If you are heading back to school and trying to find the best laptops for college students, with all the choices out there it can be a daunting task. Many college students don’t have a lot of money to spend on a laptop and want one that can last the whole time they’re in college, which can be at least 3-4 years. On top of that, many of them also carry their laptops around to their classes, so not only does it have to be durable, it has to be portable. Here are some of the laptops that I can recommend for college and are under $1000.

ASUS U46E-RAL5

This 14″ laptop is quite powerful but also portable enough so it’s not too difficult to carry around with you. It has an Intel i5 processor and 8GB of memory, which is more than what you get on the average consumer laptop. On top of that, it comes with a good battery that will last you over seven hours before you have to go and charge it again, which means you can go the whole day without having to plug it in. The only downside to this one is that it only comes with an Intel graphics card, so it won’t be the best laptop for playing games on.

 

 

Lenovo Z570-102494U

This is a 15.6″ laptop, which is slightly larger, but has similar specifications to the ASUS U46E-RAL5. It has an Intel i5 processor but only with 6Gb of memory, which is still very good. Since this laptop is a bit bigger, it’s going to be a bit heavier and cumbersome. Unlike other laptops, this one comes with Rapidboot technology which allows it to start up 20 seconds faster than other laptops. The battery life for this one is not nearly as good as the ASUS at only 5 hours, but it is still relatively decent. A nice feature that it comes with is Veriface Facial Recognition Technology. This allows you to lock and unlock your computer using your face as the password. One downside is that just like the ASUS, the Lenovo also only comes with an Intel graphics card.

 

Sony VAIO VPC-EG13FX


This is another 14″ laptop and also has an Intel i5 processor like the other two laptops, but this one only comes with 4GB of memory. Even though it has the least amount of ram, it still performs relatively well compared to the other two. This laptop also has decent battery life, lasting around six hours. If you have a Playstation 3 and enjoy using it, this may be the laptop for you. It comes with remote keyboard software to allow you to play games, surf the web, or enter text from your laptop onto the Playstation. The only downside with this laptop is that it has a plastic casing, which makes it a bit bulkier than the laptops with aluminum casings.