The murky world of student discount laptops, and how you can find the best deals

Being a student unlocks heaps of discounts on all the kit you need to start your higher education, including laptops. 

Specialist student deal websites are available to anybody who can verify their student status, plus individual retailers and manufacturers offer discounts to those in further or higher education. The deals can be brilliant, with offers including Apple gift cards and hundreds of pounds off higher-end laptops, as well as freebies.

However, just because a deal is labelled as exclusive to students doesn't mean that it’s the best deal available. Below, we show the pitfalls we’ve found while researching student laptop deals, then reveal our top tips on saving money on the perfect computer for your needs and provide our own top laptop picks.

Need a laptop for essays, media studies or design? Whatever your course, we've got you covered – see our guide to the best laptops for students.

Unidays voucher increases the price

One of the most prolific purveyors of student deal coupons is Unidays. Sign up to the service and validate your student status by entering your personal email address at the college or university, and you unlock deals from all over the web, including Apple, Acer, HP and Samsung. 

In the case of Acer, there are several very tempting vouchers to be snapped up on Unidays if you buy direct from the Acer store.

One such deal is a 15% off coupon. The good news is that it definitely works. The bad news is that on some laptops it can actually increase the price. In our example, we found the Acer Swift 3 SF314-511 available for £699 on Acer’s website. Here, the product was shown as having an RRP of £899 but with a discount already applied bringing the price down to £699. We went through the checkout process, entered our Unidays coupon and the price went… up to £764, an increase of £65.

How is this possible? The problem is that Acer has discounts available for all customers, but they're automatically applied as voucher discounts in the checkout process. If you enter your own voucher code, and the value of that code is less than Acer’s own, the price goes up.

In this case, the 15% discount was worth £136, while Acer’s discount was £200. There was no warning that this had taken place; the total value of the order simply changed to reflect the higher price (see the image below). While most people are likely to notice the discrepancy at checkout, we think it’s always worth keeping a very close eye on any voucher code you use and check that it isn’t being superseded elsewhere, including on the website you got it from. 

Indeed, in the case of Unidays and Acer, there were better vouchers available, including one that took a total of £240 off the price of the laptop, which is a net saving of £40. 

We also found multiple voucher codes for Acer on Unidays that claimed to do different things ('Up to 50% off +5% extra', 'up to £300 off + 5% extra') but were actually identical codes – the discount varied, depending on how much you spent and how many products you bought. 

Unidays’ T&Cs under the voucher code do state that deals can't be combined with other offers But given every laptop we looked at for our snapshot investigation already had Acer vouchers of at least £100 applied, it shows that student deals like this, while obviously nice, often aren’t as good as you would expect given the headline discount figure.

We contacted Unidays. A Unidays spokesperson said to us: 'Thank you for flagging this anomaly. We are addressing the issue with our retail partner and working to resolve it.'

See our guide to the best laptop deals for everyone, not just students.

Dell deals

We found something similar at Dell (which has its own student discount system), but its discount system was much easier to understand. 

When we looked at the Dell XPS 15 laptop on Dell’s website, we were offered a generic £300 discount using the code SAVE300. We also had a 10% voucher code as we'd signed up for Dell's student deals email.

Dell’s own student deals could save us £184. But when we tried to use both, it was clear only one would work at a time so we couldn’t stack the discounts on top of each other. 

It pays to do the maths when you have multiple deals to choose from. In Dell’s case, though, only a very small set of products could be discounted using SAVE300 and it was very clear where this was the case. In contrast, our 10% off code could be used on any Dell XPS laptop.

Find out which models should be on your shortlist – see our expert pick of the best laptops.

MacBook deals: Comparing Apples with Apples

Another brand that works with Unidays is Apple. Apple has a long-standing reputation for offering decent student deals and there are certainly plenty in 2023. 

In our analysis we looked at the 13-inch 2022 MacBook Pro, which Apple sells from £1,349. This year’s student deal – verified by Unidays – nets you £100 off (down to £1,249), plus a £130 Apple gift card and 20% off a three-year AppleCare+ insurance policy (down from £229 to £179). 

All in, this seems like a good deal with some real money to be saved. However, if you aren’t interested in either the gift card or AppleCare+, the best price online when we checked was at Currys, John Lewis and other retailers, which had the same laptop for £1,225. This is £24 less than Apple's student price. 

Elsewhere, we found a Student Beans offer (like Unidays, Student Beans is a member-only student discount platform) providing a link to John Lewis where members could get up to £50 off Apple products, including MacBooks. However, upon clicking the link, the deals provided were available to all John Lewis shoppers and required no student status verification. 

See our guide to the best MacBooks, including where they're cheapest. And Is AppleCare+ worth it on your iPhone? 

Overstated discounts

The bulk of student laptop deals are genuine discounts, but they're almost never as good as the headline offer suggests. 

