What laptop do you get your kid when a Chromebook won't cut it?

Finding your child the best laptop for school can feel like a herculean task. You know the laptop you bought them or the school loaned them when they were seven isn’t going to serve their educational needs by the time they get to high school—but Chromebooks might be all you and your child know. And now there are all these different types of laptops: 2-in-1s, gaming, laptops that weigh next-to-nothing. Why are there so many?!

We got you—just scroll down a little more and you’ll find our tips on not just how to find your kid a long-lasting and reliable laptop, but also what kind of laptop is appropriate for their age. (And why we’re not the biggest fans of Chromebooks, even if they are great for the youngest of students.)

Grade School / Elementary School

At this age, your child is still learning the ins and outs of technology. Assignments are basic and shouldn’t require much processing power. Likely, they will be playing educational games, using word processing software, and watching videos.

However, kids aren’t known to handle technology (or most things) like Indiana Jones and that Golden Idol—even if they’re careful, accidents can happen. They spill food and drinks, trip on their feet, throw their bags, and don’t have the same fine and gross motor skills that come with age. So, look for laptops that are highly rugged, easily repairable, or cheap enough to replace in the worst-case scenario.

A basic, budget productivity laptop or a budget tablet is ideal for a child. Something with at least 8GB of memory, an Intel Core i3 processor or equivalent, and a 1080p display should be comfortable for a few years. If you want it to last six to ten years, opt for 16GB of memory, an Intel Core i5 processor or equivalent, and a rigid chassis that’s hard to bend.

A quick and easy test to run is to check if it can play Minecraft without lagging or stuttering. Minecraft is a game that taxes both the graphics power and the central processing power of a PC but is designed to run on older and less powerful computers that aren’t meant for gaming.

This is a great way to know the laptop can handle lots of open browser tabs for book reports, run educational software (like Google Sketch or Scratch), and be reliable enough to take through all of grade school and potentially middle school, depending on what you bought in grade school.

Middle School / Junior High School

By now, your kid does so much more than schoolwork—they message friends and family, play games, edit pictures, watch and make videos, and so much more. You don’t want to stifle your child’s creative growth, but they probably don’t need a super-high-end gaming laptop, either. They need something good enough to make them happy and explore new hobbies.

The hardware requirements likely won’t be more demanding than grade school requirements, but you can expect (or should expect) a middle schooler to take care of their technology enough to put durability and ruggedness lower on the list of priorities. This means it can be appropriate to look at fancier, more expensive laptops if you want something that will last through high school.

If you choose to look for a refurbished or used laptop, stick to laptops with processors that were originally released the year prior; you can usually find a more powerful laptop for less than what you could from the current generation with the same amount of money.

Memory modules (RAM) got a huge update this generation from DDR4 to DDR5, and DDR4 is finally starting to phase out of new releases. This means you can find laptops with boatloads of DDR4 RAM for cheaper these days, but you will lose out on the speed bumps that DDR5 brings.

High School

At this level, there is more variance in what a kid could need. If your kid needs a laptop for a more specialized task like programming, drawing, or 3D modeling, then it may be more appropriate to consider laptops meant for college students.

For the kid who’s mostly writing essays, a simple, reliable, and durable laptop will do. Try to stick to something around $600 (and repairable) so they can get an upgrade or do the upgrade themself once they’re in college. Check with them to make sure their teachers aren’t requiring software only available on Windows or Chrome OS so you don’t end up getting something useless for your child’s education.

High schoolers will likely put a lot of stress on their laptop between carrying it to class and staying up until 2 AM finishing a project if they take too many honors classes at once. (I’m totally not talking about myself here. Nope. Not at all.) Any number of laptop components could fail from overuse or one too many backpack drops, so a highly repairable laptop should be at the top of the list. Plus, they will probably have no problem using it in college with some DIY upgrades.

The Framework Laptop deserves a special mention here. It’s not only highly repairable but it’s also designed in such a way that you can upgrade almost any part of the computer (including the processor, which is rare to see in laptops).

It is a more expensive laptop up-front than some of our other recommendations, starting at $1,000, but in the long run, you could save money since parts cost way less than brand-new laptops. There’s also a bonus: it’s a great opportunity to teach your kid how computers work since instructions for repairs and replacements are easily available from Framework itself.

Are Chromebooks really that bad?

If you have the option to choose your laptop’s operating system, we advise caution with Chromebooks. In a bubble, they are great budget machines, but until Google extends its lifetime update support for ChromeOS, you may miss out on critical security updates and new features just a couple of years after the date of purchase.

Currently, Google provides three years of critical updates to ChromeOS from the date of manufacture, NOT the date of purchase. Most consumers have no way of knowing how long a particular laptop has been sitting on a shelf—two weeks? Two months? Two years? Most retailers won’t say, and there isn’t necessarily a way to check by inspecting it before purchasing it online.

Google has been facing scrutiny over this practice, which has doomed millions of laptops to become e-waste even when their hardware is perfectly functional.

Final tips

Do some research to make sure you’re not buying a computer with hardware that’s more than two years old. A modern budget processor will always trounce a processor that was top-of-the-line three or more years ago.

Check if your school’s IT department has recommendations for incoming students. Many IT staff will have advice and resources available online or in person such as lists of recommended laptop specs, access to student discounts for laptops, and laptops students can loan from the school itself.

Also, consider cybersecurity when choosing your child’s laptop. Unless they’re some wunderkind hacker, they probably don’t know how to stay safe on the web. Parental controls help restrict kids’ access to inappropriate websites and their total screen time.

Be sure to keep sensitive data off a child’s computer whenever possible (credit card info, government-issued identification, addresses, medical history, etc.). Even if your kids keep information safe from bad actors, they can use that information to make some ruinous mistakes like spending $16,000 on a free-to-download game.

You can also protect your child’s privacy and data by getting them external storage for storing files. Many drives have password protection in case they get lost or stolen.

Also, ensure you get a laptop with a webcam and microphone or buy an external one to go with it in case your child needs to attend school virtually.

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Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.