Medical school certainly isn’t easy. I watched my wife study hard and often during medical school. Getting used to new terminology, dealing with patient care simulations, memorizing so much information, and then putting it to practice out on the field is a lot to handle!
You don’t want to make medical school even more challenging by getting a laptop that barely works properly.
Instead, you want a laptop that will allow you to get through medical school with flying colors, so long as you also put in the work.
Thankfully there are a whole bunch of laptops for medical students out there. The question is, how do you find the best option for you.
That’s where we come in! We’ve compiled a list of some of the best laptops for medical students. We’ve also written a nifty buyer’s guide to help you narrow down your decision.
Table of Contents
Our Best Laptops For Medical Students Reviews
1. Microsoft Surface Laptop
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The Microsoft Surface Laptop is a fantastic choice for any medical student. It even has a touch screen and a stylus which you can use to take notes on any virtual textbooks you may receive during med school.
There are a lot of things to love with this laptop!
For starters, the laptop features a 1 TB SSD hard drive of storage space. This particular SSD is a solid performer, and you can expect fast loading times and booting when you turn the laptop on.
It has an Intel Core i7 processor, with performance up to 4GHz. This means that the laptop operates even faster for a smooth performance.
The laptop runs on a Windows 10 S operating system, which you can be sure will keep you secure online as you browse.
The operating system can even help to boot up the laptop in 15 seconds or less, which is a pretty impressive feat.
You’ll be pleased to know that it can even last for 14.5 hours on just one solitary charge. This, coupled with the fact that it’s so portable, makes this laptop one of the best portable laptops for medical students out there.
Pros
- Very good battery life
- Touch screen compatible
- Portable
Cons
- It’s very expensive
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2. ASUS Vivo Book S
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If you’re in the market for a high quality laptop for your medical studies, then you should most certainly consider the ASUS Vivo Book S. This laptop is a pretty impressive performer across the board.
The laptop features a 15.6 inch display. It has an FHD screen, so you can be sure that everything you see on the screen is the best possible quality. The laptop features a dual storage system, with a 128 GB SSD and 1TB HDD.
The result of this is that the laptop performs fast and you have plenty of space available to store all of your course materials and more. Aside from that, the laptop features a tremendously powerful Intel Core i7-8565U processor.
The laptop has 8GB DDR4 RAM, allowing you to multitask and have numerous tabs open at once without it negatively impacting your laptop’s performance.
This is certainly welcome for a medical student. It doesn’t have the best graphics card, but unless you’re using the laptop for gaming this isn’t really that relevant for a medical student.
The keyboard is smooth and comfortable to use, and it’s also pretty affordable. What more could you possibly want?
Pros
- Affordable
- Performs well
- Portable
- Comfortable keyboard
Cons
- Doesn’t have a touchscreen
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3. Huawei Mate Book X Pro
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While the Huawei Mate Book X Pro is certainly an expensive laptop, it’s difficult to deny that it is a fantastic laptop across the board.
With a long battery life and a portable design, this is certainly one of the best options out there for any medical student with a larger budget.
The laptop features a 13.9 inch 3K touchscreen display. The 512 GB SSD means that the laptop boots up quickly – you only have to wait a couple of seconds then you can get on with your work.
It’s even faster thanks to the Intel i7-8550U processor. The laptop has 16 GB of RAM, making it great for multitasking.
If all of that wasn’t enough, the laptop also features a high quality NVIDIA GEFORCE MX150 graphics card, so it can deal with heavy graphics tasks easily.
You can even use it for over 15 hours for web browsing and 12 hours for playing videos. This is more than enough time for most university lectures and for use around campus.
Pros
- Very good battery life
- Portable
- Good graphics card
Cons
- Expensive
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4. LG Gram
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Whether you’re looking for a laptop for daily use or for your medical studies, you are sure to love the LG Gram. This laptop practically oozes performance, and it’s lightweight enough that carrying it around campus is incredibly easy.
The laptop features a 15.6 inch Touch full HD IPS display. As far as aesthetics go it’s also pretty attractive, with a sleek nanocarbon magnesium body that’s highly durable.
If you’re getting a late night cramming session in before a test the next morning, the laptop also has a backlit keyboard which makes it convenient for when you’re working in the dark.
It even has a great camera, making it a good choice if you need to hop on a Zoom call with your tutor at the last minute.
The connectivity options are pretty great with this laptop. It has a fingerprint sensor for extra security, and it also has a Type C port, HDMI port and a USB 3.0 port. Oh, and did we mention the battery life?
You can get a tremendous 18.5 hours of battery life out of this laptop. It’s most certainly a worthwhile purchase for a medical student.
Pros
- Decent battery life
- Light weight
- Backlit keyboard
Cons
- Speakers positioned on the bottom of the laptop
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5. Dell XPS 13
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The Dell XPS 13 is a fantastic choice for a medical student. The laptop is highly portable and functions well if you need to multitask.
There are a few different versions of this laptop – you can have a laptop with an i3 processor, 4GB RAM and 128 SSD or you can get a more powerful option with a core i7 processor and 16GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD.
The battery life also varies between versions – one has around 6 hours of battery life, while the other has around 10 to 11 hours of battery life.
In addition to this, the laptop has a 12 inch screen, and comes with thunderbolt 3 ports where you can connect up to two monitors up to it. This is ideal if you’re trying to multitask or you’re also interested in getting into streaming.
Unfortunately the laptop doesn’t come with a CD-ROM player, which may be inconvenient in some circumstances.
However, it is highly portable due to it’s sleek, lightweight design, making it a great choice for carrying from lecture to lecture.
