10 best laptops for software engineers [Buying Guide 2020]

Are you searching the internet for the best laptops for software engineers? You are landed on the right spot. Here we are going to provide you with detailed reviews of top products available. Besides, we will also suggest you some essential tips to buy a perfect laptop for software engineers. The laptop that we are going to mention would not only help you go through your college degree, but you will be able to use them after college. Like, during your internship time or job.

And if you are someone who needed to buy a new laptop, because your old laptop is not working smooth, the guide will help you too.

For a software engineering student or an IT, it is imperative to know the type of laptop and minimum specification to buy.

Because their use of a laptop is different than others, for them, a laptop is much more than a device to watch movies, play games, and listen to their favorite songs. In the last decade, the laptop and computer industry has seen a complete turnaround.

People are now more into a dedicated machine for every specific task. You would see gamers opting with dedicated gaming laptops, casual users, and frequent travelers with Chromebooks, business guys with Business-oriented laptops, and of-course software engineers and IT guy for a specific laptop to go through programming jobs, graphic designing, and other engineering-related tasks.

10 best laptops for software engineers to buy:

We tested hundreds of laptops before curating this list. You can read their specs, features, and performance. Without further ado, let’s get started.

 

1) ASUS VivoBook F510UA

ASUS is one of the esteemed names in sturdy laptop manufacturing. The laptop manufactured by the brand is robust and shares a longer lifespan compared to others.

This ASUS VivoBook F510UA laptop is ideal for software engineering students, especially if you are running short of budget. The laptop shares powerful specs and allows you to install any heavy application as per your job requirement.

The affordable price does not mean the brand cut corners, it is powered with the Intel latest 8th generation Core i5-8250U quad-core processor and paired with 8GB RAM to sky-rocket multi-tasking. The laptop with its performance going to outshoot others, you would not regret having this one onboard.

The laptop shares 1TB HDD storage, enough space to help you store anything you like.

It has a 15.6-inch screen with IPS panels and Anti-glare angles onboard that bring forth crisp, clear, and bright images on the screen. Its 0.3 inches NanoEdge bezel with 80-percent screen to body ration is going to enlighten your day with its perfection.

It is a thinner and lightest item with 3.7-pounds of weight. It has an amazingly 0.8 inches thin profile, consumes less power compared to other same sized laptops.

The laptop does not come with a dedicated graphics card, rather integrated UHD 620. The graphics section is enough for a software engineering student to install desired size apps and software.

The only downside of the laptop is, it does not come with a backlit keyboard. Yes, the keyboard is comfortable to type and has a separate Numpad to boost in typing.

The battery size is good, helps you go through the long-hours project without any worry of draining power.

In a nutshell, ASUS’s production is an excellent grab for an IT professional or a Software engineer and checks all the boxes right.

 

2) MSI GV62 8RD-200

What do you need to run heavy apps and programming related needs? Good processor, ample storage space, and massive size of RAM- this laptop fits your need and falls right on your criterion.

It is one of the affordable laptops you can buy, comes in hands under $800 price range. It is a super-fast machine, paired with an ample 8GB ram to help you run more than one apps simultaneously. The RAM size can further be expanded up to 32GB, and extra slots are there,

The laptop is powered by the Intel Core i5 8300H Hexa-core processor that reaches up to 4.0 clock speed. The processor is enough to power to give a smooth run without rendering or freezing issues.

The storage is adorned with 256GB SSD storage. The SSD storage type is way better than traditional storage and helps you have got enhanced performance without lagging.

The star of the show feature is its graphics card. The laptop comes with a dedicated graphics card; with GTX 1050 Ti, you are going to have smooth visuals experience. Having a dedicated graphics card at this price is amazing; do not overlook the MSI designed product.

Other than that, this powerhouse features a cooling system to lower the overall temperature of the chassis down. Two fans and two exhausts with six copper heat pipes will offer proper air-flow, would not let the system reach throttling.

All in all, the combination of a powerful processor with a discrete graphics card can also help you play desired games. The cooling system is for gamers who love to indulge in extended gaming sessions.

