9 Best Back-to-School Laptop Deals for 2025

The laptop you bring to college is important. Not only is it the device you'll be using through some of the most formative years of your life, but it's also often the one that you'll take to your first job, too. The problem is that the internet is full of laptops that aren't worth the money, especially if you're scrolling through lists of laptops on Amazon or Best Buy.

Good news! I've tested each of the following laptops and can wholeheartedly recommend them. More than that, I've been digging through the deals to find the best prices on the best laptops you can buy for back-to-school season. Below, you'll find lots of good cheap laptops as well as some great Chromebooks and gaming laptops that'll do just as well for schoolwork. You can even find some deals on laptop accessories.

Updated August 21, 2025: We've added the M1 MacBook Air and added a FAQ section.

If there is a quintessential college laptop, it's the MacBook Air M4 (9/10, WIRED Recommends). It's been that way for many years. And even as Apple Silicon has transformed the MacBook Air into something far more capable, Apple has kept prices low enough to still make it the go-to choice. Right now, the starting configuration at Amazon is cheaper than it was on Prime Day at $800. That's even cheaper than the student discount offered by Apple.

What makes the MacBook Air such a perfect college laptop is its long battery life and portability. It's still one of the thinnest laptops you can buy, at 0.44 inches thick, and it weighs just 2.7 pounds. It's the kind of device that can go with you across campus and last well into the evening of studying all on a single charge. You can choose between the 13- and 15-inch models, both of which are nearly identical, except the latter has more screen real estate and better speakers.

When I initially tested the Dell 14 Plus (6/10, WIRED Review), I gave it a hard time because of the $1,100 MSRP. But over the past month or so, Dell has kept a pretty generous discount intact. Right now, the starting configuration costs $750, which might not sound that cheap at face value, but when you consider what you're getting, you realize just how good a deal this is.

First off, that $750 gets you a whopping 1 terabyte of storage and a higher-resolution display (2560 x 1600), matching the MacBook Air in sharpness. It can even match the MacBook Air's battery life claims. And no, while it's not as thin or sleek as the MacBook Air, in exchange, you get extra storage and more ports, making this my go-to pick for back-to-school season this year.

The Asus Vivobook 14 (6/10, WIRED Review) has been my favorite budget laptop to come out this year, namely because it solves one of the main problems with laptops in this price range: battery life. It runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon X chips, bringing fantastic efficiency to devices as affordable as the Vivobook 14.

It's not a perfect laptop. The display isn't too bright, and the colors look off on it. I also wish the touchpad were a bit more precise. But at this price, you won't find a better Windows laptop, especially since it comes with 512 GB of storage. If you can afford the extra cash for the Dell 14 Plus listed above, it's worth it for the improved display and bump in storage.

2-in-1 laptops (otherwise known as detachables) are a great option for college. They're the lightest devices you can carry around that still give you access to a full version of Windows. The 2025 12-inch model of the Surface Pro makes this benefit even stronger, shrinking the screen down, but without losing performance or battery life. Due to its size, the Surface Pro 12 (6/10, WIRED Review) is a pure joy to use.

When it came out, it was too expensive compared to the larger 13-inch model, but on sale, it makes for an ideal college companion for note-taking in class and studying on the go. Just remember: You'll need to buy the keyboard, as it doesn't come bundled in.

The Razer Blade 16 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is my favorite gaming laptop, and it'd be a fantastic pick for college students if only it weren't so incredibly expensive. Normally, it starts at $2,400 for the RTX 5060 model, but Razer has a $400 back-to-school discount, meaning you can pick one up for as low as $2,000. I know that's not cheap, especially for this graphics card, but for a Razer Blade, it's a rare discount. This is certainly the lowest price I've seen since the 2025 model came out. The 5070 GPU model is also on sale.

The draw to something like the Razer Blade 16 is that it can function as both your laptop for college work and a gaming device with your friends in the dorm. While you could buy just about any gaming laptop and pretend it's a school device, lugging that thing to class will be a nuisance, and once you get there, the design might be a distraction. The latest Razer Blade 16 is just 0.58 inches thick, making it surprisingly portable for a 16-inch gaming laptop. Outside of the Razer logo on the lid, you might not guess that it's even a gaming laptop. It goes without saying that because it has a discrete GPU, it'll serve as a good option for STEM students who need more performance.

Now, if you want a more elevated Chromebook experience, you'll have to pay a little more. But as the price of the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus (8/10, WIRED Recommends) proves, there are plenty of great deals to be found. The Galaxy Chromebook Plus has a superb OLED screen, something that's not common in Chromebooks, even those with the “Chromebook Plus” designation.

The Galaxy Chromebook Plus not only has a bright, 15.6-inch OLED display, but also the kind of high-end specs you'll most likely need for college. That includes 256 GB of storage, 8 GB of RAM, and an Intel Core 3 processor. Perhaps its most attractive quality, however, is its portability. It's the thinnest Chromebook you can buy at 0.46 inches thick—only a hair thicker than the MacBook Air.

You've always been able to buy cheap, old MacBooks, but not good ones. And not ones that are still new, as in, not refurbished. But for years now, Walmart has been selling new versions of the 2020 MacBook Air M1, a nearly five-year-old laptop that has held up surprisingly well. While it uses an older design and has some outdated elements, this laptop is still solid in the places that matter most, such as the display, performance, and battery life. The M1 was a game changer when it launched, and while the later chips have made significant improvements, the original M1 greatly extended the battery life of the MacBook Air.

I should note that rumors have pointed to a cheaper MacBook coming out later this year or early 2026, targeting a similar price. That will likely be a better option when they launch, so if you can wait a few months, you should. But if you need something for school now, I don't think you'll regret picking up one of these ultra-cheap MacBooks.

If you want the sleek and minimalist design of the Razer Blade at a lower price, take a look at the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (9/10, WIRED Recommends). It's just as gorgeous and thin and doubles every bit as well as a study laptop. The RTX 4060 configuration is what's cheap, which, admittedly, isn't the most impressive gaming GPU at the moment. Alternatively, you can also pick up a slightly older Intel model that comes with a more powerful RTX 4070 for the same price.

Either way, what you're getting is an extremely capable laptop with some extra performance behind it for those who need it. And yeah, it's also a killer gaming laptop in your downtime.

This was my favorite new laptop of 2024, and almost a year later, it's still without a doubt one of the best laptops you could bring to school. The Surface Laptop 7th Edition (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is light and portable, has a fantastic screen, and an excellent touchpad. My favorite feature is the 3:2 aspect ratio display, which means it has a taller shape, giving you more vertical screen space to work with than most other laptops.

The cheapest version you can buy is over on Amazon, where you can pick up the 1-TB model. It's $999 right now, and it will get you great performance with the Snapdragon X Elite chipset and all-day battery life.