[Back to school] Buying a laptop to study in 2026 and some things you need to keep in mind!

A new school year is about to start and the story that repeats every year is buying a laptop. This year will be different from every year as the general situation of the PC industry is experiencing a lot of price fluctuations, so choosing a suitable laptop is not an easy story. There are many majors and many different needs, so in this article, I will first summarize general notes for a number of majors. Then, if you have any additional comments or questions, please leave them in the comments section.

I will first share with 4 industry groups: Economics - finance, Marketing - communications, Engineering and IT. You can briefly look at the mind map here to grasp the ideas you will talk about in the article. Now we will start with economics and finance.

What should you keep in mind when studying economics and finance?

First and most important is that you should choose a device with a beautiful screen, because the screen is something we look at every 8-10 hours, you should not choose a screen with low display quality. Currently, many manufacturers have cut back on this component to save costs, but it is better to cut resolution than cut down on popular color ranges, especially sRGB.

Next, those studying finance and accounting will be entering a lot of data, so choose a device with a slightly larger screen size, at least 14-inch or more comfortable, 16-inch. Some 15-inch or 16-inch devices will come with a Numpad numeric keypad and this is also important for those studying finance. Third is the full range of connection ports, at least there must be 1 USB-C port that supports PD, a USB-A port, an HDMI port and if there is an RJ45 LAN port, even better. Some current machine models for finance and accounting majors will have common RAM capacities from 8GB to 16GB. If you choose an 8GB machine to save money, you should choose a machine that can upgrade RAM later, or upgrade SSD, but I will advise you to prioritize RAM. If you already have a 16GB device, you can go through 4 years of university or 3 years of college, but if you have 8GB of RAM and still run Windows 11, it will be quite difficult.

What should you keep in mind when studying marketing?

When it comes to marketing and communications, you should also pay attention to your screen. Students studying this field will mainly buy Macs (and it's also Apple's back-to-school season), but MacBooks already have beautiful screens. The safest option is to choose a MacBook. From MacBook Neo to MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, the screen is all beautiful, at most it is 100% sRGB, the brightness is also at worst 500 nits so those studying this field can rest assured. It's not a great deal to choose a Mac at this point because Apple just raised the price of a series of machines, but to save the most headaches, the MacBook is the safest choice.

Once again, when studying this field, a beautiful screen is important. Don't sacrifice the screen for configuration because you may not be able to fully exploit it, and if you use a 67% sRGB screen, it will be very sad. Finally, the laptops that mainly serve these majors are usually ultrabooks or thin and light gaming laptops. You can choose lightweight machines to take to school to stay healthy, like MacBooks, for example.

What should you pay attention to when studying engineering?

If you learn 3D graphic design, using software like SolidWork, 3D Revit, AutoCAD or Blender, 90% of you should choose Windows instead of macOS because there are software that will not support Apple's operating system. If you study this field, your computer must have at least 16GB. If anyone says 8GB is enough for studying, don't believe it, because the more you have to do a lot of work with these software later, the more 8GB of RAM you can't upgrade will be very miserable. If you have 8GB RAM and have an upgrade option, then go for it.

In this type of machine, in this industry, there is no need to prioritize thinness and lightness. If it is, then it's better, if not, it's okay, because the priority is more performance and learning efficiency. In the past, I used to use a 1.6kg Lenovo Legion 5 without charging to take it to school every day. At that time, it still felt normal because it was very good for studying. The screen is also an important factor. If the screen is bad and the color range is not high, it is difficult to create beautiful projects.

What should you keep in mind when learning programming, AI, code...?

These are the fields of study that I see "eating" RAM the most and this is also what causes the world to have a shortage of RAM and SSD memory, causing the price of the laptop you are about to buy to increase in price. Studying this field, you should determine the more RAM the better, at least 16GB, have a discrete graphics processor with at least 6GB VRAM, or the ability to upgrade later is even better. Another note is that you should choose chip lines with good support for AI, don't expect much from chip models with NPU because currently there is not much optimized software for NPU. In the next article, I will continue to share my experience in choosing CPU, GPU, and machine models for each field of study I mentioned in this article. In short, when you buy a computer for school, you are determined to use it for at least the next 4 years, so choose carefully, don't listen too much about advertising to avoid making the wrong choice. Factors such as design, promotion, and branding are also important, but above all, you must determine what the needs and requirements of your field of study are. I often give advice to new students: ask your seniors what device they are using, is it good, and can they do the job? From there you will have less wrong choices. Have fun guys.