Best laptop for engineering students 2021

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Best Laptops For Engineering Students in 2021

Adam Topper

Adam Topper

  • Last Updated Sep 14, 2021
best laptop for engineering students

So youve just started your engineering studies youre ready to equip yourself with all of that sweet, sweet knowledge. Theres only one problem. Youre stuck with a laptop that may as well have been made in the late 90s. Its slow and difficult to use, making your studies that much more difficult.

In these situations, there can only be one solution. Its time to invest in a new laptop for your engineering studies! It can be somewhat tricky to find the best laptops for engineering students, but weve got you covered. Read on for our list of the best laptops for engineering students.

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Products at a Glance

Editor's Choice
Dell XPS 15

Dell XPS 15

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Enthusiast Pick

ASUS ROG Zephyrus

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Mid Range Pick
HP Envy x360

HP Envy x360

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Dell G5 15 5500

Dell G5 15 5500

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Microsoft Surface Book 3

Microsoft Surface Book 3

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There are a number of factors that go into choosing the best laptops for engineering students. You need to be able to effectively study using the laptop, but at the same time, you may also want to use the laptop during your leisure time. Its important to find a balanced laptop thats versatile enough that you can use it for all sorts of different things. In making this article, weve considered some of the most important criteria the processor speed, the amount of storage, the operating system and more. Naturally, since youre going to be taking your laptop to classes, weve also considered things that make the laptop more portable, such as the battery life and the physical size. In doing so, weve come up with a ranking of the best laptops based on their suitability for an engineering student.

Our Recommended

Best Laptops For Engineering Students in 2021

Editor's Choice
Dell XPS 15

Dell XPS 15

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PROS

Lightweight and portable

Powerful performance

Great speakers

CONS

The graphics card could do with an upgrade

Ah, the Dell XPS 15. What can we say about this laptop? Lets start off by saying one vital thing this is the king of laptops. Indeed, this versatile laptop will serve you well in the classroom and beyond. Its one of the most powerful 15 inch laptops on the market, and its certainly worth all of those hard earned pennies.

Performance is hardly an issue with this laptop. Its fast and reliable, allowing you to work efficiently at your studies. It features a sleek look that you can show off to all of your college pals. They will surely look at your laptop in total awe! Its also lightweight, meaning that you can put it in your bag and it wont weigh you down as you walk to different classes. If you fancy listening to a little bit of music as you study, the laptop also has some powerful speakers to facilitate this.

As if all of this wasnt already enough, the laptop also comes with an incredibly comfortable keyboard that you can use to type your notes. This laptop certainly isnt the cheapest model out there, but its worth every penny that you spend on it. We have very few complaints about it, really. Perhaps the graphics card could do with some improvements, but its barely an issue.

Enthusiast Pick

ASUS ROG Zephyrus

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  • AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS processor (8M Cache, up to 4.3GHz)
  • 16GB DDR4 3200MHz RAM
  • 1TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD
  • 0.8 thin, 4.63 lbs ultraportable form-factor
PROS

Impeccable performance

Portable

11 hours of battery life

CONS

Doesnt come with a webcam

If youre also interested in using your laptop for gaming, you are sure to love the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14. This laptop runs on a super fast Ryzen Mobile CPU, so you can expect all of your applications to load up in seconds flat. Not to mention this laptop also has an attractive design thats sure to wow all of your peers.

You are most certainly getting your moneys worth with this laptop. Its very portable despite the fact that its a gaming laptop. It has a 15.6 inch screen, and its very thin. It weighs a mere 3.52 pounds in total, so you can carry it around campus without feeling like youre carrying heavy dumbbells around with you.

The laptop also comes with a Full HD resolution so you can see everything with perfect clarity. Youll have a lot of ports to choose from for connectivity. You will even get impressive battery life. It doesnt have a webcam though, which can be rather annoying if you wish to video call with friends or family when youre away from home in college.

