If you’re a parent contemplating a ‘baby’s first laptop’ for your kid (or upgrading an old hand-me-down device they’ve outgrown), there are plenty of factors you’ll need to consider.
I personally got my first laptop at age 18, a clunky HP Pavilion model, when I headed off to university. But times have changed; nowadays, children live more online lives and are frequently expected to have a laptop for schoolwork. Plus, many kids want a computer of their own for hobbies, entertainment, and connecting with friends.
In this article, I’ll be laying out the key things you need to look for when trying to find the best laptop for kids, along with what to avoid – so you can shop in confidence, knowing that you won’t be buying a dud.
How much performance does my kid need?
Do you need to get your kid a laptop with the absolute best high-performance specs? They might hate me for saying this, but not really; in many situations, a midrange or even budget-level laptop will get the job done. It really comes down to what they want to use it for.
There’s a good chance your kid might want you to spring for one of the best gaming laptops, and those devices can be a good choice – they’re typically pretty powerful, and that can help them with more than just gaming. The discrete GPUs (usually made by Nvidia or AMD) inside such laptops are perfect for resource-intensive tasks like digital art, 3D rendering, or video editing, so if you’ve got a kid who’s creatively inclined, they can be a strong choice.
However, gaming laptops rarely offer good battery life and tend to be a lot heavier than your average Ultrabook, meaning that they’re better suited to use as a desktop-replacement system than a school laptop. If you’re looking for a device that can effectively kick your kid off the family PC permanently, a gaming laptop is worth considering.
The benefits of ChromeOS
If your kid does need a laptop they can take with them on the go, my first recommendation will always be to simply pick up one of the best student Chromebooks. Regardless of what level of education your child is at, a Chromebook can be a fantastic choice.
Chromebooks run on Google’s ChromeOS, a lightweight operating system that leverages the power of cloud computing to offload tasks to remote cloud servers, freeing up local processing power. In practice, this means that a Chromebook can be manufactured with less powerful internal components without impacting performance, allowing for a lower price tag.
That lower price does have caveats; Chromebooks are not intended to be high-performance devices, with more of a focus on productivity instead of gaming or creative work. But if your kid just needs something to write assignments on (and perhaps watch some YouTube once the homework is done), then a Chromebook could be a smart choice that saves you some cash.
To be clear, I’m not saying you should cheap out just because a laptop is for a younger user. I would typically recommend 4GB of RAM as the absolute minimum for a Chromebook (8GB for a Windows laptop or MacBook), along with a processor that is no more than three years old – any less than that, and you’ll be getting a laptop that will be quickly outpaced by software advancements.
But there are more advantages to getting a Chromebook than just the price tag. ChromeOS is easy to navigate, with a user interface that has more similarities to Android than Windows or macOS, and it comes with a handy set of parental control features that help keep your kid safe online. The main downside is that Chromebooks typically need a constant internet connection to be used properly – though this arguably isn’t that dissimilar to other laptops these days.
Other operating systems
Naturally, we can’t discount Windows laptops, nor the best MacBooks. Apple‘s signature MacBook Air is a phenomenal laptop that delivers top-notch performance and a good level of future-proofing, but I can’t recommend it unilaterally; for starters, they’re not cheap, and Windows 11 offers greater software compatibility.
Windows is the ever-reliable mainstream choice of OS, but Windows laptops come in all shapes and sizes, with far more variety than either Chromebooks or MacBooks. That can make it challenging to choose one, but the same basic spec guidelines I mentioned above still apply.
8GB of RAM is enough, but 16GB is worth the upgrade, and you shouldn’t buy any laptop with a CPU that’s more than 3 years old. Right now, I’d say the processors to look out for are any with Intel Core Ultra or Qualcomm Snapdragon X branding.
In terms of storage, 512GB is usually enough (again, you can get away with less on a Chromebook thanks to Google Drive storage), but it’s not a bad idea to spring for a 1TB SSD if your kid is the creative sort; video and image files take up a lot more space than text documents and slideshows. You don’t need a dedicated GPU (also called a graphics card) unless your kid is very keen on the aforementioned creative tasks. A lot of games for kids – think Minecraft and Fortnite – will run fine on modern CPU-integrated graphics.
One final important note: if your kid is in high school or college, be sure to investigate whether there are specific requirements with regard to what laptop they use if they need one for their studies. Some software will only run on certain operating systems, and you don’t want to buy a Chromebook only to discover that their school laptop needs Windows!