Most students looking for a new MacBook should pick up the MacBook Air. It's less expensive than other MacBooks, more powerful, and has a bigger display than the 12-inch MacBook while remaining lightweight. And though it might not be as powerful as the MacBook Pro, it should provide enough power for the average student to get through their day.

• Which Mac Is Best For Music Production
• Which Apple Mac Is Best For College Students 2015
• Which Mac Is Best For College
• Best Apple Laptop For Students

Hello, I am a college student, majoring in radiology. My laptop recently died and im looking to get a new one. I will be using my laptop mostly for note taking, veiwing my online books, research, typing papers and the occasional netflix study break 😉. Best Mac 2018: the best Macs to buy this year. While we wait for Apple to announce a new Mac Mini, the 2014 Mac Mini is still the cheapest Mac on the market by a long shot. Luckily, the Intel.

Apple MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017) with 128 GB storage The best Mac for students. The 2017 MacBook Pro is a thin and light laptop with a fantastic display and two Thunderbolt 3 ports. Great Value (for a Mac): Most students and their families aren't sweating $100 bills while they bask in the sun. If you want an Apple laptop, and you don't want to spend at least $1,299 for a 12.

Best MacBook of 2018 — for College Students The 13-inch MacBook Air is the best MacBook college students can buy today. It's inexpensive for a Mac, has plenty of ports, and is light enough to carry with you all day. I've compared a lot of notebooks (over 480!) to find the best laptop for medical students for 2018-19. I've got 4 great picks from Acer, Asus, Apple and Microsoft starting from $360.

Our pick

MacBook Air (2018)

Hits the sweet spot of power, portability, and price.

More powerful than the 12-inch MacBook and more mobile than the MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air sits in the Goldilocks zone of Apple's portable Mac lineup, offering enough power for most everything you'll want it to do without the bulk of a MacBook Pro. Features Touch ID for easy, yet secure, authentication.

Who should buy this computer?

College students who want a Mac for writing papers, doing research, surfing the web, light photo editing and just entertaining themselves should get the MacBook Air. It should also be a great computer for you when your academic career is over and you're headed out into the world.

Is it a good time to buy this computer?

The current MacBook Air came out in October 2018, so now is a great time to buy this Mac. Some solid discounts are popping up at retailers like Amazon, and we're likely many months away from a potential refresh. It's been a while since Apple refreshed any of its Macs in less than a year.

Reasons to buy

• Great balance of price and power
• Light and portable
• Retina display
• Touch ID

Reasons not to buy

• Limited customization
• Butterfly keyboard may irk some

The MacBook Air is a great Mac for students, successfully riding the line between power and portability

For students, portability is a chief concern when it comes to buying a computer. Whether you're walking through your high school's hallways to your history class or sprinting across a college campus to make it your next lecture on time, you don't want to be lugging around a heavy computer. You want something fairly light. At the same time, you don't want a computer that's underpowered. The MacBook Air occupies the happy medium of that ideal. It's more powerful than the MacBook and thinner and lighter than the MacBook Pro.

For the longest time, the MacBook Air was Apple's thin-and-light computer. Many credit MacBook Air with paving the way for the 'ultrabook' genre of computers that gained prominence in the early part of this decade. But Apple has since introduced the 12-inch MacBook, which debuted with a Retina display and was even thinner and lighter than the Air. Surely, if portability is your main concern, you should get the MacBook, right?

The MacBook Air sits in the happy medium between the portability of the MacBook and the power of the MacBook Pro.

But the sequel is even larger, even nuttier, and arguably just as compelling of an experience even if it wasn't quite as impactful overall. Yes, the original is the one that everybody raves about, and even a decade after release, it's still absolutely brilliant and well worth circling back on. Best racing games on steam for mac.

Well, let's take a look at the modern MacBook Air. It now also (some would say 'finally') has a Retina display, without adding any bulk. And no, it's not as small as the MacBook, but it's almost as light. The MacBook Air comes in at 2.75 lbs, less than a pound heavier than the MacBook's 2.03. You're not making much of a sacrifice on weight. If the footprint of the computer is a concern, check out the MacBook, but you're gaining only about half-an-inch each on width and depth, so maybe the larger Air won't present much of a size problem.

The other consideration the MacBook versus the MacBook Air is power. While the MacBook Air's eighth-generation Intel processor won't really keep up with those found in the current generation of MacBook Pro, it's more than a match for the 7th-generation processors found in the MacBook. For everything from web browsing to photo editing, the MacBook will find itself outmatched by the Air, all while the MacBook Air is priced at least $100 under the current MacBook.

Speaking of power, the MacBook Pro is probably overkill for most students. Sure, some will be able to take advantage of its more powerful processors available to it, but if most of what you're doing is writing papers, putting together presentations, or doing research on the web, you probably don't need the level of power a MacBook Pro offers. And again, you'll be saving a bit of money if you get the MacBook Air, which is always something to consider.

