The Best Laptops for Kids in 2025

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Buying a laptop for your kid is just as tricky as buying one for work or household use—perhaps more so. Many schools consider laptops essential educational tools and equip their classrooms with them. Some even require parents to purchase one for their kids. (And, of course, kids want them—to play games on!) That's where the laptop experts at PCMag come in. We've reviewed thousands of laptops over the decades since our founding. Our analysts test every model with rigorous, repeatable tests, assessing laptops based on CPU and graphics performance, screen quality, design, usability, ruggedness, and value. Our current overall best laptop for kids is Acer's Aspire 3, an affordable 15-inch model with decent performance and battery life, but we stand behind all our picks, chosen for specific scenarios and budgets. We've gathered reviews of the best kid laptops out there, plus our detailed kid-laptop buying advice and a helpful spec comparison.

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. 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 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?

Most parents will choose between Microsoft's Windows and Google's ChromeOS. In addition to running web apps within the Chrome browser, ChromeOS can 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.

Apple fans aren't limited solely to expensive premium laptops anymore, so macOS is also a viable choice. Thanks to a partnership between Apple and retailers like Walmart and Best Buy, the 2020 MacBook Air is more affordable than ever, so you can set your older kids up with a new MacBook (with older hardware) instead of using Apple hand-me-downs.

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 can 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.

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 look closely 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 transform 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, meaning 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 bolstered with rubber to help absorb drops from a few feet, but you won't see fully ruggedized machines anywhere close to this price range.

Portability is another critical 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 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 deliver 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 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 (or, more recently, Core 3), which you should consider if your kid's teachers regularly have them stream online educational videos. An Intel Core i5 or i7 (again, possibly Core 5 or Core 7) or an Apple M-series chip is best, but they're all but impossible to find on a laptop or Chromebook that costs about $300.

Expect to see these Intel Core "i" designations start to be replaced with the Intel Core Ultra 5 and Core Ultra 7 naming convention now in its second and third generation (known as "Lunar Lake" 200V or "Arrow Lake" 200H, HX, and U). These new-generation chips have new neural processing units (NPUs) in their core clusters. (The NPUs crunch on AI tasks exclusively and will see more use in the coming months and years; they are not a factor in a kid's PC right now.) AMD has a similar AI-driven growth path in its mobile processors—also in its second generation of such chips. These are known formally as the Ryzen AI 300 series, or by the "Strix Point" codename. For most kid-oriented PCs, though, you can safely opt for an older chip: an Intel "Core i" model, or an earlier AMD Ryzen processor from the Ryzen 7000 or 8000 series.

If a big part of getting a new laptop is so that your kid can stream videos, consider a 2-in-1 convertible or detachable laptop. These can double as a tablet thanks to a hinge that rotates 360 degrees, or a screen that detaches entirely from the keyboard base. Most hybrids and convertibles are more expensive than the price range we've discussed, 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 naturally less durable than a conventional laptop.

A typical minimal configuration for memory and storage is 4GB of RAM and 64GB of flash memory. The former (memory) amount is adequate in a budget Chromebook but not for a Windows machine; 8GB is the best baseline for anything running Windows, and 16GB is better. Consider bumping up the storage capacity to at least 128GB for a Windows system, 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 on a 64GB drive. Really, 256GB should be the minimum for a Windows machine unless it's truly bare-budget cheap, and 512GB for a gaming model.

The exception is if you choose a now-rare 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 from all budget laptops, barring 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. But really, getting what you need from the start as internal storage is a much better idea.

Time for Fun: What About Graphics and Games?

Just because you're selecting from relatively slow processors and limited memory capacities doesn't mean gaming is out of the question when your kid is done with their schoolwork. Some games are, of course, even educational. For instance, Microsoft has an educational version of its immensely popular open-world construction game Minecraft. Students can use it to explore real-world history like the Oregon Trail, solve math problems as they understand how long and challenging the trail was, and research fur-trading companies to learn about the economic concepts of monopolies and supply and demand.

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 plans to do more intense gaming, you'll need to increase the power and the price to a full-fledged gaming laptop (or maybe a desktop). Gaming laptops employ a dedicated graphics chip, dubbed GeForce RTX or Radeon RX.

You won't find current-generation gaming laptops for less than $700.That's the on-ramp for machines with game-worthy GeForce RTX or (less common) Radeon RX 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.)

Ready to Buy the Right Laptop for Your Kid?

Giving your son or daughter a laptop endows them with a portal into the mighty 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 ensure that tool isn't harmful. Fortunately, all three major OS makers have parental control features, and a laptop's size relative to a smartphone makes it easier to monitor activity and set ground rules like disallowing computer use after homework is finished.

We trust our advice has armed you with the rudiments you need to buy with confidence, and we continually update this roundup with the latest models. You can also check out our roundups of our favorite tablets for kids and our top phones for kids.