School has been weird for the last year or so. If you’re enrolled somewhere, you’re probably doing a lot of online classes as much as in-person classes. You might even have some of that changing on the fly as some places open up and others close down again. It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on, but one thing is for sure: you need to be flexible. A great laptop gives you options, whether you need to connect to a class from your kitchen or you need to get some work done at the local cafe.
We’ve got a roundup of great places to save and great laptops to buy just for you.
Whether you’re a parent looking for a laptop for your high school student or a college student paying your own way, one thing that’s probably true is you aren’t looking to spend a fortune on a new laptop. You need something functional, portable, and affordable. You’ll need powerful enough graphics to run programs like Zoom (and maybe a little TikTok on the side?). Depending on the work you do, you’ll also want something accessible enough for word processors, saving to the cloud, and running basic software that varies from Adobe Photoshop to iTunes.
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2020
This antivirus monitors your computer in real-time to stop malicious files before they have a chance to start downloading.
Best Laptop Student Discounts
Before we even get into specifics, you should know there are plenty of places online that offer student discounts. Anyone who can prove they go to school like with a .edu email address or sometimes through other methods like a form that checks college databases can get a huge chunk taken off any computer. Here are some of the best places to do just that.
Best Buy Student Deals
This program applies to a wide variety of stuff, including headphones and cameras and smartphones. But you can also save $100 on Apple MacBooks, up to $300 on Surface Books, and $50 on tablets.
Dell University
You can save 2% on any computer. Plus, keep an eye out for special events around the beginning of each semester where Dell offers as much as $100 more off prices. You can also save on monitors and other accessories, and many of these deals are focused solely on students.
Apple Back-to-School Program
Apple has exclusive pricing for students and educators. Apple’s program targets the back-to-school time period and isn’t year round like some others. You can save a chunk on MacBook laptops, get 20% off AppleCare+, and sometimes get free stuff when you’re in the back-to-school window.
Microsoft Education Store
Automatically save 10% on anything as a student or the parent of a student. That includes Surface tablets, accessories, and more.
HP Back to School
HP has a wide range of products, and you can save at least a little bit on all of it if you’re a student. Get a new laptop, sure, but HP might also be how you outfit your dorm with a new printer or get yourself a headset for private listening.
Amazon Prime Student
While not a direct way to save on a laptop, the benefits of Prime Student may pay off a lot more in the long run. You get a six-month trial that includes a lot of Prime benefits, including free two-day shipping, unlimited Prime Video streaming, unlimited photo storage on Prime Photos, and more. You’ll even get Student-exclusive deals. After the six months are up, you get 50% off Amazon Prime.
Best Back-to-School Laptop Deals
The laptops under this category will mostly be machines already on sale regardless of what student discounts might also be applied. In other words, you might be able to save even more using available student discounts. They also need to be well-rounded machines capable of doing what you need them to do while you’re traveling to school or getting online for remote classwork. You can pay for extras like Office 365, but in some cases you’d be surprised how much you can get away with using programs that save directly to the cloud like Google Docs. That’s up to you, of course, but it might also be up to your budget.
HP Stream 14-inch laptop refurbished | $55 off
Covered by Amazon’s Renewed Guarantee for 90 days. The laptop includes an Intel Celeron N4000 processor, 4GB RAM, and 64GB flash storage. It has a 14-inch screen with 1366 x 768 pixel resolution, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and multiple USB ports. There’s also a microSD card reader for expanding your storage.
Acer Chromebook Spin 311 convertible laptop | $250 off
The internals include an Intel Celeron N4020 processor, 4GB RAM, 32GB flashstorage, and more. The Chromebook has Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0. It includes an 11.6-inch touchscreen. The built-in cloud support gives you some extra storage options including an additional 100GB on Google Drive to use.
Asus Chromebook Flip C434 2-in-1 laptop | $100 off
This laptop has a 14-inch touchscreen display with 1080p resolution. It can flip 360-degrees so you can use the Chromebook as a laptop or a tablet. It’s powered by an Intel Core M3 processor, 4GB RAM, and 64GB flash storage. You’ll also get a year of 100GB Google Cloud Storage to use.
HP 15-ef0022nr Windows laptop | $43 off
The specifications include an AMD Ryzen 7 3700U processor, 8GB RAM, and a 256GB solid state drive. It has a 15.6-inch display with 1366 x 768 pixel resolution. It also comes with Windows 10 Home, a long-lasting battery, and NVMe speeds on the SSD for crazy fast load times.
Gateway 15.6-inch Ultra Slim Notebook
Grab a super inexpensive laptop powered by an Intel Core i5 processor, Intel Iris Xe graphics, a 512GB SSD, and 16GB RAM. It also has a Fingerprint Scanner, a built-in webcam, and a 15.6-inch IPS display.
Samsung Galaxy Book S 13.3-inch touchscreen | $230 off
The Galaxy Book S features a long-lasting battery life that can go up to 17 hours. It also works well with Android smartphones if you’re already in that ecosystem. It’s powered by an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD. It also has a 13.3-inch 1080p touchscreen.
› See more product details
Lenovo Legion Y540 15.6-inch laptop | $220 off
Sold through the antonline eBay storefront. This is a trusted eBay seller and it’s a great price. The laptop has a 144Hz refresh rate on its 15.6-inch 1080p screen, so it’s a good gaming option. It’s also powered by a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card, which is a huge improvement over integrated graphics. You’ll get an Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD as well.
Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 Laptop | Starting at $1,670
The powerful 2-in-1 laptop comes with Windows 10 Home, an 11th-generation Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor, 8GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD. It has a 13.4-inch InfinityEdge display that is enabled for touch and folds around into a tablet form-factor. It’s $123 off while supplies last
MacBook Pro (16-inch, Late 2019) | $2,249 at Amazon
In late 2019, Apple bumped the top-end MacBook Pro display size up to 16 inches and redeveloped the keyboard for a more reliable experience. Since it’s been out a few months, it has seen a few discounts, but this $200 price drop at Amazon in space gray or silver is one of its best yet.
Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 Laptop | Starting at $1,274
The powerful 2-in-1 laptop comes with Windows 10 Home, an 11th-generation Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor, 8GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD. It has a 13.4-inch InfinityEdge display that is enabled for touch and folds around into a tablet form-factor. It’s $123 off while supplies last.
Alienware M15 R3 gaming laptop | About $120 off
This powerful gaming laptop is equipped with an Intel Core i7 processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card, a 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM, and Windows 10. It has a 144Hz display with 300 nits of brightness. Cryo-Tech optimizes cooling, giving you better performance overall.
What to Look For
If you haven’t quite found what you’re looking for in the list above, just know that things change all the time. Laptop deals come and go like the wind. Student discounts can change as well because those programs often have a lot of exclusive time-sensitive ways to save. Not only will we continue to update this page, but you should continue to keep an eye on all the big retailers, especially those with back-to-school programs. The Apple program, for example, is not a year round thing. The deals are rare and limited.
In addition to checking out main retailers like Best Buy, you might also want to keep an eye on eBay storefronts. You probably won’t be able to use the main site’s student discount program through eBay, but this is a way for retailers to offer special discounts the main storefront can’t. Most retailers have an eBay page, too, including
We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.