Ultimately, when looking at the current MacBook lineup through the lens of a student, the MacBook Air successfully rides the line between the thin-and-light MacBook and the powerful MacBook Pro. It will meet the needs of most students, and should still be a great Mac to have when you're ready to leave academics behind and head off into the world.

Alternatives to the MacBook Air

The MacBook Air might be the best MacBook for most students, but different people have different needs. If you're looking for more power, then check out the MacBook Pro. It'll be a more capable machine for almost everything you want to do, with more expensive models offering an ever-increasing amount of power for tasks like photo and video editing, app development, scientific programs, illustration, and music production. It will last longer than the MacBook Air and perform at higher levels the entire time.

If you're looking for more of a budget option, unfortunately, you're going to have to settle for something older from Apple. It's still a MacBook Air, but it lacks the Retina display of the newer model, and its processors are older. But, it still has all-solid-state storage, which means a lot when it comes to boot times. If budget is your chief concern and you still want a Mac, the older MacBook Air that Apple still sells should work just fine, if not quite as well as the new model.

More power

MacBook Pro

More power for whatever you need to do.

More powerful and versatile than the MacBook Air, the Pro lineup offers more customization options so you get the exact machine you need for photo and video work, scientific programs, music production, or other intensive tasks.

The MacBook Pro offers a lot of customization options that allow you to create the computer you need. Offers everything from a seventh-generation dual-core Intel processor to an ninth-generation, eight-core i9 beast, configurable up to 32GB of memory with AMD Radeon graphics for the most intensive tasks. If power is what you want, that's what you'll get with the MacBook Pro.

Value pick

MacBook Air (2017)

A capable computer for the money.

While it hasn't seen anything other than a spec bump in the last couple of years, the 2017 revision of the MacBook Air is still a capable machine. It may lack Thunderbolt and a Retina display, but it'll still get you through most of your tasks without hassle.

Apple quietly bumped the specs on the MacBook Air in 2017, introducing a couple of new processors to choose from. Despite its lack of Thunderbolt 3 ports or a Retina display, the older MacBook Air should still be able to meet most of your needs. It even still has an SD card reader, something many Mac owners thought was lost to the ages (or at least the Mac).

Which Mac Is Best For Music Production

Bottom line

If you want an excellent 'medium' Mac laptop, get the MacBook Air. Offering enough power to meet most of the needs of student life while being almost as portable as a MacBook, the Air strikes a great balance between the other offerings in Apple's laptop lineup.

It's also among the most affordable of the portable Macs, especially when you start getting into the upper echelons of what that MacBook Pro has to offer and even compared to the 12-inch MacBook.

Our pick

MacBook Air (2018)

Hits the sweet spot of power, portability, and price.

More powerful than the 12-inch MacBook and more mobile than the MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air sits in the Goldilocks zone of Apple's portable Mac lineup, offering enough power for most everything you'll want it to do without the bulk of a MacBook Pro. Features Touch ID for easy, yet secure, authentication.

Credits — The team that worked on this guide

Joseph Keller is a senior writer at iMore. An Apple user for more than a decade and a half, he spends his time learning the ins and outs of iOS and macOS, always finding ways of getting the most out of his iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Rene Ritchie has been covering the personal technology industry for a decade. An outspoken analyst and critic, he writes at iMore.com/vector, podcasts at applepodcasts.com/vector, and you can find his show at youtube.com/vector. Follow him @reneritchie on Twitter and Instagram

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Editor's Notes

Which Apple Mac Is Best For College Students 2015

Which Mac Is Best For College

March 27, 2019:

Best Apple Laptop For Students

A good student laptop should be easy to use, portable, reasonably quick, and possibly most importantly, inexpensive. On the budget-oriented side, a Chromebook is hard to beat, and Asus' model is among the most refined. The Acer Aspire and Swift are high-performing Windows computers that are awfully cost-effective in their own right, as well. Asus' VivoBook S15 is a little more costly, but it contains hardware that's pretty close to in line with far more expensive choices. If you're looking for the most streamlined options, it's hard to overlook the Microsoft Surface 2 laptop, as well as their Surface Pro model, both of which offer a fine user experience and plenty of performance. They can even be had at relatively moderate prices, though in the case of the Pro, you'll have to make a couple compromises in terms of hardware. Apple, of course, specializes in user satisfaction and ease of use, and their MacBook Air and Pro models are perfect examples of that. They are a little more pricey than similarly equipped PC-family devices, however. If you're looking for peak performance from a Windows PC, consider the Huawei, which is nearly as sleek and stylish as anything Apple makes, and it packs some excellent components inside. And if you're really looking to process some major polygons, Dell's G5 may be the choice for you, just be sure not to spend too much time playing games when you're supposed to be doing homework.