Pros
- Various options available
- Powerful
- Portable
Cons
- Doesn’t come with CD ROM Player
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Best Laptops for Medical Student Buying Guide
Is it Necessary to Have a Laptop for Medical School?
Not all medical schools require you to have a laptop for medical school. Some will allow you to have tablets or you may not even need one at all.
With that being said, they’re certainly handy to have for research, note-taking and more, not to mention that there are plenty of schools across the globe that do require you to have a laptop for medical school.
If you’re just taking your notes, doing your studies and you need somewhere to store your course materials, there’s no need for anything particularly fancy.
However, technology is becoming more and more advanced as time goes on and it’s best to prepare for that. Who knows – VR may end up making its way onto your medical school syllabus at some point.
With this in mind, it’s best to ensure that you have the best laptop for medical school.
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Things to Consider
It’s best not to pick up the very first laptop that crops up on Amazon when you’re looking for a laptop for medical school. After all, you have no idea if that laptop is going to be suitable for what you need it for.
You need to think about whether you need certain software for your course, and if so will certain operating systems work with it? Will you need something portable, something with a decent processor?
With that being said, here are just a few of the things that you should keep in mind when searching for your laptop.
Weight
Unless your lessons are virtual, which they generally aren’t in medical school, it’s best to buy a laptop that’s fairly lightweight.
The chances are that you are going to be carrying your laptop around with you a lot on campus, so a heavy laptop is going to be quite cumbersome to carry after a while.
You could consider it an arm workout for you, but why bother when there are plenty of great portable laptops out there? Ideally, you should be looking for a laptop that weighs less than 3 lbs if possible.
Size
This partially links in with the previous point and you need to weigh both options up (no pun intended.) If you opt for a laptop with a bigger screen, you’ll be able to see more without straining your eyes.
Unfortunately this often comes at the expense of the weight – the bigger the screen is, the heavier the laptop will be. With that being said, you should consider a laptop with a screen around 12 or 13 inches.
This is big enough for you to read any content on your screen without much trouble, while still being lightweight enough to carry around with you on campus.
Processor
While a having a laptop that’s relatively small is certainly good for medical students, you shouldn’t compromise on the processor.
At the absolute minimum you should be getting an Intel i3 processor so you can multitask with at least some degree of success.
It would be even better if you could get an Intel i5 or i7 processor as this will perform even better.
Be warned, however, that you are likely to pay more money if you buy an i5 or i7 processor, though it’s certainly worth the money if you have it to spare.
RAM
The chances are that you are going to need to study a number of different documents for your course, so it’s a good idea to get a laptop with decent ram. A minimum of 8GB is the best choice.
If you don’t need to do so much on the laptop then you could probably get away with less RAM on the laptop than this.
Operating System
You will also need to consider the operating system of the laptop before you buy. What option are you going to be able to use the best, and will the operating system be compatible with your course?
The chances are that as a medical student you won’t need a great deal of software, other than the basics such as the Microsoft Suite, a PDF converter and Adobe PDF.
However, some schools may use extra applications such as ExamSoft or VLC, which may not be compatible with all devices. You need to consider this before buying.
Resolution
What’s the point in buying a laptop if you can’t use it properly, if you can’t actually see anything on the screen all that well?
Make sure that your laptop has a resolution that’s around 1080p, though ideally no lower than 1440 x 900.
Storage
It’s always a good idea to get a laptop with a decent amount of storage, even if your career path involved mostly being on your feet and away from your laptop.
You should be looking for a laptop with storage of 128GB and above, though you don’t need to go overboard.
It’s also worth considering if you plan on using the laptop for other purposes, for instance if you are going to be gaming then you will need more space for game storage.
Touch Screens
A lot of laptops nowadays have touch screens, but do you necessarily need one? Not really, though they can come in handy.
For instance, if you have the laptop in tablet mode then you can scroll through a document using your finger, and you can manually write noted on a document and keep them there for future reference.
No rummaging around for old pieces of paper required.
Battery Life
If you’re a student, it’s always a good idea to try and find a laptop that has a decent battery life. Sure, if you’re only going to be using your laptop at your desk at home then it may not be that important.
On the other hand however, you may wish to take notes with your laptop in lectures and other classes, meaning that you will need decent battery.
Not all lecture theaters provide you with plug sockets where you can charge your laptop, so looking for decent battery life is certainly in your favor.
At a minimum you should be looking for at least 7 hours of battery life, or else you risk a mad panic in the middle of a lecture when your laptop suddenly turns itself off.
Connectivity
The chances are that you will need to connect your laptop to another device. Perhaps you want to use one of the library computers for an assignment so you use a USB to transfer the assignment from your PC to your laptop.
As a result of this, you should be looking for a laptop that comes with a wide range of different ports, including USB ports, SD card slots, mic and audio jack slots and a HDMI port.
Aesthetics
Still torn about which laptop to buy? If you’re stuck between two different models then think about what you want your laptop to look like. You’ll likely enjoy using your laptop more if you enjoy how it looks.
Aesthetics shouldn’t come above other more important considerations like the processor or the operating system, but it’s nice to have a laptop that you enjoy looking at.
Some laptops even have multicolored designs and backlit keyboards, which are handy.
Trackpad and Keyboard
On the subject of keyboards, you should make sure that yours is easy to use. There needs to be ample space in between the keys so that typing is easy for you and you don’t need to strain your fingers.
You should also have a well calibrated trackpad that you can use to navigate the laptop, though this isn’t as important to consider if you plan on connecting your own mouse to the laptop instead.
You don’t need anything particularly fancy, but something that’s easy to use is a must. Extra features such as backlit keyboards can be considered later on.
I hope this list of great laptops and the buying guide will serve you well as you look to purchase your laptop.
