Just as it is with smartphones, buying your kid a laptop is fraught with concerns, except for one important difference: Many elementary and middle schools consider them essential educational tools, and equip classrooms with machines for their students. Other schools require parents to purchase laptops, offering a selection of recommended models.
Your kid will likely need to use a laptop at school, or for school, whether you like it or not, especially in the wake of the pandemic, in which remote learning came to the fore. Regardless, kids will almost certainly want to use that computer at home, too, both for fun (messaging friends, watching videos, playing Fortnite) and homework (looking up information, typing book reports).
Kids being kids, the list of factors to consider doesn't end there. Don't forget about parental controls, durable plastic, and water-resistant keyboards. At least you won't have to worry about the cost. Buying a kid-friendly laptop need not break the bank—all but one of our recommended models cost less than $700, and most are under $500—and the even better news is that just because they're inexpensive doesn't mean that they are necessarily slow or poorly made.
Below is a breakout of the best laptops for kids that we've tested for 2023, carefully picked with several specific subcategories in mind to cover every kid's digital learning needs. Following that is a buying guide that breaks out your shopping concerns in greater detail.
First and foremost as a preface to our advice: Our focus here is on younger kids. If your child is at the university level, check out our roundup of the best laptops for college students. And you'll find even more choices in our overall roundup of the best budget laptops. Also check our top picks for the best Chromebooks for kids for more on ChromeOS concerns and education aspects, especially for the lower grades.
If your child is also of the age that they may be looking to play PC games on the same machine that they'll use for schoolwork, that is a whole other set of considerations. We'll address that in a section near the end of this article, but know that gaming machines cost more than our other picks here.
Which Operating System Is Best in a Kid PC?
Before you begin to evaluate features, you'll start with the essential question that has plagued PC shoppers for decades: Which operating system should I choose?
This is not the Mac vs. Windows debate of old. New Apple laptops aren't available for less than $500—not even close. The MacBook Air, Apple's least-expensive notebook, starts at $999 and is still overkill for an elementary- or middle-school student. If you're an Apple fan and want to raise your son or daughter to be one too, you're best off giving them a hand-me-down and buying a new MacBook or MacBook Pro for yourself.
Reused Macs aside, most parents will choose between Windows and ChromeOS, the operating system from Google. In addition to running web apps within the Chrome browser, ChromeOS can also run apps from the Google Play store designed for Android smartphones and tablets, including Microsoft Office. If you've decided against buying a smartphone for your kids but they talk your ear off about wanting to play mobile games, buying a Chromebook might be a good compromise.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Windows 10 and Windows 11 have also become more useful for kid-oriented laptops, thanks to S Mode, which is aimed at the education market and, among other security enhancements, prevents apps from being installed unless they're available on the Microsoft Store. This means you've got the ability to block games and apps based on their content ratings (something you can also do with Google Play apps). When your son or daughter gets older and more responsible, you can easily upgrade to the full version of Windows to remove these limitations.
(Credit: Kyle Cobian)If your child's school has specific software that runs only on Windows, your operating system choice will be decided for you. If not, you'll want to take a close look at ChromeOS, since a few Chromebooks include decidedly kid-friendly features (such as easy-grip coatings, or display lids that double as whiteboards). Again, check out our Chromebooks-for-kids guide and best Chromebooks for gaming for more on the specifics around this OS.
Features like these are what transforms an ordinary cheap laptop into a school-friendly machine that kids won't outgrow or wreck in a few months. Arguably the most important, though, is how rugged the case is.
Built for Backpacks: Rugged Laptops for Kids
A few Chromebooks and inexpensive Windows laptops have spill-resistant keyboards, which means that they should survive splashing with an ounce or so of water unscathed. It's much rarer to find entire laptops that are waterproof; the rugged ones that are (models like Panasonic's Toughbook line or Dell's Latitude Rugged Extremes) typically cost several thousand dollars and aren't geared toward kids at all, but rather workers in emergency-services, outdoorsy, or shop-floor professions. Likewise, it's relatively easy to find reinforced lids or cases made of rubber to help absorb drops from a few feet, but you just won't find fully ruggedized machines anywhere close to this price range.
(Credit: Molly Flores)Portability is another key concern, especially for middle- and high-schoolers who walk to school with backpacks laden with heavy textbooks. Most laptops in this category with screen sizes from 11 inches to 13 inches weigh about 2.5 pounds. Go above 3 pounds, and you're putting a real burden on your child's shoulders.
