Ultimate Laptop Buyer’s Guide For Students Majoring In STEM/Art/Design

If you’re a STEM/Art/Design student, "Which laptop should I choose for my study?" is probably the question that you and your classmates will always ask. Yes, besides listening to music, watching streaming shows or browsing the web, STEM/Art/Design-majored students will always need to run a series of professional software like Adobe suites, VSC, MATLAB, or even install the VMware for further Linux environment build-up. With a suitable laptop can you finish all those homework or projects rapidly & smoothly, leaving you more time for playing their favorite game titles or watching the most popular streaming shows. So in this article, we will provide you the ultimate laptop buyer’s guide, to help you find a suitable laptop for both courses and entertainment.

Performance is & will always be the most important thing of a laptop for STEM/Art/Design students. Only with great performance can you finish your homework or projects smoothly so we will always recommend you go for a higher-performance model. CPU & GPU are two critical components primarily determining the laptop's performance. For CPU, it’s better to choose a laptop featuring Intel H/HX or AMD HS series processor. Compared with U or P series processors, the H/HS/HX series processors sport more cores and higher clock speed, promising smoother execution of those professional apps.

The importance of GPU also gets higher because NVIDIA continuously widens the support of graphics to a series of professional software that STEM students will use such as Adobe, MATLAB or AutoCAD. The exclusive CUDA cores also become more critical to AI-related workloads. So it’s always better to go for laptops with discrete graphics from NVIDIA like GTX or RTX series. Something nicer is that you can also count on it for PC gameplay, which makes the GPU even more important.

If you want your laptops to last longer, the memory & SSD must be upgradable. So it’s always better to go for those models with at least one memory slot & SSD slot. Dual memory slots are even more preferred because you can upgrade your laptop with two identical memory sticks, promising even better compatibility & performance.

As for the total size, it’s always safer to choose the models with at least 16G RAM and 512G SSD. We will even recommend going for 32G memory for virtualization applications like VMware, or editing software like Photoshop for serious design/editing of pictures with tons of layers. As for storage, if you will also take your laptop for serious gaming, going up to 1TB will be an even safer bet.

Programming is probably the thing that the majority of the STEM students will do and with a great keyboard, you might love it more (or hate it less) so we will recommend going for a laptop with at least 1.5mm of key travel distance, which can provide acceptable keypress feel; Backlight also matters if you’re more used to using your laptop in dark place. Some of the gaming laptops even feature per-key RGB backlit keyboards, which allows you to highlight those most-frequently-used keys with different backlight colors.

Numpad is also critical for STEM students, especially for those who will use MATLAB or Excel often. However, there’re more & more laptops coming with no numpad so you really need to check it before getting one for yourself.

Even though there’re plenty of adapters or dongles in the market, it’s still annoying & inconvenient to use with laptops so it’s always better to go for laptops with versatile connectivity. Besides the most-common-used USB-A and USB-C, HDMI is probably the most important port that you can count on for attaching a projector or monitor. If your laptop got one or two more video output ports like DisplayPort(via USB-C) or MiniDP, you will be amazed by the superior productivity from multiple screens. Last but not least, even with greater popularity of wireless headphones (or earbuds), it’s still recommended to choose the laptop with headphone jack, promising wider & more flexible headphone compatibility.

Guess you have some ideas about how to choose a laptop for your study now. As a leading performance laptop brand, MSI recently unveiled a series of new models featuring the latest Intel 13th gen H/HX series processor and RTX 40 series graphics, and all other features mentioned above. Something greater is that all of these new models are ranged with different prices that you can more flexibly choose your own:

If you got $1000 around budget and is looking for a solid option with great performance & versatility, the brand new Cyborg 15 is definitely on top of your watchlist. With the latest Intel 13th gen processor and NVIDIA RTX 40 series graphics, it can provide satisfying performance, promising fast & smooth execution of a series of professional software like Adobe series or Solidworks; The blue-backlit keyboard with numpad allows even more convenience while using professional software like MATLAB. And its dual memory slots and single SSD slot can make it future-proofing, which means you can count on it longer.

If you’re looking for a laptop with greater performance and even better upgradability with the price tag around $1500, Katana 15 is a true solid option. The built-in Cooler Boost 5 cooling can push both CPU & GPU further, delivering more performance for all kinds of workloads; Its dual memory & SSD slots provides even higher upgradability, making it lasts even longer. Greater productivity can also be found with its HDMI and USB-C with DisplayPort output support. You can even attach 6K or even 8K display to it thanks to 2.1 version of HDMI.

In conclusion, with this ultimate buyers’ guide, you can now more wisely choose the laptop for your study and don’t forget to check the new product lineup from MSI, which sports plenty of features that will play the perfect role as the best helper of your study.