Why Laptops Make Great Gifts for College-Bound Students
Laptops for college students are at the heart of everything they do in school and if you pick the right laptop as a high school graduation gift, it could last until that new college student becomes a young professional entering the workforce. College laptops need to be fast, powerful and packed with features to support the lifestyle of college students. Why? Students are juggling attending classes in-person or remotely with their laptop, creating content for assignments or social posts, and streaming content or gaming on breaks. Students today lead active lives and don't want a laptop that just does schoolwork, it needs to support all aspects of their student life. Providing laptops as high school graduation gifts with the premium features that support their student success and lifestyle is an investment in their future and the quality of their student experience.
As a parent, friend, guardian, or loved one of a college bound student, deciding to buy them a laptop is a great high school graduation gift idea, but you will want to make sure you pick the laptop that has the right features to support all aspects of school life as they prepare to join a new college. Also, as a high school graduation gift, your new student will have a premiere laptop that empowers them and allows them to learn from anywhere and not be tethered to a limited school provided computer or lab. To ensure you choose the right laptop as a high school graduation gift, we have created a college laptop guide that details important college laptop features and can be included with a college preparation checklist or with a new student checklist.
High School Graduation & College Acceptance Calendar
Plan your high school graduation gift now using this calendar of key dates (based on schedules in the United States), including typical milestones in the college-acceptance process:
- College-acceptance notifications: Often arrive from March through May
- Gift Ideas for Students Accepted to College – Consult this article or other college laptop buying guides for college-acceptance gift ideas
- High School graduation ceremonies: Typically held in May and June
- Gift Ideas for High School Grads - Gifting a laptop is an investment in the young person’s future (if too expensive, consider chipping-in with friends or relatives)
- Back-to-School sales and discounts: Look for these between July and September
- These sales are ideal for finding special pricing on laptops that match the specific needs of your high school grad or future college student
Top Features for College Laptops
There are several uniquely important features to consider when choosing a laptop for a college student. Additionally, when shopping for laptops it can feel overwhelming to understand all the technical jargon that you are presented with. At Lenovo Education, we understand it is very important to start off a college experience with the right technology in hand, therefore we have created this informative article to help you prioritize and understand why certain features are important when picking out a graduation gift for your college bound student.
Format - Matching Laptop Options to College Student Types
The first important decision is to pick a form factor that best matches a student's needs. This can be done by thinking about the personality and activities that your college student will be involved in. Below are four major types of laptops to consider for graduation gifts and how they match a student's behavior.
- Ultra-Slims: These clam shell laptops are known as "ultra-slims" or "thin and lights" or "ultrabooks" and are one of the best laptop formats for new college school students. They pack a lot of processing power into a small and stylish package, fit easily into a backpack, and work well in multiple environments. While they typically don't have a dedicated graphics processor (GPU), they tend to have impressive built-in graphics, good quality sound, and high-resolution cameras.
- 2-in-1s: These versatile laptops are referred to as "convertibles" or "2-in-1s" as they usually come with a 360-degree hinge that lets a college student "convert" them from a laptop or a tablet. Additionally, they can be configured into a "tent mode" and stand handsfree for watching movies and streaming content. They are excellent high school graduation gifts for students who will use their laptop often as an entertainment center.
- Mobile Workstation Laptops: Fusing the portability of a laptop and the performance of a workstation, mobile workstation laptops are the best high school graduation gifts for college bound professional and engineering students who need that extra performance for their schoolwork. These devices are widely endorsed by colleges and universities, and many are Independent Software Vendor-certified (ISV-certified) for major education applications and software. Mobile workstations come with lightning-fast graphics and processing, and they can handle compute-intensive needs even in surprisingly light packages.
- Gaming Laptops - When gaming is a "close second" in priority to schoolwork, gaming laptops can serve both educational and gaming needs and will make both students and their parents happy. Gaming laptops deliver top notch gaming action in a thin and light form factor that supports on-the-go students. There are options for a range of budgets, but most options deliver reliable high performance in a stylish package that gamers will be proud to brandish on campus.
Size & Weight - Balance of Laptop Portability and Laptop Performance
The average weight of modern laptops ranges between 2 and 8 pounds. Ultra-slims and convertibles generally weigh less than mobile workstations and gaming laptops, although the trend is to make laptops thinner and lighter and pack more power per pound. Here are some general guidelines to keep in mind that contribute to the size and weight of a laptop:
- Screen Size: The bigger the laptop screen (which is measured from corner to opposing corner), the heavier the laptop. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but generally, if you take two laptops of equivalent power with equivalent features, the one with the bigger screen will weigh more. Sometimes the heavier weight is worth it, especially if your college bound student expects to be involved in creative, design, engineering, graphing, lab work, and science curriculum.