Battery life is important, too, but it's no longer the limiting factor that rendered the laptops of a decade ago useless if they spent more than a few hours away from a power outlet. Even some of the cheapest laptops now boast times of about 10 hours on PCMag's battery rundown test, thanks (mostly) to power-sipping Intel processors.
What Specs Should My Child's Laptop Have?
The final consideration is how your kids will use the laptop, which in turn determines the processor, storage, and memory configurations you should select. Tasks such as taking notes, writing papers, or making PowerPoint slides require little more than the bare minimum, which means that an Intel Celeron or Pentium processor will suffice; a few budget Chromebook models now also use AMD or MediaTek mobile processors. These collectively are the lowest performance tier in budget laptops. (The exception to that: AMD's Ryzen C series chips, much peppier AMD processors that are purpose-built for Chromebooks.)
The next step up is an Intel Core i3, which you should consider if your kid's teachers regularly have them stream online educational videos. An Intel Core i5 or i7 is best, but all but impossible to find on a laptop or Chromebook that costs about $300.
If you opt for a more powerful processor so your kids can stream videos, you might also want to consider a 2-in-1 convertible or detachable laptop, which can double as a tablet thanks to a hinge that rotates 360 degrees, or a screen that detaches completely from the keyboard base. Most hybrids and convertibles are more expensive than the price range we've discussed to this point, but you can find a few high-quality models for less than $500 (especially in the Chromebook crowd). These are best for middle-school-age children or older, since these machines are by nature less durable than a conventional laptop.
(Credit: Kyle Cobian)As for memory and storage, a common minimal configuration is 4GB of RAM and 64GB of flash memory. The former (memory) amount is adequate in a budget Chromebook but skimpy in a Windows machine; 8GB is really the best baseline for anything running Windows. You'll definitely want to consider bumping up the storage capacity to 128GB, since the operating system files on a Windows PC can take up more than 20GB, leaving your kid with a paltry 40GB or so of built-in storage.
The exception is if you choose a laptop that has a roomier but slower (and more easily breakable) spinning hard drive, or one with a built-in SD card reader. (Hard drives have disappeared from Chromebooks, and mostly from budget laptops, too, barring some older models.) In the latter case, you could stick with the base configuration and ask your kids to store their bulkier files on SD cards if needed, which you can buy in 32GB capacities for about $20 each.
Time for Fun: What About Graphics and Games?
Just because you're selecting from among relatively slow processors and limited memory capacities doesn't mean that gaming is out of the question when your kid is done with his or her schoolwork. Some games are, of course, even educational. For instance, Microsoft has an education version of its immensely popular open-world construction game Minecraft. Students can use it to explore real-world history like the Oregon Trail, solving math problems as they begin to understand how long and challenging the trail was, researching fur-trading companies to learn about the economic concepts of monopolies and supply and demand, and more.
(Credit: Kyle Cobian)Minecraft and similar games will run on Core i3 systems with as little as 4GB of RAM—it'll even run on some Chromebooks—but if your kid is looking forward to playing them, you'll make the experience much more enjoyable by selecting a laptop with 8GB. And new to the laptop market: gaming Chromebooks, which are built to take advantage of Android games and cloud gaming services.
If your child is planning on doing more intense gaming, you'll need to step up the power and the price to a full-fledged gaming laptop or gaming desktop. These are laptops with a dedicated graphics chip, which will be dubbed GeForce GTX, GeForce RTX, or Radeon RX.
You won't find current-generation gaming laptops for less than $700. However, $750 to $800 is really the on-ramp for machines with game-worthy GeForce or Radeon dedicated graphics chips, and prices rise rapidly from there as you add features and power. Most kids will be satisfied with a budget model under $1,000, however. (See our guide to budget gaming machines.)
So, Which Laptop Should I Buy for My Child?
Giving your son or daughter a laptop endows them with a portal into the immensely powerful internet, even if the laptop itself may not be the most potent you can buy. It's up to you (and your kids' teachers) to make sure that tool isn't harmful. Fortunately, both Chromebooks and Windows laptops have parental control features, and a laptop's size relative to a smartphone makes it easier to both monitor activity and set ground rules like disallowing computer use after homework is finished.
Check out our top picks for laptops designed for school-age kids below. You can also check out our roundup of our favorite tablets for kids, as well as our top phones for kids.