This ideal laptop for IT professionals also comes with a backlit enabled keyboard. The flunky keyboard with RED lighted keys creates a different ambiance and help gamers to get in the mood of the battlefield.

 

3) Acer Aspire E 15

Whether it is a programming or gaming, Acer never fails to impress its users. The brand has many successful line-ups, including the Aspire series. This laptop series is one of the top-selling line-ups and amazes you with its superb performance, features, looks, and specs.

Acer Aspire E15 is touted as an all-rounder laptop that handles almost everything without any issue. Just throw anything, and see its performance how it goes through seamlessly.

A laptop is a hands-down option for game development, graphics design, and programming. You can have it on board for running any heavy application you wish, and you would not lag or render by the machine.

The laptop comes powered by a latest 8th generation Intel Core i5 Quad-core processor, which is paired with 8GB DDR4 RAM. The storage section features a 256GB SSD storage, enough to store files you wish.

The graphics department is taken care of with NVidia GeForce MX150 with 2GB video memory. The visual section is powerful enough to create discrete visuals on the screen without tearing images.

The laptop features a stunning keyboard with a pleasant typing experience. The backlit enabled keyboard gives tactile feedback and helps you type for hours without any serious difficulty.

Its battery is one of the biggest positive sides. It comes features with a robust battery runtime; at least 12-hours can be taken with single-charging.

If you feel the storage or ram size is not enough and feels the need to extend one or both. You can easily extend using extra slots given; get the right use of them.

So, it is a good laptop for computer engineering students, help them run any application, or go through any amount of processing without issues.

 

4) Apple MacBook Pro

If you can afford a big shot, and looking out to have the best laptop for your Software Engineering profession, check out Apple MacBook Pro.

This is a hands-down option for an IT professional and features everything perfect to suits your needs. The laptop features advanced options and helps you go through any kind of project regardless of its size.

The MacBook Pro comes with a touch bar and Touch ID. The laptop is mostly adapted to use by architects, photographers, video editors, and graphic designers due to its high processing power.

The laptop is powered with Intel 8th generation core i5 process. The processor brings a whole new class of performance in notebooks. The advanced architect processor comes with Four threads and helps in doing heavy tasks seamlessly.

It comes with an 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD storage. Though you might feel running short of storage, it can be expanded using an SD card that supports 256GB size. The ultra-fast SSD storage helps you read and write at fast speed compared to traditional storages.

The laptop features a 15.6 inches Full HD screen with a 16-inches retina display. You are going to amuse by the largest retina size by far, offered by any Mac Notebook. The display produces 500 nits of brightness, produces spectacular clear, and crispy graphics without a single color-skipping. The P3 wide color gamut brings true to life images, no matter where you are, you will witness the best possible display.

The Mac product integrates Radeon Pro Discrete GPU. The latest generation GPU provides real-time performance and renders 3D titles, high-resolution images, and videos without lagging.

This expensive laptop for software engineers come with built-in energy-saving features that save energy when you are doing relatively lighter tasks.

The MacBook Pro packs a big sized battery. The battery provides 10-hours power with single charging, take it around and use it the way you like. Bring the powerful machine at the campus, or use it at home. And it is not going to disappoint you with the seamless performance.

5) Dell XPS 15

Dell is a renowned brand in manufacturing robust laptop that shares incredible performance. This Dell XPS 15 is a good option when it comes to portability and performance. It is a smaller and lighter option, weighs around 4.4 pounds, easy to carry around. The laptop comes with advanced features that not only help you now in studying Software engineering but in your professional career. The laptop’s sturdy construction enhances its lifespan; endure rough and tough conditions without showing any wearing out. This laptop is often recommended to computer sciences and Information Technology major students, and its features make it a worth-choice.

This laptop is powered with 8th generation Intel Core i7 8750H Hexa-core processor with 9MB cache and clock speed up to 4.1 GHz. The processor makes an ideal choice for power users who indulge in heavy processing tasks such as game development, video editing, and graphics.

It comes paired with a 16GB ram that gives you a boosted multi-tasking. Get more than one apps running in the background, dozens of tabs opened, enjoying music, and still doing your job.

