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Best Laptops for Homeschooling & Online Learning (2023 Update)

Best Laptops for Homeschooling & Online Learning (2023 Update)

A laptop that is used exclusively for online learning or homeschooling doesn’t have to be expensive in order to work like a charm, but it has to tick some boxes in order to ensure maximum speed in order to optimize the learning process.

Today, we’re here to share with you the best laptops for homeschooling and online learning. These products won’t break the bank, but will work like a charm, allowing younger or older students to keep up with their courses and learn their curricula without a problem and without any dead times.

The situation worldwide forces the school systems to shift towards distance learning, as well as other alternative methods of schooling like homeschooling, unschooling and even worldchooling.

And for all these types of education, you need a laptop that can handle the tasks of streaming content online (either from various learning platforms or direct streaming with teachers), as well as offer decent speed when it comes to word processing and running various programs and apps for homework, projects and the entire learning process

Please note: We get commissions for purchases made through links in this article.

If you are in a hurry and you don’t want to go through all the details and personal reviews of our recommended products, I’m listing bellow the best laptops for online learning with links to Amazon so that you can compare and decide yourself:

Laptop ModelComments
Chromebook Flex 3Best Budget Laptop for Homeschooling
Lower performance, made for online use
Check price here
ASUS VivoBook 15Best cheap Windows laptop for homeschooling
Good price/performance ratio with decent battery
Check price here
Dell InspironEditor’s Choice
2021 model (so still very recent), good performance & battery life
Check price here
Acer Nitro 5Best performing laptop for Homeschooling
Can also handle gaming, great specs, more expensive
Check price here

Now, in more detail, let’s check out below the best budget friendly laptops for homeschooling and online learning in 2023!

Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3

lenovo flex 3 laptop

The cheapest product on our list is a Chromebook, as opposed to the Windows-powered computers below. Chromebooks are not able to run Windows apps, but most of them have alternatives to be used on this operating system as well.

The main advantage of a Chromebook is that it’s cheap and these are the computers that are offered in schools in the US, generally. So they are good and reliable when it comes to online learning, even though they are not perfect for those used with Windows laptops.

They also require an internet connection in order to work as the OS is basically an internet browsers with some extra bells and whistles.

The Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 is a small one – at just 11.6″ it could be a challenge for older students, but perfect for younger ones who won’t mind the small screen. The image quality is good and the display is touch sensitive as well, meaning that students can swipe their finger over the screen to interact with it and also use it in tablet mode.

This 2021 model delivers a decent performance, thanks to its 4GB of RAM and MediaTek MT8173C processor it has installed. It has a super fast eMMC drive for storage, but with just 32GB of RAM. That is insanely low these days, but fortunately you can increase the storage via an SD card or use cloud storage, as Chromebooks are intended to be used like this.

Like all models on this list, it has a decent quality webcam – it offers HD quality and the incorporated mic does a good job to let the student be heard without problems.

This is a decent model for online learning, but doesn’t really offer many options, especially if you are used with Microsoft’s Windows or you need to use some specific Windows based programs. Also, it is not great for multitasking and is relatively slow compared to our other models below.

But its main advantage is the low price, so if you’re on a very tight budget, you will have to make it work. Not ideal, but there are surely worse options out there.

Click here to check it out on Amazon

ASUS VivoBook 15

This is, in my opinion, the best choice if you want to balance a lower budget with good performance. For distance learning and homeschooling, it’s also a better option in my opinion thanks to the familiar operating system – Windows 10.

This is a larger – yet still portable and light – laptop with a display size of 15.6″, offering a full HD wide view display with anti-glare capabilities, meaning that the image on the display is solid even when used outdoors or in rooms with higher levels of light.

It offers a good performance, thanks to its 8GB of RAM and Intel i3-1005G1 CPU. Now, even though the processor is not one of the most recent models, it still performs well when it comes to school-based activities and online learning. It is compatible with Google Classroom, as well as any other app or service that is used nowadays for online learning.

It also offers more storage than our previous model: 128GB of SSD storage. While this is definitely not a lot, it’s just enough for a laptop used mostly for homeschooling and performing most activities online.

It comes with other goodies as well, like a backlit keyboard (making it perfect to use in darker environments), as well as a fingerprint reader for added privacy and security. It has a plethora of useful ports, including a modern USB Type C and an HDMI port.