- Power: The more powerful a machine—say a laptop that's built for gaming—the greater its electricity demands, and therefore the bigger its battery will be. So, higher performance laptops like gaming and workstations will have larger batteries and will weigh more than an ultra-slim or convertible laptop.
- Storage: Larger storage also means more weight. Spinning disk hard drives can store more data than SSDs and cost less, but these hard drives also weigh more. To shed some pounds, you might have to compromise on internal storage. You can always supplement your onboard allotment with an external USB drive to add more storage.
Battery Life and How Battery Life is Estimated
Students are on the move and while charging stations are more available than ever, there is not always the time to recharge. Battery life varies widely based on the type of activity and length of use.
Check the battery performance of the laptop before purchasing. You should expect to get 7-10 hours of battery life out of a quality laptop. It is important to read the fine print on how battery life is estimated and usually retailers list a range for battery life to account for the variety of user behavior. Look for ratings that are endorsed by a benchmarking standards organization, for example MobileMark®. Your student will appreciate a graduation gift college laptop that they do not have to fret about lack of battery life.
Display & Camera: Resolutions and Aspect Ratios Best for Students
Display size and resolution are critical for students, especially since an increasing amount of the student experience is conducted on the screen and via their webcam. Your graduating student will appreciate and use that quality screen for gaming, streaming, and social activities. You will want to look for displays and camera resolutions that are at least Full HD (FHD) (1920 X 1080 pixels) and higher. Also, look for displays with at least a 16:10 aspect ratio, taller than the 16:9 format popularized with the advent of streaming video. Your college bound student will appreciate a graduation gift laptop with extra height for their schoolwork and streaming video still works very well on these taller screens.
Processor & Memory: Performance and Efficiency
Probably two of the most important features to consider when buying a graduation gift laptop with the performance to support a new college student's needs are the CPU ("central processing unit" or simply "processor") and RAM ("random access memory" or just "memory") - the heart and mind of the PC. If you've heard buzzwords and terms like "Intel Inside," "dual-cores," "Core i7," "Ryzen 7," and other similar terms, they all refer to CPUs. Terms like "RAM," "DRAM," "DDR4," and others refer to the internal active memory used by the CPU to run applications. DDR4 (Double Data Rate) is the latest and greatest protocol for memory and offers higher data transfer rates, the faster the data transfer and the higher the capacity (measured in megabytes "MB"), the better the performance.
The faster the CPU, more cores and higher frequency (GHz), the higher the price ranges and more energy usage. Just like driving a sports car versus a minivan, you can notice the difference. Intel and AMD are the most popular process manufactures and share a similar model-naming scheme. The two main families of processors — Intel® Core™ and AMD Ryzen™, respectively — use 3, 5, 7, and 9 to differentiate the CPUs. Generally, the higher the number, the more powerful the processor. An AMD Ryzen™ 3 processor won't be able to outpace an AMD Ryzen™ 7 and an Intel® Core™ i7 will be more powerful than Intel® Core™ i5 for example. And just like Intel, AMD keeps everything simple by only using a few model numbers, as well as the "X" suffix indicate higher performance. The higher the model number, the more powerful the CPU. For example, a Ryzen 3 1200 is less powerful than a Ryzen 3 1300X and a Ryzen 5 5600X.
Most universities and colleges recommend a laptop with at least an Intel Core i5 or AMD Ryzen 5 series and 8MB of RAM, however for students who need a higher performance laptop, the Intel Core i7 or AMD Ryzen 7 series with 16MB of high transfer rate RAM is recommended, so look for those minimum processor specs when selecting your graduation gift.
Graphics Cards for Gaming and Other College Student Needs
If your high school graduate plays a lot of games and expects to have a laptop that supports their gaming lifestyle in college (gaming during downtime and breaks of course parents), you will want to prioritize selecting a high school graduation gift laptop that comes with a discrete graphics processor (GPU). Dedicated GPUs are essentially required to make the hottest AAA game titles look good and play smoothly. Nvidia GeForce GTX or AMD Radeon RX GPUs are the baseline GPUs to look out for high school graduation gifts for gamers. Gaming laptops with these GPUs and above support 1080p and can be found in mainstream budget laptops, and you can expect these gaming laptops to start at $800 and more.
A discrete (dedicated) and more powerful GPU will also provide a better experience for college student content creators editing video and students who expect to use highly computational mathematic, scientific or data visualization applications. However, like a high-powered processor (CPU), GPUs will also draw on battery life so you will need to balance that with a larger battery.