With 512GB SSD storage, you are going to get anything irrespective of the size stored. The Solid State Drive storage type is very popular and way better than traditional. You will have spellbound user experience with fast booting, reading/writing speed.

Its GPU lets you defy the limits and get unlimited visual performance. It comes features NVidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card, do not mix GTX 1050 with GTX 1050 Ti, the latter is an upgraded version and ways better in gaming performance.

Its keyboard is backlit enabled, with 1.5 mm travel speed and satisfying typing and coding experience. Now, the dim lights are not going to be a hindrance, get your tasks going using illuminated keys.

The laptop includes 2 USB 3.0 ports, 1 USB Type-C, Thunderbolt port, and 3.5 mm headphone jack.

The laptop comes with a variety of specifications and customized options. You choose as per your budget constraints and requirements. The model is a pretty maxed laptop that goes through anything you throw at it. So, get the laptop onboard, and reach new heights in your software engineering profession.

 

6) Lenovo Legion Y7000

If you are hunting for a relatively less-expensive laptop to continue your IT projects, we got an affordable pick for you with Lenovo Legion Y7000 laptop.

The particular laptop is not expensive, nor cheap. It is an affordable hunt for a software engineer.

The laptop is packed with many high-end features such as its RAM, FHD screen, Dolby Atmos sound, SSD storage, and many others.

Let’s explore every specification one by one and compare it with the other enlisted.

The laptop is powered with Intel 8th generation Quad-Core i5-8300H processor. The processor delivers the highest level performance and responsiveness and soars up productivity. You can have the unit onboard for editing photos, mixing videos, doing graphics related heavy tasks, and much more.

The unit pairs with 16GB DDR4 RAM and 256GB SSD Storage, to help you in doing your jobs better and efficiently. Both memory options are upgradable, can be expanded up to 1TB and 32GB.

Its visual processing handling department is on par. The laptop is adorned with NVidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card, which offers blazing visual processing. With the latest generation GPU architect, you can play any 3D title with zero renderings, freezing, and delaying. It helps you outshoot, outrun, outsmart others in the gaming zone.

The laptop comes with a full-sized keyboard with a separate Numpad. The RGB backlit enabled keyboard shares a complete gaming look.

 

7) Dell G5

Dell’s G series is one of the highest-rated, followed, and top-selling. The series helped the Dell brand to touch new heights of success. If you really want to experience a smooth computing experience, do not pass Dell’s this product.

The Dell G5 comes with advanced features, ergonomic design, backlit keyboard, and decent battery life. The laptop shares dedicated features to programmers who love to spend time coding.

This Dell G5 laptop is powered with Intel 9th generation Core i7-9750H Hexa-core processor with 12MB cache and up to 4.5 GHz clock speed. The speed of the processor is impressive, can have onboard even for running high-ended video games.

The powerhouse comes with a dual-storage option. The storage section is divided into types; HDD+ SSD. You get 256GB SSD storage for booting and 1TB HDD storage for storing your files and folders. In the budget range laptop, the type of storage is getting fame, as people get speed and storage both under the hood.

The gaming laptop shares an abundance of 16GB RAM. The size of ram is ideal for playing AAA titles, would give an extra edge in running heavy apps that a software engineer comes across daily. The size is expandable. Using the extra slots, you can get it enhanced up to 32GB.

The visual department is taken care of with NVidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card. This is an added benefit; you cannot have this range of specs in any laptop that comes under $1000.

In the end, the last but not the least specification is its display. The laptop features a 15.6 inches Full HD screen with IPS panels and LED lits and 1920 x 1080) resolution.

The battery-run time is good. You have around 6-7 hours of battery.

 

8) Samsung Notebook 9 Pro

If you are searching for a Touchscreen laptop in an affordable budget price range, go with Samsung Notebook 9 pro. This laptop comes with a 360-degree hinges and shares a 13-inches touchscreen. The laptop comes with 16GB DDR4 RAM and 256GB SSD storage. Both the memory options are great, enough for a software engineer to carry out projects.

