook? The Asus Zenbook Infinity UX301 packs an Intel Core i7 4558U 2.8 GHz 3.3 GHz Processor, a 256GB (128GB x 2) SATA III RAID 0 solid state drive, and an integrated Intel Iris HD5100 graphics card into an elegant 15.5 mm thick gorilla glass reinforced chassis. This is a beautiful ultrabook, and it’s scratch resistant polished exterior will keep your laptop looking like new. With the UX301’s brilliant 13.3 inch 2,560 x 1,440 IPS touchscreen display, 2 sec boot speed and 8 hour battery life, you won’t just crush those long study sessions at the trendy cafe across campus, you’ll look good doing it too.

Acer Aspire R 13

If flexibility and versatility are your primary concerns when picking your computer of choice, look no further than the Acer Aspire R13. The Aspire R13 looks truly unique—it’s stunning 13.3 inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) multi-touch display balances delicately upon Acer’s futuristic looking Ezel Aero Hinge, which allows this ultrabook to transform into a whopping six different user modes. The screen can be flipped 180 degrees to be turned into a theater, converted into a propped drawing pad and even flattened into a tablet pc. Acer makes no compromises in performance either, sporting a 5th generation Core i5-5200U processor, 8GB of LPDDR3 SDRAM, and a 10 hour 4 cell Li-Ion battery into a sleek black carbon fiber package.

Asus ROG G501JW

If you’re an engineering student, an architect, or just an avid gamer, you need a laptop with a large powerful display and dedicated graphics card. Top of the line laptops can easily get large, bulky and well over $2000, but because we are shopping for students and require mix of performance, portability and price, the ASUS ROG G501 is a solid choice. With its 15.6 inch 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) IPS matte display and its NVIDIA GTX 960M 4GB GDDR5 graphics card, you’ll have no problem running the latest video games on ultra-settings. It is also remarkable how thin Asus managed to make the ROG G501JW, packing Core i7 4720HQ processor, 16GB of ram, a 512GB SSD and the GTX 960M graphics card into a 0.81 inch thin aluminum casing. With the ROG G501’s red backlit keyboard, 4K graphics, and sleek black aluminum design, you’ll be sure to turn heads at your next college LAN party.

It’s all about what laptop is going to suit your needs – so give it some thought before you head off to college this semester!