I’m a tech expert, and these are the three student laptops you should consider buying

The Dell XPS 13 (along with the 15in variant) is the best Windows laptop going, and the nearest thing to a MacBook Air you’ll find, but you really don’t need the 2023 model. You’ll save the best part of a grand by picking up last year’s instead.

The difference in performance is negligible. You get a 12th-generation, U-series Intel processor rather than the newest 13th gen, but things like the display, design, ports, keyboard and chassis are otherwise basically the same. It features a decent 1,920 x 1,200px screen, excellent build quality and it’s lightweight and portable.

We’d suggest doubling the memory to 16GB for the extra £100 – that’s where you’ll spot the difference in performance – but if you want to dial the specs all the way back, you can get a brand new Dell XPS 13 for as little as £845.

If you don’t need a whole lot of performance but just want an everyday laptop to bash out notes and emails or take video calls, look to Lenovo’s IdeaPad 3i.

This is a deleriously cheap Windows 11 laptop that cuts all the right corners. It runs on 4GB of RAM and an Intel Core i3 processor. That’s the least powerful processor in Intel’s main line, but still significantly more capable than the Intel Celeron and Pentium chips you’ll find wheezing away in even cheaper devices.

Build quality is good, the keyboard and trackpad are comfortable to use, it’s thin and lightweight, there’s a decent port selection and the minimal branding gives it a clean look.

No laptop brand is sexy, but HP is probably the least sexy of them all. But putting aside the uneasy connotations of brown sauce and laserjet printers, the HP Pavilion 14 is quietly one of the best budget Windows laptops you’ll find.

There are a bunch of ways of configuring the HP Pavilion 14. You don’t want to cheap out on the underpowered Celeron or Pentium models, but instead look at the AMD Ryzen 5 or Intel Core i5 models for a better compromise between performance and price. As with the Dell XPS 13, it’s worth doubling the RAM if it’s in your budget.

These models will handle basic tasks with ease, but are also speedy enough to cope with more demanding jobs, such as photo editing and handling large files.