The device looks very simple, overall silver chassis, and a Samsung logo on the lid shares a simple yet attractive look. The laptop is made of an aluminum body. The sharp corners it shares make the machine even more appealing and eye-catching. Overall, the laptop is good and bolsters powerful specifications.

The Samsung designed touchscreen laptop comes powered with an 8th generation Intel Core i7-8550U processor with up to 4.0 Turbo Boost speed. The powerful processor will give a boosted performance, put anything over here and see how the processor emerged as victorious.

The laptop also shares a 16GB DD4 RAM. The size is marvelous and helps people get enhanced multi-tasking without freezing.

This laptop for software engineers come in hands at 1000 price range and shares an AMD Radeon 540 graphics card with 2GB dedicated memory. The dedicated visual processing section ensures users get sky-rocketing visual processing, with zero renderings, and split screens.

The laptop keyboard is marvelous, on par performance with Apple MacBook Pro. It is a backlit enabled keyboard with spacious keys. A user will enjoy typing using this Samsung front-runner.

The battery runtime is impressive, with 8-9 hours of runtime on Wi-Fi. It also supports super-fast latest charging mechanism and gets around 80-percent charged in 40-minutes.

Overall, it is a good product share cool features and specs integrate worth the price. The active pen features let you design anything on the screen, a cool addition.

9) Apple MacBook Air

The latest Apple MacBook Air is a model that offers splendid performance; you might not have seen the level of performance before. The laptop integrates improved hardware for enhanced performance, a brilliant laptop for software engineers.

You might have been witnessing many software engineers using MacBook air, that’s because of the reliability of this product.

It comes with an Intel i5 processor, though the processor is quite lesser than most of the other laptop enlisted, still, if you compare its performance with other, it stands heads and shoulders above the rest.

It is a further-proof machine that is built well and runs great even on low resources. Having this laptop is like investing in the future, you do not have to buy any laptop for at least 5-6 years.

This thin beauty shares an 8GB DDR4 RAM to boost your multi-tasking. The stereo speaker it comes incorporated stands out and produces clear audio. You do not have to use external speakers; it fills a small conference room with audio quickly.

The Apple MacBook Air also shares integrated Intel UHD 617 graphics. The graphics are good to produce clear, brighter, and smoother images production on the screen.

It is difficult to single out the winning feature in this apple product, but when we carefully compare all the specs, it seems the display is the winner. This comes with a retina display, the best you would ever lay your eyes on. The retina display is famous owing to crispy, lively colors. The web pages look as though someone has printed them out and put them in front of you on a sheet of paper. The bezels of the laptop are reduced as much as 50-percent, so you focus more on display.

The latest MacBook comes with a Butterfly Mechanism in the keyboard. The keyboard is tested four times stable and smoother than traditional keyboards. That means you will have a seamless typing experience, faster, accurate with fewer mistakes. The keys are backlit, integrates ambient light sensors to help you type in low light ambiance.

10) Acer Swift 3

If you need a laptop for your casual computing as well as professional tasks doing, and running short of money, settle with Acer Swift. The laptop might not be the powerful as others enlisted, comes in hands under $500 price bracket. This is the cheapest software engineering laptop you can buy and can get your jobs done.

The laptop’s shape is eye-catching, boasts an upgraded design. It looks more professional now compare to the older version. It comes with aluminum chassis, in sparkly silver color and gives a premium feel.

The laptop is powered with an 8th generation quad-core Intel Core i7 processor that reaches up to 4.0 GHz clock speed. The processor is powerful enough to help you go through any amount of complex processing jobs. Just throw any complex task and witness its doings.

It comes with an 8GB DDR3 RAM and 256GB SSD storage. Both the memory options are remarkable if we look at the price tag.

The great thing is it comes with a dedicated graphics card of 2 GB memory. The NVidia GeForce MX 150 graphics card helps you in processing complex visual tasks and outshoots others.

The last but star of the show feature is its keyboard. The keyboard is backlit enabled and shares an ergonomic built. The keyboard keys are spacious, render a comfortable typing experience.

