Back to School 2026: What Laptop Does Your Kid Actually Need?

Every August I get a run of laptops in. Some are last year's back-to-school purchase — screen hinges snapped, keyboards sticky, the fan clogged up after less than twelve months. Others are panicked bring-ins two days before term starts: a laptop that won't turn on, or one that takes eight minutes to load Windows because someone bought 4GB of RAM in 2026.

I'm not going to tell you what to buy without giving you the reasoning behind it. The laptop market is full of noise right now — AI PC badges, Copilot+ stickers, OLED screens on budget machines, Snapdragon chips where you'd normally expect Intel. Most of it doesn't matter for a school laptop. Some of it does. Here's how to cut through it.

The specs that actually matter

The biggest mistake I see is treating RAM as a number to minimise to hit a price point. Eight gigabytes of RAM is not enough for a school laptop in 2026. I say this because I've had half a dozen come through in the past year where the parent bought 8GB thinking it would be fine, and it's painful to use within six months once Chrome is open alongside Teams or Google Meet and a couple of Office documents. The machine isn't broken. It's just full.

Sixteen gigabytes of RAM is the minimum. That's not future-proofing or overkill — that's baseline for comfortable use today with the software schools actually issue. If the budget is genuinely stretched, 8GB is liveable, but go in knowing you may be looking at a replacement or a disappointment in a year or two.

Four gigabytes of RAM — which still appears on some machines in 2026 — is a waste of money regardless of the price. Don't buy it.

Storage: 256GB SSD is the absolute minimum, and honestly uncomfortable once you add the full Office suite, a few years of school files, and anything downloaded for coursework. Four-fifty or 512GB is the sweet spot at most price points. An SSD is non-negotiable; if a machine at this price still has a spinning hard drive, walk away. They're slower, less reliable, and the performance gap is large enough to make the laptop feel ancient immediately.

Processor: an Intel Core i5 or AMD Ryzen 5 (current generation) handles everything a school laptop needs. You don't need an i7 or Ryzen 7 for GCSE coursework and Teams calls. Where it does matter is in the generation — a 12th or 13th gen Intel Core i5 is meaningfully better than a 10th gen, even at the same price. Check the number after the brand name, not just the brand name.

The one thing most guides won't tell you

Battery life on the spec sheet is fiction. Every manufacturer measures it under conditions no actual student experiences — screen at 20% brightness, no apps running, probably on an Ethernet connection in a temperature-controlled room. Real-world battery life is typically 60-70% of whatever number they're advertising. A laptop claiming 10 hours will last 6-7 in normal use.

For secondary school this matters because kids aren't always near a socket. For university it matters a lot — a full day of lectures is eight hours easily. I'd take a claimed 12-14 hours and feel confident about a day's use. A claimed 8 hours means hunting for a plug by 2pm.

What's available right now in UK shops

Prices shift — always check at the time of reading, these were correct in mid-August 2026 — but here's where things sit across the main UK retailers.

Under £400 — secondary school, general use

The Acer Chromebook Plus 514 is at Currys for £249 (down from £349). Intel Core 3, 128GB storage, 10 hours claimed battery. Chromebooks divide opinion. They're genuinely excellent if your school uses Google Workspace — Classroom, Docs, Slides — and the student mainly works in a browser. They are less useful if the school issues Windows-only software, or if the student wants to run standard desktop applications. Check what the school actually uses before buying one. Verified students get an additional 10% off Chromebooks at Currys through to late October.

The Acer Aspire Lite 15" is at Currys for £399 (was £549). AMD Ryzen 5, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD. That's the spec combination you want at this price point — this is what I'd be steering most people towards for secondary school. It's a big screen, reasonable build, and the specs will last.

£400-700 — sixth form, college, early university

The Asus Vivobook S16 OLED at Currys for £599 (reduced from £999) is interesting. Intel Core Ultra 5, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, OLED display, claimed 20 hours battery. The OLED screen is genuinely nicer to look at than a standard IPS panel — colours are better, blacks are proper blacks — though it doesn't make the laptop faster or more capable. The 1TB SSD is generous. At £599 it's decent value; at £999 it was overpriced.

The HP OmniBook AI 17" is at £699 (was £999). Intel Core Ultra 5, 16GB RAM, big 17" screen. "AI PC" and "Copilot+" branding on these should be treated as background noise for most students — the AI features are mostly cosmetic at this stage. What matters is the processor and RAM, and they're solid here. Students get an additional £100 off at Currys until October.

£800+ — university, creative or technical courses

The Microsoft Surface Laptop 13.8" is now at £999 (down from £1,599). Snapdragon X Elite processor, 16GB DDR5, 512GB SSD, claimed 20 hours battery. The Snapdragon chip is ARM-based rather than x86, which means a small number of older Windows applications may not run natively — worth checking if there's specific software the course requires. Battery life is genuinely excellent. Portability is the selling point here.

Currys also runs a student verification scheme through Student Beans — up to £150 off selected Windows laptops over £1,299 and £100 off those over £799 from 5 August through to 1 November. Worth checking before you pay full price.

What I'd actually tell a parent standing in Currys

Before any of the above: ask the school what software they use and whether it runs on Windows 11. Most schools are on Microsoft 365, so any Windows 11 laptop handles it fine. Some schools are Google Workspace, in which case a Chromebook becomes worth considering seriously. A small number of courses — media, engineering, design — have specific software requirements that narrow your options.

Then ask how far the kid is going. Year 7 and year 8 — a £300-400 machine is fine, don't spend more. Sixth form or college — spend a bit more and get something that lasts through to university. University itself — buy the best you can sensibly afford, because they'll use it for three or four years, and a better machine bought once is usually cheaper than a mediocre machine bought twice.

Screen quality is underrated in buying guides. A cheap screen with bad colours and low brightness is genuinely unpleasant to stare at for hours of coursework. It's hard to assess from a spec sheet — nits (brightness measurement) over 300 is reasonable, 400+ is good. In the shop, actually look at the screen at different angles under the shop's overhead lighting.

Once you've bought it — setting it up properly

The first hour with a new laptop matters. Don't skip it.

Every Windows laptop ships with bloatware — McAfee trial subscriptions, manufacturer apps that load at startup, browser toolbars, things that don't need to be there. They slow down startup, occasionally pop up notifications at inconvenient moments, and some of them expire after 30 days and then nag you to subscribe. Clear them out before handing it over.

Go to Settings, then Apps, then Installed Apps — sort by publisher and remove anything that isn't Microsoft, the laptop manufacturer's essential drivers, or something you recognise. Then go to Task Manager, click Startup Apps, and disable everything that doesn't need to run at boot. Chrome, Office, anything that can open when you need it rather than sitting in the background.

Set up a Microsoft account if it doesn't have one. This matters because it enables BitLocker (Windows drive encryption) and Windows Hello login, and it means if the laptop is lost or stolen, the drive is encrypted. For students carrying a laptop between home and school, that's not a theoretical risk.

OneDrive for school files. Everything going into OneDrive means if the laptop dies, the coursework doesn't. Three years of A-level work on a local drive with no backup is a disaster waiting to happen — and yes, I've had students come in with exactly this problem.

If you want a second opinion before you buy, or you've picked something up and you're not sure it's set up right, my laptop repair service in St Helens covers setup and configuration as well as repairs — bring it in and I'll take a look.

Mark

Mark has been fixing computers since the late '90s and went self-employed in 2008. Based in St Helens since 2013, he works evenings and weekends from his home in Laffak — friendly, affordable repairs for PCs, laptops, and Macs. See reviews on Google