With the 2025 Back to School season upon us, many parents will be wondering whether it’s time to finally buy their kid a laptop. It’s a tricky question with no easy answer, but don’t panic: TechRadar is here to help.
I’ll preface this by saying that I’m not a parent myself, but many of my friends and colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic are, and I’ve picked the brains of everyone from my neighbours to my mother (who is a career schoolteacher) to combine their feedback with my own 8 years of experience testing and reviewing the best laptops in the world, and deliver you only the most useful advice.
In today’s increasingly online world, it’s more and more common for kids to have their own electronics, meaning that parents need to be more aware of the technology their children are using. If you’re deliberating over whether to buy your kid a laptop, there’s a good chance they already have a phone or table and probably use your laptop or desktop PC too – so there’s a good chance they’re already more tech-savvy than you, and sure, they might be leveraging that knowledge gap to try and persuade you they need their own computer. But do you really need to spend the money? Let’s get into it.
Educational needs
First up, let’s talk about school. I personally didn’t own a laptop until I headed off to university at 18, but that was more than a decade ago now; these days, having regular access to a computer is practically mandatory for kids at many different levels of education.
No, your child doesn’t need a laptop if they’re in Pre-K, and most elementary/primary schools won’t expect students to bring laptops into classes, but some schools may expect kids to do some work that requires a computer as early as 2nd or even 1st grade (that’s year 2 and 3 for our readers in the UK).
By the time they reach 4th grade (year 5), you’re liable to find them seriously monopolizing your time on the family PC if they don’t have their own system for homework and projects. The best approach here is simply to contact the school and get their input on how much computer work your kid will be expected to do.
If your kid is in high/secondary school and doesn’t have a laptop yet, it’s time to pull your finger out and get them one. Even if they don’t need to physically take a laptop into school with them, they’re absolutely going to need one at home. Our list of the best student laptops is ideal for children who are already in their teens; if they’re younger but still need a laptop, check out the best laptops for kids.
Your kid’s own needs and wants
Laptops aren’t just for school, of course! A good laptop can be an all-in-one educational, creative, and entertainment device for your kid, so it’s important to talk to them and get a good understanding of what they actually want to use it for.
If all they really want to do with a laptop is watch Netflix or YouTube and browse social media, then good news: you won’t need to spend too much. Any of the best Chromebooks will fit the bill here; these Google-powered laptops aren’t suited for running more high-powered software, but they’re very affordable, usually lightweight and compact, and even come with useful parental safety controls built into the operating system, ChromeOS.
If your kid likes to play games, then a Chromebook is very much *not* the way to go. To play the majority of PC games (without horrible performance, anyway), you’re ideally going to need a laptop with a dedicated GPU – look out for ‘Nvidia RTX’ branding, which means that the laptop has Nvidia graphics.
Of course, I’m not saying that you need to buy a multi-thousand-dollar gaming laptop. A cheaper (or even second-hand) one will be fine, especially since the most popular PC games for kids – I’m talking Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, and their ilk – aren’t particularly demanding on the hardware. In fact, some newer laptops can even handle those games with just CPU-integrated graphics (iGPUs); in terms of brands to look for, Intel Core Ultra, AMD Ryzen AI, and Snapdragon X Elite processors are all great options for lighter gaming.
The good news about laptops with discrete graphics (dGPUs) is that they’re also fantastic for creative workloads. If your kid is interested in photo editing, videography, or any kind of digital art and design, then a laptop with a dGPU from Nvidia is perfect for feeding that hobby, since it’ll handle programs like Photoshop, Blender, and Procreate with ease. As someone who had a brief dalliance with 3D art as a kid, I wish I’d had one of the laptops you can get today. Trying to run Blender on a crappy Intel i3 CPU was a painful experience. So if your kid has a passion for digital creativity, you can fuel that fire with a more powerful laptop.
Choosing the right laptop
When buying a laptop for a kid, chances are you won’t be springing for a high-end MacBook Pro or anything like that. That’s totally fair; laptops do ultimately have a shelf life, and you don’t want to spend a ton of cash on a device that’ll probably need replacing in five years’ time.
With that in mind, you shouldn’t totally cheap out either. The world of computer hardware and software moves fast, and buying something seriously underpowered could put you in an uncomfortable position where it needs replacing sooner than you expected. A good rule of thumb is to simply do a Google search for the laptop’s CPU to find out how old it is; if it’s more than three or four years old, you’ll probably want to avoid that model.
It’s also important to consider what software your kid will be using. Not every app can run on ChromeOS and macOS, so if there are specific programs your kid wants to use (or will need for school), then be sure to do your research. A Windows laptop will usually be the safest option here.
Lastly, be sure to read reviews so you can confidently pick a laptop with good battery life. This is a must-have for any laptop for kids, especially if they’re planning to take it to school with them – there’s nothing worse than running out of charge when you’re halfway through an important piece of schoolwork!
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christian.guyton@futurenet.com (Christian Guyton)