The webcam is also capable of offering a good image quality, with the incorporated microphone doing a good job also. While we have much better setups out there, for the purpose of online learning (and the price of this device), the combo works flawlessly.

The design of this laptop is also really nice, with a great screen-to-body ration that makes it look very well, while the device itself is thin and light. It also has a numeric keypad on the keyboard to make things easier when it comes to dealing with numbers.

All in all, this VivoBook is a great option if we look at price/capabilities, with the only mention that unfortunately the battery life isn’t the best, offering just around 4 hours of more intense usage on a single charge. But since you’ll be at home most of the time, this shouldn’t be a problem.

Click here to check it out on Amazon

Dell Inspiron – Editor’s Choice

dell inspiron

Our top choice today is a Dell-made laptop, one that offers amazing performance at a decent price so you’ll have absolutely no reasons for complaint.

This is a regular-size laptop (15.6″ display with full HD resolution), offering a really good image quality. It also has a really sleek and nice design – thin, light and really good looking! As a bonus, it’s also ergonomically built, so the keyboard is inclined a bit, making for a more pleasant and less tough on the wrists typing experience.

The specifications of the laptop are really good, assuring high speed even when multitasking or keeping lots of tabs/programs open.

Powered by 16GB of RAM and the 11th Gen Intel Quad-Core i5-1135G7 processor, this laptop will easily handle any program related to homeschooling or online learning. It also offers a solid amount of storage space: 512GB on a super-fast SSD, so you can also store a lot of extra files, documents, but also photos and videos (and all your diplomas!)

While it doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card (which is required for playing most AAA modern games), it does have Intel’s latest integrated card, the Intel Iris Xe which is created to offer a better performance than previous integrated GPUs.

It has a good quality webcam and integrated microphone (but you can also use a headset for increased incoming and outgoing audio quality), it has a backlit keyboard with a full keypad, as well as a fingerprint reader to round up a really good products.

It comes with two regular USB ports, but also one USB-C, as well as HDMI. Its display doesn’t have touch capabilities, but that’s really not a con in our opinion.

All in all, this is a really solid laptop that offers great performance and solid speed through all the programs you can throw at it (related to online schooling) and it also sells for a decent, fair price. Top choice here!

Click here to check it out on Amazon

Acer Nitro 5

acer nitro 5 laptop

Now, if you have a bit more to spend, you will probably be really excited about this beast which is the only laptop on our list that can also handle some more serious gaming (this also means that it is better at multitasking and more advance processes, like video or photo editing).

This is all thanks to its dedicated graphics card. We’re talking about the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 with 4GB of dedicated RAM. While this is definitely not the best on the market at the moment, it surely is a lot better than the integrated cards offered by the previous models and can easily handle more demanding tasks, as well as modern computer games.

It also has a great processor – the 9th Generation Intel Core i5-9300H which goes up to 4.1 GHz when turbo-boosted (very fast for the non tech-savvy), but also a whooping 32GB of RAM. These specs alone will keep it relevant and a solid choice for years to come.

It also offers a ton of storage with a mix of SSD and HDD drives. You get a more than decent 512GB SSD, but also a 1TB HDD where you can store large files and archives. A really great combo overall!

It has a 15.6″ Full HD IPS Display with great image quality and good speakers also, while the integrated webcam and microphone are great for your Zoom sessions (or Google Classrooms or whatever program your school and teachers are using).

It has a backlit keyboard with a full numpad, but it is also a bit heavier and bulkier due to the fact that it is, in the end, a gaming laptop – and those need extra components for the added performance. So it’s fast and really nice overall!

This is a more expensive laptop that is great for homeschooling, but also for better multitasking and even some gaming when the student needs to relax a bit. (I am not saying now that you can’t play games on the other models, but on this one you can play more games with better visuals)

Click here to check it out on Amazon

These are our recommended products – from really cheap ones, to slightly more expensive laptops that are more versatile and give more options to the students.

Pick the one you consider the best based on your needs and budget and I am sure you will be extremely satisfied with the choice that you have made.

If you need any specific details about the recommended models above, don’t hesitate to ask and we’ll answer as soon as possible!