If you’re looking to buy a great laptop for your teenage son or daughter, you’re at the right place! We have selected the best for you and we’re sharing them below, making sure that you’re getting great quality and features teenagers want, all at a good price.
If you are the parent looking for a laptop for a teenager, we would actually recommend going through the recommended models with them and have them decide (based on the budget). The features and technical data we’re sharing below might mean a lot more to them than it would to you.
But no matter what model you choose, you can rest assured that you have made a great choice. We personally researched tens of models to come up with our list and we’re explaining what the laptop is best for.
Basically, the main difference between the recommended models is that some are better for playing computer games than others. The latter are also cheaper, so if gaming is not an important thing you want from the new laptop, you’re up for some great deals.
But we’ll talk more in depth about each model. Let’s check our recommended laptops for teenagers below in a quick table first!
Please note: Our blog gets commissions for purchases made through links in this article.
| Laptop Model | Main features |
|---|---|
| Chromebook Flex 5 Best Budget (Overall) | PROs: Cheap, Suitable for online learning, browsing and streaming, small and portable. CONs: Not a Windows laptop, low storage Check price here |
| ASUS VivoBook 15 Best Budget (Windows) | PROs: Best Budget Windows laptop, decent specs CONs: A bit slow Check price here |
| Dell Inspiron 15 | PROs: Solid specs, fast, durable CONs: Only HD resolution (1366 x 768px) Check price here |
| Acer Predator Helios 300 Editor’s Choice | PROs: Top specs, good for gaming, great display CONs: Would’ve been better with more storage Check price here |
| MSI GE75 Raider | PROs: Good specs, good for gaming, large display, lots of storage CONs: More expensive (but worth it!) Check price here |
If you want to know all the details about the models recommended above, let’s get a bit more in depth below with each laptop and see why we consider them perfect for teenagers.
Lenovo Chromebook Flex 5
The cheapest option on our list is a Chromebook made by Lenovo. This means that the laptop doesn’t run Windows, but Google’s OS and is made mainly for online use.
You can perform most activities that you would on a normal laptop – including online learning, browsing the internet, watching movies and much more.
The main difference to traditional laptops, apart from the fact that it uses another OS, is the fact that it offers minimal storage – 64GB in this case. This is less than what most phones offer nowadays… but as I said, Chromebooks are created to be used online.
An advantage of the Flex 5 is the fact that it is very small and therefore light and highly portable. The display is of just 13″ – which still offers a large enough screen for your activities, and is also FullHD with good image quality.
The laptop is powered by an Intel Core i3-10110U processor and has 4GB of RAM – which isn’t impressive at all, but for Chromebooks it’s actually OK. You can use Spotify and have several browser tabs open without noticing any major performance drops.
It also has a touchscreen, which helps as you can flip the screen over and use the laptop as a tablet. A nice feature for sure.
In terms of extra connectivity, it boasts 2 USB Type-C ports, as well as a traditional one. No HDMI port here though.
All in all, if you’re on a tight budget and plan to do most activities online, a Chromebook is a good choice and the Flex 5 is an even better one.
Click here to check its price on Amazon.
ASUS VivoBook 15
We also have a really solid budget option for you if you want a Windows laptop (and some extra storage too!).
The AUSS VivoBook 15 is a regularly-sized laptop (15.6″ display) with full FD resolution and a pretty solid image quality. Light and thin, it is easy to carry around and looks really nice.
It also has a decent performance, being powered by the AMD Quad Core R7-3700U CPU and 8GB of RAM. This is not an ideal setup for sure, but it gets the job done and for the money spent on it… you can’t really get anything better.
In terms of storage, this model comes with 512GB of SSD storage, which is a decent amount nowadays, even though not impressive. But for online learning and storing photos and videos, it will do the job!
It does have some extra bells and whistles, like the ergonomic build for the keyboard, which is slightly lifted for easier typing. The keyboard itself is backlit and the laptop has a fingerprint sensor activated via Windwos Hello.
It comes equipped with one USB-C port, three regular USB ones, but also an HDMI port and a microSD card reader. These will always come in handy!
It has decent battery life, of several hours on a single charge and overall is a good, cheap laptop. While this is definitely not the best laptop you can buy, it gets the job done!
Click here to check its price on Amazon.
Dell Inspiron 15
A bit more expensive than the previous model, this one offers a better overall performance, being able to handle a bit more.