Mid Range Pick
HP Envy x360

HP Envy x360

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PROS

Great battery life

Charges quickly

Can be used with the HP MPP 2.0 pen - ideal for dabbling with digital art

CONS

Doesnt have 4K display

Theres nothing quite like a 2 in 1 laptop when you want the ultimate versatility. Thats what makes the HP Envy x360 stand out so much. This laptop is ideally for casual use and for professionals and students looking for a high quality machine.

There are many things to enjoy about this laptop. First of all, it comes with fantastic battery life, allowing you to have many hours of use before you even need to charge it. Speaking of charging, whats especially great is that the laptop also charges insanely quickly. When its time to play a little bit of music, you can crank up the volume with the laptops incredible speakers.

If that wasnt enough, you can also use the HP MPP 2.0 pen with the laptop, allowing you to draw things on the screen if you wish to do so. Unfortunately though the laptop doesnt come with a 4k display. Nevertheless, this laptop is versatile and powerful its sure to become the engineering students best friend.

Dell G5 15 5500

Dell G5 15 5500

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PROS

Great connectivity

Works well for gaming and demanding programs

Attractive design

CONS

Makes a lot of noise when its cooling

The Dell G5 laptop truly does have it all. Designed primarily as a gaming laptop, this device can handle even the most intense programs, making it ideal for people that need to work with programs such as AutoCAD on a regular basis.

Of course, thats not all either! This laptop features an attractive, sleek looking design. It practically oozes classiness! For gaming, you will get a stellar performance, and this thankfully also applies when you are using other programs that require a lot of horsepower. It also has impeccable connectivity too, ideal for connecting things like external hard drives.

Whats even better about this laptop is that its pretty affordable considering the price. The screen is rather large, measuring 15.6 inches and it weighs only 5.16 lbs. This may be a little heavy to carry but this is fairly normal for a gaming laptop, so its to be expected. The cooling is a little bit noisy though which could be rather irritating to listen to while youre studying.

Microsoft Surface Book 3

Microsoft Surface Book 3

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  • Screen Size: 15 Inches
  • Computer Memory Size: 32 GB
  • CPU: Intel
  • Processor: 1.3 GHz core_i7
  • Screen Resolution: 3240 x 2160
  • Operating System: Windows 10 Pro
  • Graphics Coprocessor: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660Ti
  • Memory Speed: 1.3 GHz
PROS

Attractive

Comfortable keyboard

Portable

CONS

Very expensive

With a gorgeous display and a super comfortable keyboard, its unsurprising that so many people love using the Microsoft Surface Book 3.

The specifications on this laptop are pretty decent, as a whole. For your money, you will get a Core i7 processor that means your laptop runs at an incredible speed. Youre also going to get 32 GB of RAM and a super powerful 1 TB SSD. The laptop is a mere 15 inches, meaning that its large enough for you to see what youre doing with ease, but its also more than portable enough for you to take to all of your classes.

As a whole, the laptop is a premium model thats certainly worth the extra expense. Yes, you heard that right the biggest problem with this laptop is the hefty price tag. Its possible to get laptops with even better specifications than this for a fraction of the price. Nevertheless, if you have the money to spend, this is certainly a great option.

Things To Consider

Wait dont hit that buy button just yet! Take some time to consider these key characteristics before you choose your laptop.

Processor

As an engineering student, there is one thing that you definitely want to prioritize when youre buying your laptop. Thats right, speed. You will want to get a laptop that can load up all of your applications and programs with ease while youre studying. You will likely need to use programs such as AutoCad, which can be pretty difficult to run on an ancient laptop. To save yourself the heartache of waiting 90 years to issue a command, simply just get a laptop with a good CPU instead.

In order to do work with 3D objects easily, you should get an Intel Core i5 processor at the minimum. Of course, you may have a slightly better budget than that. If you want some serious speed, look for a laptop that has an Intel Core i7 processor or a suitable equivalent. With that in mind though, if you arent planning on using software that requires a lot of power to run, you dont need to get a super powerful CPU.

