Best Laptops For Biology Majors – Reviews

Whether you’re a biology student looking for a laptop replacement or an aspiring one, finding the right laptop can help you load.

In most cases, you’ll be spending time taking notes, running presentations, and other MS Office stuff. Very few of you will be working on heavy stuff but we’ve considered that as well.

Finding the best laptop for biology majors is more laborious than challenging as there are tons of options available and you’ll play the game of choosing your favorite one for days.

To stop you from wasting your time, we’ve compiled a list of excellent laptops that are great for biology students. These are picked with your best interests in mind so that you can’t go wrong with them.
Let’s jump right in.

Best Laptops For Biology Majors

Our Top picks are as follows

• ASUS ZenBook 13
• Apple MacBook Air
• Lenovo Yoga 740
• Acer Aspire 5
• Acer Predator Helios 300

1. ASUS ZenBook 13 – Editor’s Choice

The ASUS ZenBook 13 is our Editor’s choice for the best laptop for biology images. This laptop strikes the balance between portability and power and ensures that no compromises are made.

Right from the design of this laptop, this device here is an amazing one. This is one of the slimmest laptops you will get your hands on and weighs just around 2.5 lbs. The bezels around the screen are super thin and give you an effective screen-to-body ratio of 95% which is fantastic.

The display we have here is a 13.3-inch widescreen LED-backlit display that comes with a full HD resolution. In terms of color quality, this display nailed it. The pictures you get are vibrant and the texts are sharp enough to give you the best viewing as well as reading experience.

The battery life of this display is another important area where this laptop excels. With light use, you should be easily getting around 8 to 10 hours of battery life. As a biology major, this is the battery life you should be getting as most of your activities will be simple and less taxing on the device.

The processor that powers this ASUS laptop is an Intel Core i7 processor. though this is an i7 processor, it is also an ultralow voltage processor which means it will not have that much drain on the battery of this laptop. Performance-wise, this processor can clock to a maximum of 4.2 GHz which is more power than you will ever need as a biology student.

The memory department on this laptop is filled with 16GB of RAM. This is a lot of memory and will give you all the freedom you want when it comes to multitasking. You can run several applications side-by-side without any issues whatsoever. You will even be able to run virtual machines but as a biology student, the chances of that are pretty bleak.

For storage, you get 512GB of SSD storage. This is a very fast storage drive and can move even gigabytes of data within seconds. If you’re looking for good storage, then this is probably multiple times it. Not only is the storage fast, but it is also very spacious giving you enough room to play with.

Overall, this ASUS ZenBook is an excellent laptop that comes with amazing specs. As a biology student, you will love this device and you will keep using it even after you graduate which tells us how future-proof this device is.

2. Apple MacBook Air – Mac Pick

The Apple MacBook Air is the best laptop for those who prefer macOS over Windows. If you’re a fan of the Apple ecosystem and want an easy win, then the MacBook Air would be the perfect place to start as it is budget-friendly and also gives you excellent performance.

One of the best things about the MacBook Air is its portability. This is the most portable laptop you will find in the Apple laptop lineup. With a weight of just 2.6lbs, you can easily carry this anywhere you want to. The laptop also has a slim profile which means you can slide this into your backpack and you won’t notice any budget.

Another compelling feature of this MacBook Air is its battery life. With regular use, a normal biology student would get around 9 to 11 hours of battery life from this device. You can also get the same battery life for other stuff like video streaming, web browsing, and similar tasks. Even with heavy applications, battery life is still good at about 5 to 6 hours.

When it comes to processing power, the MacBook Air is governed by an Intel Core i3 processor. This processor is perfect for biology students as it does not take up a lot of power and gives you excellent performance. This processor is also one of the main reasons why this laptop excels at getting such good battery life. You will also be able to run heavy applications as well which is not something a lot of people understand when looking at this processor.

The MacBook Air comes with 8GB of RAM. Thanks to the optimization in macOS, you will be able to do much more multitasking with this memory than on a Windows laptop. You can run several apps side-by-side and be more productive without affecting the performance of the laptop.

