How to Pick the Best Laptop for Your Child: A Parents’ Guide

In an ever more heavily computer reliant world, having the right device for your childs school work and personal learning has never been more important! Nearly every school is suggestions laptops for your children. Yet, because there are so many options, picking the right one can be a daunting task. Lets make this simpler. 

Choosing their first device: 

1) Price: For children of this age, having an expensive device isn't a good thing. Spillages, drops and other issues are always a concern. So for your childs first device, we'd recommend going for a lower end tablet. Something that will help them begin to understand how computers work. Just to get them used to the devices they will face in everyday life. Something from the below £150 mark will fit perfectly here. A good tablet is going to be a far better entry into computing then a laptop. 

2) Durability: Something strong. A lot of manufacturers are now making 'kids tablets' or 'kids laptops' that are designed to be more rugged and durable to withstand everyday use. You don't necessarily need one of these - as most tablets will be compatible with various cases designed to reduce the risk of those little accidents - drops and spills. Lenovo for example, offer a great range of affordable tablets that do everything they will likely need. They come with kids modes that eliminate harmful applications and internet access. A fantastic entry to tablets and computing more generally. 

Progressing to full fledged computers:

For secondary school. A full laptop becomes much more of a necessity. Teachers will set homework to be done on a computer, ICT lessons will become incredibly important and children will actually want to be interacting with technology. 

1) Price: An affordable laptop is a must here - with the risks of drops, spills and losses still ever present. Something in the £300 - £500 range will net a great value machine that will enable your child to learn and get the hang of computers. It's likely important to also consider an office subscription at this point too - the package of Word, Excel and the rest of Microsoft Office apps. This is available as either a subscription that's paid monthly, or as a one of payment for that years Office release. Before buying - check you don't have any 'guest' or child accounts available with your Office package, if you have one to save a little here. 

2) So Much Choice: For secondary school children, the options open up massively. All major laptop manufacturers offer inexpensive student focussed laptops. For the most part, you'll be able to choose based on appearance. Anything in this price range above will be roughly equivallent to other machines at the same price, so it's worth picking something you like the look of. 

3) Screen Size: As kids will be sat at a table or desk while using their laptop for the most part, a decent size screen is a good idea. The standard of 15.6" is perfect here. It offers enough screen real estate to easily see and manage multiple tabs and windows at once. Plus, if they wanted to watch a film, stream netflix, or even play a game - this screen size will work well. 

4) Weight: A light to medium weight laptop will work well. Light enough they'll be able to take the device to school if required, but not one of the untralight laptops that are more prone to damage. All the laptops we have will have their weight availale in the 'specifications' tab on the product pages. 1kg - 1.6kg should be appropriate. 

Chromebooks | Is a Chromebook Good for a Child?

Chromebooks are laptops, but not all laptops are Chromebooks. These types of laptop run a version of Chrome OS. Which is similar to Android mobile phones. It's like a cut down computer experience. Everything is expected to run in the cloud, or through apps available on the build in app store. They're a great option here too, they're inexensive. Reliable, light and easy to get to and from school. They come with Google's suite of online office apps such as Google Docs and Google Sheets that are a great alternative to Windows equivalents like Microsoft Office. A lot of schools suggest getting a Chromebook instead of a laptop - they're cheaper and offer great entry level tools to get your child started. We do agree, but feel it may be better to let your child experiment with the full Windows laptop experience they're more likely to interact with in their working life later down the line. 

This is where the studies get serious! Also where we aren't really able to call them children anymore. They will almost definitely need a laptop at this point. Something reliable to get through their online studies, essay writing and leisure time! The good news is that the £300 - £500 price range is still perfectly fine. You might consider getting something a little more expensive at this stage, as the risk of losing or dropping the devices is much diminished. Most 'children' of this age will want to help choose their own laptop, things like looks of the device will become more important as they will likely be using their laptop for a lot of different activities. 

Specialisations
If your child has chosen to do something like Graphic Design, Computer Aided Design or Photography you may need to consider a more powerful machine in order to run all the tools they'll require for these areas of study. It's not a requirement by any means, and they'll get by with most devices mentioned above. But they may benefit from a computer with a graphics card at least. Something in the £700 range should cover this in most cases, even without the graphics card, the extra power in these laptops will make the use of these tools much smoother. 

There is no set answer to this. We are seeing that schools are placing increased focus on using technology from a young age, so while it may sound crazy to get a primary school child a laptop, it will likely cement the computing skills they need later on in life in place early on. Many parents are considering from around age 10, or just before starting secondary school. With kids younger than this usually receiving tablets to play on and enjoy learning focussed games. 

It's inevitable that at some point, your child is going to want to play games on their laptop. Most laptops will run small web based games, and some full fledged lower requirement games. But if playing full, big release games is something you want to consider, a gaming laptop is a must. Between anywhere from £500 - £1000 with the weight of the choices being near the top of this range. You can see a selection of gaming laptops here. 

The specific specification requirements for kids games will be provided by the game manufacturer, you can use this to get an idea of the specifications the game will need to run. We'd recommend at least an Intel Core i5 or AMD Ryzen 5 for gaming. Along with at least 8GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD storage. For graphics, a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 or higher is recommended. 

The internet is an excellent resource. It contains the sum of all human knowledge, but it's also full of things you might not want your children to see. This is where parental controls come into play. Almost all devices include some built in way to manage this risk in the form of parental controls. Or, the ability to lock out certain functionality, certain content, or just to limit screen on time. 

Chrome OS / Chromebook
Chromebooks include a tool called Family Link, which you can use to manage your childs device. You can choose which websites they can acess, which Google services they can sign into and supervise their app usage. This support page from Google details exactly how to get everything set up.

Windows Laptops
Microsoft provides family safety tools. With much the same functionality of Google's Family link, the Microsoft Family Safety tools allow you to apply screen time limites, allow or disallow certain websites or kinds of websites or to limit access to games. More information about Microsoft Family Safety.

In most cases, you won't need anti-virus software. But, if you want to add an extra layer of protection to your childs computer or tablet - anti-virus software is available. Multiple different companies provide these solutions, Norton, Malwarebytes, Avast and AVG are just a couple of examples. Each one provides different tool sets that add an extra layer to you and your childs security. Most routinely scan the computers files to check for anything that doesn't belong. Some go a step further and also screen the sites you browse. Some even go beyond that are offer their own kinds of parental controls.

We can't make suggestions here, so you'll just need to have a read through on their web pages and see which software may suit you best. Just be aware, a lot of the anti-virus software providers are now bundling VPN software too, which can actually bypass some internet restrictions, so make sure you read how to set things up carefully.