Can anyone recommend a good laptop for a university student

[David william]

My sister is starting college really soon and is in need of a good laptop. The budget is about $950,we have found a laptop idk if it is good I'll put the specs of it below. Can anyone recommend a laptop.
Laptop we have found-
LENOVO IDEAPAD SLIM 3 14ALC6 RYZEN 7
AMD Ryzen™ 7 5700U (8 Core, 16 Threads- Up to 4.3GHz)
8GB DDR4 3200MHZ (4GB OB + 4GB SODIMM)
512GB NVME M.2 SSD
14" FHD (1920x1080) IPS 300nits Anti-glare
Amd Radeon Graphics
Backlit Keyboard, Fingerprint reader
1.41 kg, 45 WHr
Free Lenovo Backpack
3 Years warranty
Genuine Windows 11 Home 64Bit Pre-installed, Office home and student included

 

[cdrkf]

My sister is starting college really soon and is in need of a good laptop. The budget is about $950,we have found a laptop idk if it is good I'll put the specs of it below. Can anyone recommend a laptop.
Laptop we have found-
LENOVO IDEAPAD SLIM 3 14ALC6 RYZEN 7
AMD Ryzen™ 7 5700U (8 Core, 16 Threads- Up to 4.3GHz)
8GB DDR4 3200MHZ (4GB OB + 4GB SODIMM)
512GB NVME M.2 SSD
14" FHD (1920x1080) IPS 300nits Anti-glare
Amd Radeon Graphics
Backlit Keyboard, Fingerprint reader
1.41 kg, 45 WHr
Free Lenovo Backpack
3 Years warranty
Genuine Windows 11 Home 64Bit Pre-installed, Office home and student included

That looks like a decent option - although it somewhat depends, what subject is she studying?

 

[David william]

Psycology,She also has a side online business and she want to edit (not extreme editing)

 

[cdrkf]

In that case something like the model you suggested should be fine - 5700U is pretty fast for standard use and has good enough integrated graphics for light gaming, video editing etc.

 

[David william]

Will an i5 be enough too?

 

[cdrkf]

Will an i5 be enough too?

So the i5 / r5 has less cores typically than the '7' models. For general use that doesn't usually make much difference, however they are slower for intensive tasks that can use all the cores (for example editing).

If you compare the Ryzen 5 5600U and the Ryzen 7 5700U - the per core performance is pretty much the same (same generation of core and max turbo is close - 4.2ghz on the R5 vs 4.3ghz on the R7), so for light duties like writing documents, web browsing they will be effectively the same. The R5 has 33% less cores however (6 cores / 12 threads vs 8 cores / 16 threads on the 7) - so it will be roughly 33% slower when doing the final render of a video file. If you are only doing heavy work occasionally then this might represent a good compromise, depending on the price difference.

 

[ak47jar3d]

It's fine for light editing. I would focus on usability. Keyboard and mouse perferences. You likely want a better than 1080p display. The u based processors are more than sufficient for your usage.

 

[LordVile]

M1 MacBook Air. Free office suite, best battery life at the price, solid display. Prob and will need a dongle but they’re not exactly expensive. Not great for gaming but should melt any light video editing task.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

M1 MacBook Air. Free office suite, best battery life at the price, solid display. Prob and will need a dongle but they’re not exactly expensive. Not great for gaming but should melt any light video editing task.

If you can afford one of these, this really is the one to have for college. And with standard software that comes with it, you can easily scan everything into PDFs so when you’re doing chemistry labs or whatever materials for study, if I could afford the Mac I would go with a Mac, if not get one of the rising powered laptops, or ultra books.

my son loves his ryzen powered Ultrabook from Hewlett-Packard, but he wants an iPad Pro when he goes to medical school