The solid-state drive on this laptop comes with 256GB of storage space. This is a pretty good starting point for storage and Apple just improved it from 128GB to 256GB just this year. Apple’s solid-state drives are extremely fast and this gives you more performance per dollar than any other solid-state drive on the market.

Overall, this Apple MacBook Air is an excellent laptop for those who prefer macOS. The performance of the laptop is on point and you will get an optimized user experience that is not something we can say about every laptop out there.

3. Lenovo Yoga 740 – Convertible Laptop

The Lenovo Yoga 740 laptop is a great choice for those who prefer a convertible laptop. This Lenovo laptop gives you the flexibility of a tablet or a great price without compromising on anything else.

The design of the laptop plays an important role here. The hinges on this laptop or super smooth allowing you to transition from one mode to another without any friction. The laptop also comes with excellent durability so you don’t have to worry about your hinges feeling you or any other part of the laptop giving up after some time.

The display we have here is a 13.3-inch display that comes with full HD resolution. As far as color quality is concerned, this is one of the better panels we have seen and does well for the price. The viewing angles on this laptop are very impressive, thanks to the IPS panel underneath the laptop. This display is perfect for taking notes as the touchscreen comes with excellent responsiveness and supports pretty much every external stylus out there.

There is no lack of processing power in the Lenovo Yoga 740. It comes with an Intel Core i5 processor and 8GB of RAM that is perfect to give you the perfect student experience. You can run pretty much any application you want with this configuration and you would be surprised what this laptop is capable of.

This late-hour yoga 740 laptop also does well when it comes the battery life. You can easily get around 7 to 8 hours of battery life with your regular biology student routine. Even with some heavy users, the laptop can still last for about 4 to 5 hours which is quite impressive.

Overall, the Lenovo Yoga 740 is an excellent convertible laptop for the price. This may not be as good as the surface book but it saves you a lot of money and gives you a similar performance at a fraction of the cost. Doubt, this is one of the best convertible laptops for biology majors.

4. Acer Aspire 5 – Budget Laptop

The Acer Aspire 5 with the Ryzen processor is our go-to laptop when it comes to fishing for budget laptops.

This is a 15.6-inch laptop so you’re not going to get the same portability that you get from the other laptops on the list. However, this laptop is also one of the lightest laptops in the same size category. It weighs just around 5 pounds which should be easy to carry around the campus.

The display on this device is a full HD display that comes with decent color quality. The viewing angles are fantastic, thanks to the IPS panel underneath the display. Being a widescreen, this display gives you the ability to run two windows side-by-side at the same time enhancing your productivity to the next level.

The processor that powers this laptop has an AMD Ryzen processor and it does well when it comes to handling your everyday applications. This process gives a similar performance to that of an Intel core i3 processor. And also, you have the advantage of getting at much cheaper which has always been the case with AMD processors.

The memory department on this laptop is equipped with 8GB of RAM. This memory should be more than enough for most biology majors when it comes to multitasking. You will be able to take notes while listening to music in the background and downloading some stuff all at the same time without any issues.

With eight gigs of RAM, you should also be able to run a few tabs on your favorite browser without any refreshes.

Overall, the Acer Aspire 5 is an excellent budget laptop that gives you very good performance for the price you’re paying. If you are stuck on a shoestring budget, then this would be the laptop we highly recommend.

5. Acer Predator Helios 300 – Gaming Laptop For Biology Majors

If you are a gamer and you want to play the latest and greatest games at least for the next couple of years, then the best gaming laptop for you would be the Acer predator Helios 300.

This Acer predator laptop is one of our best choices when it comes to getting a gaming laptop or an affordable price. Even at a price this low, the gaming laptop does come with all the hardware that is perfect for gaming and does not disappoint us.