The laptop comes with a 15.6 inches FHD display with an anti-glare coating that reduces eye fatigue and helps you continue using it for extended hours.

With 5-6 hours of extended battery runtime, the laptop at this price falls right on our needs.

What makes a laptop stands out for software Engineers?

Buying a laptop for software engineering is a little different than a casual laptop or a gaming machine. Here criterion is different. Thus the specifications and performances must be different.

A software engineer has to do different types of jobs, for instance, running heavy software or application, graphics designing, video editing, or programming. So, the laptop should be adequately equipped to run all sorts of tasks smoothly.

Although we have listed out our tops picks, you can have one as per your budget. Still, if you do not like any of them, and sales-man is trying to push something else, you need to gauge that using this yardstick. These are some simple yet useful tips or checks; you should look at these features in a laptop for software engineers.

CPU:

Whether you buy a laptop for casual computing, gaming, or for software engineering, CPU is the most integral part and comes at play when we talk about the overall performance.

It is a brain of the computer, and if the brain works slow, the entire body function witnesses a downfall. You need a laptop with the latest generation processor integrated, powerful enough to go through your demanding applications and tasks.

For a software Engineer, in my opinion, an 8th generation processor with core i5 would be enough. The processor size would suffice for the requirement of most of the software engineers.

If you are a senior software engineer and need to go through some really heavy tasks, the intel core i7 with Hexa-core is the best grab.

 

RAM:

First, understand the task a RAM is supposed to do. The ram helps more programs run simultaneously, and switch between different apps and tasks as per the need. The more the RAM size, the higher the multitasking would be.

But having more than required RAM size also slows down your performance. In that case, the computer will go through more space in switching the programs and applications.

You should not spend all of your hard-earned money on housing a bigger sized RAM. But, it is good to have a good-sized ram, especially if you are a professional and need to run the heavy applications.

For Software Engineers, we recommend 8-16GB RAM. For a beginner, 8GB is more than enough and for a pro from 8-16.

Storage option:

Let’s face it, more than the storage capacity, storage type matters now. The traditional hard drives are going obsolete now. People prefer having SSDs rather than HDDs.

That’s because SSDs are way faster than HDDs and helps you have faster booting and read/write speed.

SSDs are imperative for software-engineers; it will save your time and quickly load everything you need.

The dual-storage option is hitting the laptop market nowadays. The dual option is great if you got less money and want to enjoy the privileges of the latest SSD type of storage.

For a dual option, having 128GB SSD and 1TB HDD is perfect. And if you got money, and afford buying a full SSD, go with at least 256GB SSD, lesser than that would be damaging.

 

Dedicated Graphics card:

I do not think for a software engineer, having a dedicated graphics card is that important. Yes, it is always good to have a dedicated GPU; it helps you in visual processing and saves lots of your precious time. If you cannot afford one, do not worry, most of the tasks would be related to other specs rather GPU.

For recommendation, get a 2GB graphics card if you can. This will help you do graphics designing, video editing, and other graphics-related tasks.

Operating System:

When it comes to a laptop for software engineering, the biggest issue is to decide which operating system is the best.

In today’s laptop world, Windows and macOS are leading. Both are good and help their users to have boosted performance. But, most of the programmers and coders prefer opting with Microsoft windows due to obvious reasons. The Windows support various programming languages compare to the MacOS, and it also comes in hands at a cheaper price range.

But, if you are an iOS developer or you are planning to become one, and wanted something to help you in the future, opt with MacOS. Because to become an iOS coder, you need to learn Objective C and Swift that requires Xcode, which is only available on Mac right now.

 

Wrap Up:

We have reviewed the top 10 best laptops for software Engineers. These are top-rated and best-selling products in their related price-tag. We tried to put every price laptop so that everyone could get benefits from this detailed guide. You can read reviews of this machine, check their specifications, behold their rating and if you are fully satisfied with all these details, give a final shot.

As mentioned before, we just did not add these products without any research. Our team chose these laptops after hours of research and checking their pros & cons.

We hope you like this guide, and it will make you choose the best laptop as per your needs, requirements, and budget.