If your new college student doesn't have a priority for gaming or high-end visualization applications, then in most cases a college laptop with an integrated graphics solution should suffice for the day-to-day college tasks they will face. These laptops have graphic support built into the CPU processors. Look for some form of integrated graphics, like: Intel HD Graphics, Intel UHD Graphics, Intel Iris/Iris Plus graphics, or Intel Xe Graphics in the high school graduation gift that you choose.
Graduation Gift: College Ready Laptop Price Ranges
When shopping for college ready laptops as high school graduation gifts, you are going to want budget between $500 and $1,000 for a mid-range quality laptop that will meet the requirement of the average college student; for a new college student who likes to game, create content, stream high quality video, and have the performance to support demanding applications (video editing, 3-D rendering, computer science & engineering software) you are going to want to budget $1,000 - $2,500. These premium performance laptops will last your new college student through their entire college years and continue through their early career. Budget laptops less than $500 tend to get outdated quickly and usually are less durable and capable of supporting student life. You can always team up with other relatives and friends to purchase a high school graduation gift of a high-performance laptop that is an investment in your high school grads future.
How much storage do you need, and what type? HDD vs. SSD
There are two general options for external storage: HDD ("hard drive") and SSD ("solid state drive"). HDD laptops are slower than SSD college laptops but have higher storage capacity for a lower price. SSDs don't have moving parts like HHD and thus are faster & lighter weight, use less electricity, but generally cost more, that is they cost more per gigabyte. SSD are becoming more common and a preferred standard for college students because of their smaller size and portability; they will give your new college student a boost of speed and increased durability. If your new college student plans to install a lot of programs or will be using large media files, they will need 500GB of space or more. AAA games that college students like to play can have installations that exceed 40GB to 50GB for each game, a smaller SSD can get eaten up fast. With the wide availability and lowering costs of cloud storage, local storage space is somewhat less vital, and you can supplement your high school graduation gift with an external USB drive to add more storage.
Quality Streaming & Wi-Fi for Uninterrupted Sessions for Class & Entertainment
Students are entering a college experience these days where quality streaming and uninterrupted sessions online are critical to student success. Help prepare your college bound student for this experience by selecting a high school graduation gift laptop with excellent Wi-Fi capabilities. Note that both download and upload speeds are important for quality wireless connections. Wireless streaming, gaming, and online video sessions are best supported with Wi-Fi 6. 802.11ax, the latest Wi-Fi protocol, which delivers up to 4x more network capacity and efficiency in dense environments than its predecessor, 802.11ac.
Security and Support Features for Peace of Mind
It's important to evaluate the safety and security support features of the high school graduation gift laptop you are considering. Look at both the features that are built into the device and additional services and software that can be bundled to establish additional peace of mind. Lenovo offers an array of Premium Care and software addons. These add-on services and software support will help your college bound student stay connected, safe, and provide support when college life's little accidents try to get in the way of a productive and happy college student. Premium Care Plus puts your student first in line with 24/7 available college laptop support and Legion Ultimate Support is designed for gamer-centric college students and their dual gamer student lifestyle. These support packages also come with Accidental Damage Protection that covers accidental spills, drops, bumps and other hazards of college life without any additional service fee. With Lenovo's Smart Privacy your new college student will stay in control of their privacy and data with a service that helps identify at-risk accounts, data breaches, and blocks 3rd party web trackers. Last but not least—and especially helpful for new college students who will be overloading their new college laptop graduation gift with lots of tasks—is Lenovo's Smart Performance software that can diagnose and resolve performance and security issues, boost PC performance overall, and keep harmful malware off the device.
Laptop Accessories as High School Graduation Gifts
If buying a laptop is a little out of your price range for a high school graduation gift, you can always pick up an accessory to support your college-bound senior. There are many important items a new college student will need to set up their learning space.
Headsets, keyboards and mice, cases and backpacks, printers and scanners, or an extra monitor are all great smaller high school graduation gift ideas but important investments in your student's future success in college.
Conclusion: Laptops as High School Graduation and College Acceptance Gifts
Lenovo is the recognized technology leader that develops, manufactures, and sells a diverse selection of products. Our personal computers, laptops, desktops, tablets, towers, and PC accessories can support college student studies, entertainment, gaming, and social activities.
Buying a laptop for a loved one as a high school graduation gift or college-acceptance gift is a great idea, and an investment in their future. So, choosing the right laptop is an important step when students are preparing for college—they will need a reliable laptop with the right set of features for assignments, content creation, and other schoolwork.
With this in mind, be sure to include "shopping for a laptop" as a part of your new student's college preparation checklist. It will help make the transition from high school to college much more manageable. And a great place to start is the Lenovo Education Store, where you can find special discounts and additional information on education technology and devices for college students.