With a 15.6-inch screen, this is not a very portable laptop. The display comes with full HD resolution with a 144Hz refresh rate and 3ms overdrive response time. This is one of the best gaming this place you can get at this price point and you do get a fluid gaming experience, thanks to these specs. The color quality of the display is also pretty good which means you will also love watching your favorite content on this display.

The laptop is powered by an Intel Core i7 processor from the 9th generation of Intel chips. This is a hexa-core processor and it delivers a ton of power which is more than any biology student will ever need. You can run pretty much any application on this laptop without any hiccups whatsoever.

The laptop also comes with 16 gigs of RAM which is great for running games. With this memory, you will be able to run pretty much any multithreaded applications without any issues whatsoever you can also multitask to your heart’s content without holding yourself back. Now go and open tens of tabs on your favorite browser.

The graphics card on this laptop is what is responsible for this excellent gaming performance. We have an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 that comes with a dedicated video RAM of 6GB. This is one of the best gaming cards you can get on a mobile device right now it does a fantastic job when it comes to running the latest games.

The storage on this laptop is also quite good with a 512 GB SSD. This SSD is very fast when you compare it with the mechanical hard trip. You can easily move around huge files without having to wait for more than a few seconds. The SSD is also instrumental in launching applications fast. This applies to games as well as the SSD is well-complemented by an excellent GPU.

Overall, the Acer predator Helios 300 is a fantastic gaming laptop that comes at an affordable price. While you can still go for $2000 gaming laptops, this one saves you a lot of money and gives you similar performance. If you’re a biology student looking for a gaming laptop, then this is probably it.

What To Look For In The Best Laptop For Biology Majors?

If you’re not happy with any of the laptops mentioned on the list, you can go and find yourself the right laptop for you. We are committed to helping you to get the best for you so we’ve listed certain criteria that you should not deviate from if you want the best bang for your buck.

Portability

As a biology student, you don’t want to carry around a pole clampdown that slows you down and makes your life miserable. Instead, you need a small laptop that packs a punch and helps you with your everyday tasks.

The ideal solution for portability would be an 11-inch laptop. But we feel that this size is a bit too small for students. Yes, we have a lot of 11-inch tablets lying around but getting a full-fledged laptop in the same size might not be a great idea keeping the future in mind.

The next best option for us to be the 13-inch model. For us, these are the perfect size for any student. The 13.3-inch laptops will give you a decent-sized display and you can do a lot with it without having to squint your eyes. It is also perfect for portability, thanks to its slim and lightweight design. You will not find a heavy 13.3-inch laptop even if you want to.

Your portability will suffer if you want to go for a 15.6-inch laptop or a bigger one. We don’t usually recommend this size for biology students as it is mostly unnecessary and the gains you would get are quite marginal.

In addition to portability, you may also want to take a look at the form factor that suits you the best. If you are going to take handwritten notes, then you can skip getting a laptop and get a convertible laptop so that you can use an external stylus to take handwritten notes straight on your laptop instead of scanning them later.

You may also want to check out tablets if handwritten notes are your topmost priority. Why spend a fortune on a laptop when you can get a tablet at a fraction of the price? Or you can get a much more powerful laptop like the iPad Pro by spending the same amount of money.

Display

When most of your computer-related task is taking notes, doing research, browsing the web, and so on, you cannot risk getting a bad display on your laptop. You will be spending a lot of time every day in front of your laptop screen so you might as well get a good one.

The first thing you should decide regarding the displays in size. As we discussed in the previous section, the size of the laptop you want is mainly decided by the portability you need. If you want the best portability of that then we recommend going with a 13.3-inch laptop.

The next thing you want to focus on is the resolution. We do not want you to get a simple HD display. Getting a 720p display is probably the worst thing you can do on a modern laptop. These are old-fashioned displays and might be a good choice for those who are on a shoestring budget, but if you’re not then we would steer clear of them.

In our opinion, a full HD screen is a minimum you should route for when getting a new laptop. The full HD display comes with much message pixel density and offers more clarity. You can also go for a displacement better contrast ratio to get some colors with a good punch and vibrancy.

