I am a highschool senior and looking for a laptop for college. I will be playing some non graphic intensive games such as football manager and runescape. Might dip into some overwatch/counter strike but not for sure. I will be coding in matlab as well as python. I will be working in excel using vba and sql. I am thinking i7 at least 16 gb of ram. My budget is about 1k. In order to keep price down I was thinking about getting a lower end nvidia graphics card or maybe without one at all. Any suggestion specific laptops or just specs would be very helpful thanks.
Unless you absolutely need one now, wait until the spring or summer before you start college to get one. You are on the right track with 16gb RAM. An i5 should be fine, but a lot with 16gb also require you to go up to an i7 - no big deal. Get an SDD for reliability. The HP Spectre x360 has gotten consistently good reviews for the last 3 years. The Dell XPS 13 is also one that is usually in that conversation. See how the Microsoft Surface reliability has been after it’s been out a year.
I can’t really think of a reason you’d need 16 GB of RAM. Yes, it’s nice, but why pay for it if you most likely won’t need it with the programs that you plan to run?
I second the idea of waiting until summer for back to school sales.