The Criteria We Used For The Best Laptop For Software Development plus best laptop for computer science students
Are you looking for the best laptop for software development? If so you found the right page. I recently had to do this search for myself. I wanted a competent laptop that performed well, wasn’t too small, wasn’t too big, with a good screen, keyboard, trackpad and of course great battery life. Plus I didn’t want something that was going to be too expensive. Sure there are lots of great laptops but overall this has a great mix of those requirements all together with good support. This also means it’s a great laptop for computer science students.
The winner is the Dell Inspiron 7000 (7440) with an i7-13 gen, 1TB SSD, 32GB Memory.
Link to the 1TB 16GB model here since Dell didn’t have the specific model available on Amazon at the time of this writing.
Amazon does have on it refurb models for the Dell Inspiron 7440 i7 1TB 32GB (click here).
The Case
It comes in an ice blue color. The color is a bit more silver than blue. It’s actually not that blue, it’s just a slight tinge. Which is good since I didn’t really want a blue laptop, it looks mostly silver. The overall weight while not as light as the lightest laptops is only about 1 pound more. This seemed like a reasonable compromise for good battery. The metal casing around the laptop has more flex then a Dell XPS laptop. It still feels like a solidly built device. Opening the cover reveals the 14″ screen with a small bevel on the left and right sides, and larger bevel on the top and bottom of the screen. The camera is at the the top of the device. The camera has a mechanical privacy shutter you can slide open or close. The cool metal case feel on your hands resting on it feels nice.
The screen hinge is big making it look like it should be a 2 in 1 device but it does not bend that far back It’s not a touch screen either.
The Keyboard
The keyboard has raised chicklet keys on almost a full size laptop keyboard. The function key row is slightly smaller with the usual dual function keys there. The keys feel good to type on. The keyboard has a very small flex to it as you press on it, but feels solid. The power button is a button in the top right position with no writing on it at all (why not the power symbol on it?). Just above the power button is a fingerprint reader that can be used to login to the laptop once configured.
The Touchpad
The touchpad is generously sized. The use of the touchpad itself is smooth and responsive. The button presses feel like they are a bit deeper and more springy than on the Dell XPS.
The Ports
The ports on the left side: A DC power port, HDMI (1.4), USB-A (3.2) , USB-c (thunderbolt – that can also be used to power it). On the right hand side: headphone jack, micro SD slot, USB-A (3.2)port
The Screen
The screen is plenty bright for normal use in your home under usual lighting or bright lighting. It’s probably too bright and full brightness in a slightly darkened room.
The performance
The performance of the laptop is good. Its snappy to launch apps, browse, the web and check email.
The Heat
When running full out on power the top edge of the laptop got really hot. Not so much that it would burn you immediately but enough that it was uncomfortable to touch. Luckily since it’s above the function keys you probably wouldn’t have to feel it very often. It doesn’t seem to get that way under normal use on battery. So doesn’t seem like it’s problematic.
The right edge of the laptop has large openings for cooling. The bottom of the laptop also has slits in it for airflow.
The battery life
Running a streaming youtube video the battery estimate is around 4 hours (full screen 720p) with about half screen brightness. Running the netflix app estimate about 3 hours, 30 minutes use. Running just the video in the usual youtube window not full screen it estimated about 6 hours. Surfing the web at half screen brightness the battery estimate is around 10-11 hours (I used it for about 3 hours and it was estimating over 8 hours use still.)
The Graphics
To be clear gaming graphics were not a criteria I used for deciding on this laptop. So don’t expect too much from this. If you want to play top of the line games recent games at high frame rates this probably isn’t the laptop you would want to pick. This laptop uses the Intel Arch 8 Graphics iGPU which likely won’t play top of the line triple A rated games that need the newest GPU’s to run with a good frame rate. Some articles suggest if you lower the graphics settings you might be able to run games like Cyberpunk 2077 at 30fps. It sounds like you could probably get similar frame rates for other games, maybe better for older games or with lower graphics settings. So you can run some games if you like.
Conclusion : What Makes This The Best Laptop For Software Development
I mentioned the criteria and it fit all of those. Though I didn’t mention it also has great value for the money. It comes in a 32GB Memory and 1TB SSD, i7 13th gen configuration at reasonable pricing. You can get enough memory, hard disk space and power at a good price to do reasonably demanding development work. I hope you enjoyed this article about the best laptop for software development and programming based on our criteria. As we mentioned this is also a great laptop for computer science students (at least ones not doing much gaming).
If you would like to learn more about software development read our book here.