If you have the money, you can even go for QHDR 4K displays. They might be overkill in 13.3-inch laptops but you get an awesome display in which you can’t spot individual pixels even from the closest distance.

Make sure that you have an IPS panel underneath the display. There are different kinds of panels like IPS, TN, and VA panels. The IPS panel is the best among the three and will give you the best output. Going for a TN or a VA panel will greatly reduce the cost of your display, but you will also be compromising a lot on the quality of the output.

You also have the option to choose between a glossy or matte display. A glossy display will give you the best representation of colors. It will be the most accurate display you will find and it is perfect for people who work with colors. The disadvantage here is that you’ll also be greeted with a lot of reflections which could get annoying over time.

If you’re not a fan of the reflections on your display, then getting a matte display can help you load. These displays do not reflect much and you will have a cleaner display to work on. The disadvantage here is that you can see a small coat on the display that prevents reflections and it could impact the overall color accuracy of the output.

Also, make sure that your display comes with decent maximum brightness. Most of the time, you would be using around 30 to 50% of your maximum brightness. But if you want to work in the park or in a place where there is a lot of light, then having a bright screen will come in handy. Some of the models mentioned in the list have a maximum brightness of up to 500 nits which is pretty cool.

Battery Life

Battery life is one of the most important factors when choosing a student laptop.

As a student, you will have a packed schedule where you will not have the time to find a free charging outlet and then charge your laptop in the middle of the day. Avoid this at all costs by picking a laptop that comes with all-day battery life.

A laptop that can last an entire day can give you much more flexibility and will remove the headache of finding a free charging port which is a huge challenge on campus. Charging ports are always hogged by students and there is no way of getting one unless you wait for 15 to 30 minutes.

Apple laptops are great when it comes to battery life. The Microsoft Surface line is also pretty good when we are dealing with battery life. Most of the laptops mentioned in the list are good and will give you enough time to end your day without having to charge them again.

If you can’t afford a laptop that lasts an entire day, then go for one that gives you at least 5 to 6 hours of battery backup. If you don’t want to mess around with charging points, then we recommend getting Apollo bank which has at least half your laptop’s capacity.

Connectivity

A student‘s laptop should come with all the essential connectivity options.

Most flagship laptops do not give you the entire set of connectivity. Not all ports are included which is Sonam at the service to biology students. But with a thunderbolt port, we would be replacing a lot of ports. These ports are very versatile and can help you transfer data, connect to an external monitor, and even a charger laptop.

Most modern laptops come with only a thunderbolt port which might look like a problem at the start but once You get used to it, it all gets better.

If you are going to get a small laptop with the idea of connecting it to a bigger display, then make sure that it comes with a thunderbolt port or an HDMI port. The ports help you connect your laptop to a high-end external display.

Make sure the laptop comes with good moral standards built in. To get high internet speeds without the help of wires, you want at least 802.11AC Wi-Fi on your laptop. For the best internet speeds, you need Wi-Fi 6 adapters on your laptop which have also reduced latency by a big number.

You will also be benefited from Bluetooth 5.0 on your laptop as it comes with improved range and better connectivity. Having said that, anything about Bluetooth 4.0 will do a fantastic job.

Processing Power

For a biology student, there is technically no need for a lot of processing power. You would be fine with an Intel Core i3 processor on your laptop as most of your activities won’t need a higher level of processing power.

If you seek a lot of processing power apart from your studies, then we would recommend going for an Intel Core i5 or even an i7 processor. These processors come with a lot more power and can get more stuff done than an i3 processor.

In our opinion, we would avoid i7 processors and go for i5 processors even if you need more power. This is because the i7 processor is known to drain the battery mode. Regardless of what you are going to do with your laptop, your studies will come first, and for that, we would recommend going with an Intel Core i5 processor if you need one.

Though processing power isn’t a big deal, we do not recommend going with an Intel Pentium, Celeron, or atom processor. These are super entry-level processors and will bog you down when it comes to performance. They are meant for more low-performance devices like chrome books or entry-level laptops.