Storage Space

Youre more than likely going to be putting a lot of stuff on your computer. Youre going to need various programs and youll also want to save your work onto the computer. Not to mention, your laptops basic functions can take up space on the laptop, as can things like games or other applications. For this reason, its important to get a laptop with decent storage space.

Of course, the type of storage can also be very important. Ideally you should be trying to get a laptop that has an SSD, since this will run significantly faster on your laptop. Theyre also usually a lot more reliable too. With an SSD, you can have much better productivity as your applications will likely start up a lot faster.

Its worth mentioning that SSDs are also quite expensive, so buying an SSD with a lot of storage space could cost you a lot of money. The solution? Get a joint HDD and SSD drive. You can often get laptops with 1 TB of storage space on the HDD and 256 GB of storage on the SSD. This gives you plenty of space, while also ensuring that your laptop works as quickly as you need it to.

Graphics Card

Sometimes you are going to need to run 3D software on your laptop when you are doing your engineering studies. For this reason, its worthwhile to think about the graphics card on your computer. Youre going to need a beefy graphics card to run programs such as MATLAB CAD or Solid Works.

If possible, you should be looking for at least a 2 GB DDR3 graphics card, possibly better than this. Itll also be great for other things like gaming too, so its certainly worth investing in a laptop with a good graphics card.

RAM

RAM is another good thing to take into consideration when youre buying a laptop for your engineering studies. The amount of RAM on your laptop can determine the amount of things that you can store on the laptop, and how quickly things will run. It works hand in hand with your storage in many respects. Ideally, its worth investing in a laptop with around 8 GB of RAM. If needed, you can also get laptops with around 12 GB and 16 GB of RAM, too.

Size

The size of your laptop will have a big impact on your productivity, but it can also affect how portable the laptop is. You dont strictly need to have a large display if youre studying engineering, but it can certainly be handy. On the flip side though, having a large screen can also mean that the laptop isnt as portable, making it pretty hefty to carry around from one class to another.

So, whats a student to do? Its best to look for that middle ground between a screen thats too big and too small. In the words of Goldilocks, you want something thats just right. 15 inches should work just fine, but you theoretically dont really need anything bigger than 13 inches if you do need to prioritize the portability of the device.

Battery Life

Having a heavy laptop is inconvenient when youre a student and youre moving around a lot, but its something that you can most likely live with. However, good battery life isnt something that you should miss out on. You may not always have access to a charging point in your classes, so what are you going to do if your laptop dies after one hour of use in your lectures? Ultimately, its best to avoid having this situation occur in the first place. Instead, you should get a laptop that has impeccable battery life. Look for at least 6 hours of battery life if you can in order to make it more convenient for you to do your work. Ideally you will want more battery life than this, but 6 hours is a good starting point.

Operating System

The operating system that you choose will likely come down to personal preference. Are you a Mac kind of person, or a Windows sort of person?

Mac is a fantastic option, and laptops with this operating system are generally high quality. The display is usually rather impressive too. Of course, its not always the best choice for running engineering software, since not all programs are actually compatible with Mac OS.

As such, if you are an engineering student its probably a much better choice to opt for a Windows operating system instead. The vast majority of operating systems work with Windows anyway, so this is the better choice if you are going to be using engineering programs.

Other Considerations

There are a couple of other considerations that you may want to think about when youre choosing the best laptops for your engineering studies, too. First of all, you will most likely want to consider a laptop thats durable. If youre traveling to your lectures and classes with your laptop in tow, you dont want the laptop to get damaged because its been bashed around too much.

In addition to this, its also a good idea to think about the connectivity of the laptop. Its good to have a couple of ports on your laptop for things such as USBs or for your headphones when you want some sweet tunes while you write your next essay.

Other useful features include backlit keyboards and touchscreens. Theyre not entirely necessary, but they can certainly help in some situations.

Our Verdict

Editor's Choice
Dell XPS 15

Dell XPS 15

Check Price
Read Review

Table of Contents

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