For most laptop brands, we found that the deal gives you access to a student-exclusive version of a brand’s online store that looks identical to the one that non-students see. The only difference is the price. We had a look at a few stores that operate in this way and found that, in some cases, the student discount was overstated when we compared it to the price that non-students could get. 

This is because all of these stores also operate regular discounts for non-students. For example, the Lenovo Store shows the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i 14 as having a 'web price' of £540, with a student-exclusive price of just under £470, saving £70. However, the actual selling price for that laptop online is just under £481 (as a discount is available to all website visitors), making the student deal just £11 cheaper than everyone else would pay. 

In another example, the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 14 is listed as having a 'web price' of £440 with a student deal price of £343.20, showing a discount of £96.80. However, the actual selling price is £352 – just £8.80 more.

It was similar at Samsung’s store. The Galaxy Book 3 is listed with a £119.90 discount at £629.10, but this is actually just a £70 discount on the price everyone can get. This was true on any product we checked that had a discounted price for all users. Samsung told us it was aware of the issue and was "investigating further".

Of course, even £8.80 is better than no discount, and £70 is positively excellent. But if you see a headline discount that convinces you that this is the right product to buy, you should double check how much you’re really saving – and continue to shop around.

Many of our laptop reviews have live price information, showing you the best deals we've found online

The best student deals and what to watch out for

The good news is, even in all of the cases above, there are deals to be had, and students do tend to get a lower price than everybody else. 

Below we’ve listed what you can expect from all the big laptop brands and retailers that offer student discounts, and what to look out for.

• Apple: Get £100 off a Mac, a £130 Apple gift card and 20% of three years of AppleCare+ with Unidays validation. WATCH FOR: If you don’t need the gift card or AppleCare+, other retailers may be cheaper. Visit the Apple Student page.
• Acer: Get up to £300 off laptops with Unidays validation or direct validation with Acer. WATCH FOR: Discounts don't stack on top of other Acer Store offers, so be sure to pick the correct voucher for your needs and don’t be afraid to try a few different vouchers to get the best price. Visit the Acer student store or the Acer Unidays page.
• Currys: 10% off all Windows laptops with Student Beans. WATCH FOR: This code doesn’t work on bundle deals, such as a Windows laptop that comes with a free monitor. We've also found in many cases buying the laptop directly from the manufacturer with its own student discount is cheaper. Visit the Student Beans/Currys page.
• Dell: Register with your institution's email address and you’ll be sent a list of voucher codes. These range from 5% off Inspiron laptops to 10% off higher-end XPS, Latitude and Optiplex laptops. WATCH FOR: The student discount code won’t always be the best choice, as other vouchers on the Dell website might be of greater value. Visit the Dell students page.
• HP: Access student-exclusive store with Unidays validation or directly on HP's student website.
• Lenovo: Access student-exclusive store with Unidays validation. WATCH FOR: Discounts appearing higher than they are in reality because they're compared to RRP, not the current selling price for the general public. Visit the Unidays Lenovo page, or go direct to the Lenovo student website.
• Samsung: Access student-exclusive store with Unidays validation, and there are also discounts for anybody aged 16-26. WATCH FOR: Discounts appearing higher than they are in reality because they're compared to RRP, not the current selling price for the general public. Visit the Samsung Student and Youth page.
• StudentBeans and Unidays: A good place to start to find out what products you can get deals on. WATCH FOR: Both of these stores may appear to have exclusive voucher codes for companies such as Asus and John Lewis, However, when we checked, the links were simply to generic deals pages that aren't exclusive to students.

Student laptop picks

Below we’ve picked three great laptops for students at three different prices.

Acer Swift 1 SF114-34, £399

Ideal for uni essentials: This 14-inch Windows laptop is thin and light and is often on offer for under £300. At this price it’s terrific value. Its Pentium processor is good enough for basic research and writing tasks, and its long battery life makes it ideal for heading out and about. 

Read our full Acer Swift 1 SF314-34 review.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 14-inch Gen 8, £449

Fast and portable: This is one of the nippiest sub-£500 Windows laptops we’ve seen, making it perfect for the student who likes to have a few things on the go at once. And if you forget to charge it, you’ll get more than six hours of use from just a 30-minute charge. It's currently available from Lenovo direct for £360, before any student discounts are applied. 

Read our full Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 14-inch Gen 8 review.

Asus Vivobook 16X, £549

A big laptop with huge performance: This chunky 16-inch Windows laptop offers super speedy performance thanks to its beefy six-core AMD processor and generous 16GB of Ram. And its large size means it has lots of ports for all your accessories. 

Read our full Asus Vivobook 16X review.

Our research into student laptop deals

What we did: We conducted a snapshot investigation of the student laptop deals landscape between 15 and 23 August 2023. We compared prices of a range of laptops before and after student discounts were applied and checked other retailers to see whether discounted laptops could be found at a better price elsewhere.

News, deals and stuff the manuals don't tell you. Sign up for our free, monthly Tech newsletter.