Things like the number of cores or the clock speed do not play a significant role when it comes to choosing a laptop for biology students. All you need is a good dual-core or quad-core processor that does a pretty good job when it comes to handling your everyday activities. Don’t stress about the processor much.

When it comes to memory, you will be fine with just four gigs of RAM. But since we are looking at a laptop that should last you for at least a few more hours, we highly recommend going with 8GB of DDR4 RAM. This is a pretty good amount of memory and should help you with all your multitasking needs.

If you plan on doing something great for your biology class like rendering a model or doing something similar, then you might want to go with 16 gigs of RAM. This is a lot of memory and anything other than heavy usage will not justify this memory. Most of the students will be super happy with eight gigs of RAM on the laptop.

Graphics

If you are strictly going to stick to your curriculum, then the integrated graphics card you get on your laptop is perfectly fine for your graphics requirements.

You will need a dedicated graphics card only if you want to play games, edit photos and videos, render staff, and do other heavy tasks. If this is not the case, then feel free to stick to and integrated graphics card as it will do a great job in Mohsin areas.

Also, integrated graphics cards have developed greatly in the last few years. You will be able to run a lot of mid-range games and even handle some heavy applications without any issues.

Storage

The storage you get on your laptop is quite important. Whether you go for a mechanical hard drive or a solid-state drive will make or break your experience as a student.

Mechanical hard drives are pretty old in design and come with moving slow parts. With these drives in place, you will get a super slow experience which will make you wait for launching applications, move files, and do pretty much anything you do on your laptop.

These drives are very cheap and are included as the basic option on so many laptops. You can also get a lot of storage for little money which makes it a tempting offer for those who don’t understand how storages work.

In our opinion, you should always go for solid-state drives. These are modern storage devices that do not have any moving parts in them and are 17 times faster than the slowest mechanical hard drive. And they can move data much faster and can help launch applications quicker than ever before.

The amount of storage you need is completely dependent on your requirements. Do keep in mind that solid-state drives are very expensive. So if you don’t need the space, then we can go for a minimum of 128GB SSD. In most cases, we have found that a 256GB SSD is the right choice as it gives you enough space to play with and also presents the increased reading and writing speeds.

As a student, you should also pay attention to getting a backup storage device. A cheap external hard drive is perfectly fine for backup storage as it gives you more storage for less money. You don’t have to worry about speed here as this is only a backup and you won’t be using it as frequently as your solid-state drive.

You should also sign up with a cloud service provider and store important information on the cloud so that you don’t miss any of them in case of a hardware failure.

Operating System

We all have our choices of operating systems. Selecting the right operating system is more of a personal preference than anything else. There is no software for biology students that are discipline-specific.

If you are comfortable with Windows, then you should probably go for the Windows laptop. If you are a fan of macOS, then that’s your jam. There is no point in switching operating systems in school as it will only make you go through a learning curve that is unnecessary at this level.

In terms of compatibility, windows could be a model better option as most software is made for windows than for macOS. But the advantage you have with a Mac is that you can install Windows as a virtual operating system or as a parallel operating system which gives you access to both OS. The vice versa is not possible yet.

Budget

This is probably the most important factor you need to take into account.

If you don’t have any budget issues, then you probably should go with our editor’s choice if you are going for a Windows laptop. If Mac is your weapon of choice then you’ll be perfectly fine with the MacBook Pro or even a MacBook Air.

Your choices will be limited if you are on a budget. Always remember that the tool is only as good as the man who uses it. So even with a simple entry-level laptop, you can do great things if you have the heart for it.

Don’t ever think that a budget laptop will spoil your chances of getting good at school. That is not the case at all. We have selected a budget laptop that is both cost-effective and gives you excellent performance. Take a look at it.

Conclusion

That’s all we have for this post.

We hope you got what you wanted. If you’re still having doubts about getting the right laptop, do let us know if you’re having trouble with anything. We’ll contact you and help you to find the laptop that suits your needs the best.