College is just about to begin for this year’s graduating class of 2024 and next year’s class is starting to plan their future.
One of the biggest college necessities is a laptop to complete student tasks. Since the Covid-19 pandemic occurred there has been an explosion in the usage of digital work.
Colleges have gone paperless. The only question is what laptop best suits the average student.
For the past five years, I have assembled multiple computers for myself, relatives, and friends. I feel I know to give all students more insight on the best laptop for the dollar.
Apple has a competitive market for Macbooks so I have chosen the 15-inch Macbook Air against Windows, the second most competitive laptop choice. For Windows, I have chosen the Asus ROG Zephyrus.
Both laptops are just under $1,300. The average financial aid given to students is $14,100 According to NCES National Center for Education Statistics.
Starting with Macbooks, they offer top-tier processing power leaving ultra-fast technology to suit your college needs.
The Macbook provides Apple’s newest M3 chip to get all your work done lag-free.
Johny Srouji describes why, “They’re the most advanced chips ever built for a personal computer.”
On top of the M3 chip, Apple provides a liquid retina display with True Tone to give you the best display for detailed images and pixel-perfect image capturing.
“The Mac inspires us to be productive and to do the best work of our lives,” says Johny Srouji.
Following that the Asus ROG competes with this plus more. Packing a Ryzen 7 this laptop gives about equal performance to the M3 chip but doubles in performance against almost all other categories
With a Dedicated Graphics card, this laptop can give cutting-edge graphical performance for hard power-consuming software.
With the wonderful performance that comes with the Asus ROG, the laptop overall has more power packed into it than Apple’s MacBook.
The Asus ROG Zephyrus gives students more performance for the dollar.
With more than double the performance in memory compared to Apple’s Macbook which offers 8gbs unless you upgrade it costing more money.
College students also want to watch Netflix or relax and enjoy video games in downtime, and again the Windows laptop takes the win.
With dedicated NVIDIA graphics, the performance from the RTX 4050 provides the power to run any games or stream any movies to cure your downtime boredom.
“NVIDIA Engineers pushed technologies on every front,” says Jensen Huang NVIDIA’s CEO.
It seems clear the best option to choose is the Asus ROG. The Performance alone is the best of its class regarding raw power, but one category is missing and that is comfortability.
“Breakthroughs require innovation in architecture and design, as well as algorithms,” Jensen Huang states.
Regarding Apple’s Macbooks, the Comfortability factor cannot be beat. With Apple’s custom sleek design, the MacBook also takes the win for best exterior aesthetics
With a light weight of 3.3 pounds, only .3 pounds lighter than the Windows laptop, the MacBook is best for relaxing and working from anywhere.
It is best to say that the Asus ROG Zephyrus is best suited for your college needs. It’s an absolute powerhouse and around a budget that most college students can afford.
The problem with Apple’s Macbook is the performance is too low compared to the Asus ROG to justify the price.
To get the features the average consumer wants, people need to spend even more and customize the base model which not every student has the flexibility for.
Just adding more storage for your Macbook can add between $200 – $800 in addition to the base model. Apple may be good for phones but for college students, the price is just unacceptable.