This is thanks to the better processor – the Intel Core i5-1035G1 CPU which is paired with 16GB of RAM. This already allows for some serious multitasking and if you are like me and like to have tens of tabs open, it can indeed handle them.
It has a 15.6″ display, which is also anti-glare (meaning it performs better in strong light conditions) but unfortunately it only offers a HD resolution instead of fullHD. This means that the maximum resolution you can get from it is 1366 x 768 px.
It also doesn’t feature an USB-C port, but does have 3 traditional UB ports, as well as an HDMI slot. Finally, it offers a decent amount of super fast, SSD storage: 512GB. It also has an SD card reader, in case you want to quickly access extra storage.
All in all, this is a fairly priced laptop that offers a solid performance, but also a lower resolution.
Click here to check its price on Amazon.
Acer Predator Helios 300 – Editor’s choice
We’re now moving to more expensive, but also much faster and better overall laptops.
The Acer Predator Helios 300 is a gaming laptop of high quality and performance, but this means in reality that it is very good for a multitude of tasks – like video and photo editing, music production and much more. So it’s not just good for games. Everything’s faster on these models.
This is thanks to the modern processor, the Intel i7-10750H which goes up to 5 GHz, but also the 16GB RAM it comes equipped with and the super-fast 512GB SSD (with another slot open and easy to access if you want to upgrade storage).
The best part about it is that it has a dedicated graphics card for extra power and quality. It’s also a very good one, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 with 6GB of RAM. Modern games and all apps will have no problem running on this system!
The display is also really good. We’re talking about a full HD 15.6″ display with an increased refresh rate (144Hz). This means that all moving images – like videos – will look better and clearer than on regular displays. This will help keep the eyes less tired too!
It has various bells and whistles, including a 4-zone backlit keyboard which makes it look extremely cool. It also has one USB-C port, one miniDP port and 3 regular USB ones, as well as HDMI.
It has a decent battery offering about 6 hours of usage on a single charge. And despite all the goodies that are to be found inside this laptop, it’s still pretty light at just 2.5kg (5.5 pounds).
Based on the price/quality ratio, this model gets our editor’s choice award, meaning that it is our top recommended laptop for teenagers.
Click here to check it out on Amazon.
MSI GE75 Raider
Last but not least, we have another laptop that was built for gaming, so it can easily handle modern apps, multitasking and all sorts of programs.
This one is also bigger, with a 17.3″ display. It becomes a bit less portable, but a larger screen is generally better, especially if you spend a lot of time in front of the laptop.
And just like the previous model, the MSI Raider has a 144Hz refresh rate for a better image quality. You will really love it!
And that’s not the only reason that will make you fall in love with it! It also has great specs for an overall amazing product: Intel Core i7-10750H processor, 32GB of RAM and a whooping 2TB of storage (1TB SSD + 1TB HDD). Truly amazing!
It has a dedicated GPU as well, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 with 6GB of RAM. No complaints here whatsoever!
It has all the ports that you need (including USB-C, HDMI and miniDP), and also a backlit keyboard to make it look really cool. It has a decent battery also, being able to offer up to 6 hours on a single charge.
Overall, even though this is the priciest option on our list, if you have the budget and you need a very strong laptop with tons of storage and no real cons, it is the perfect choice!
Click here to check it out on Amazon.
Do teenagers really need a laptop?
We would say that, generally, laptops can be considered a necessity nowadays for teenagers and most of the population, actually.
It is true that kids will usually spend more time on their phone, doing things that they could also do on a laptop, but there are still tasks that are better performed on a laptop.
Most importantly, if they study online, they will need a laptop as it makes writing, reading and the entire learning process easier.
Also, if you have nothing against your teenager son or daughter to play computer games, then a good laptop with a dedicated GPU is needed. Most games that are made specifically for computers are not available on mobile.
Finally, a laptop helps teenagers keep up with the ever-evolving world of tech. Being tech savvy today is almost mandatory in many working fields and having a laptop would help teenagers a lot.
Additionally, if you don’t want them to have access to specific websites or content you might not agree with (like websites for adults), you can set up restrictions and blog specific websites or types of websites. In other words, you can keep the environment as safe as possible for them.
Conclusion
With laptops being such an important part of our everyday life, we need to make sure that we get a solid, durable and high performance laptop for our teenage sons and/or daughters.
The list we shared above helps you make an educated decision and allows you to choose the best laptop based on the activities the teenagers are going to perform mostly on a laptop.