Thanks for the clarification. One aspect of Choice testing is that it does not always reflect what we want to buy, it reflects what we are buying; that data is used to make the cut of what is in or out in any given test. It would seem Windows products generally being less expensive and with a wider selection of price points would be more prominent, but.
Further, some Choice premises in the ‘how to’ summaries, such as smaller is less expensive is variable and should not be taken in an absolute sense. It can go either way depending on who a model is targetted at - a student? a casual home user? a professional? a road warrior? My point is look for features and then a price rather than start by filtering to a price. I (my opinion) would go for at least an intel I5 or AMD Ryzen 5 class processor, 16 GB memory and 512 GB SSD storage. Separate graphics are expensive inclusions and mostly unnecessary except for gaming or video creation (not just watching vids). I7’s and Ryzen 7s have their place but generally not needed for office, web browsing, and so on. If I had to give up anything for budget it would be a less powerful processor, not memory or storage. ‘AI enabled’ is meaningless and the advertising flavour of the day.
This Choice page has a selective table (easy to overlook) that might be helpful. It is well down the article but clicking on it opens a drop down of broad categories and ranks major manufacturers.
Apple usually rates highly for all their products because they enforce tightly controlled hardware and software, and traditionally have successfully marketed as much as jewellery as technology. Their history is self-evident.
OTOH Windows products are open and thus most everything costs less, but as with ‘anything computer’ can thus be prone to variable experiences.
Many schools have recommended products that are locally supported or have local track records. Some may have discount arrangements. Ask your school. Local support is less important for the more tech savvy student.
As for reliability things happen even to the best products. Depending on location there could be a warranty facility near you or a continent away. If something happens consider the possible down time and how it might affect studies; reliability should be a major concern. Many web articles extol reliability from all the major brands but a few years back (it might have changed so I will not mention the company) one could have a failed storage device, easy and quick to replace, but if it was not in tock at the warranty facility and even though the part could be locally purchased for much less than $100 at RRP and easily swapped out, customers sometimes had to wait weeks and months for ‘the official supply chain’ to bring one in from Singapore or Taiwan. How to discover this? Only reviews, anecdotal or otherwise, or personal experiences.
Whether this site’s opinions are useful in compared to Choice is for a reader to judge, but it might be helpful to taken as opinion not a test. Further a search of ‘best student notebook computer australia’ will return many hits, many sales oriented but with a few useful sites all offering their own opinions. FWIW Apple always comes out well with the caveat the high price is good value all things considered.
A final - look at Venom, a lesser known company. Check their entry level product. It is a bit over $1,500. but worth looking at if you can. They seem almost uniquely built to a standard not just a price point in my experience.
