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The best desktops for students
We'll be honest, we realize most students will buy a laptop to use at school and call it a day. But opting for a desktop instead isn't the craziest idea, especially if your needs extend beyond standard email-and-Netflixing. Having a more robust machine with a desktop-class processor and possibly more RAM and storage could make sense for both serious gamers as well students with creative hobbies, like photography, filmmaking or audio production. Depending on your budget, of course, you could still buy a laptop for taking notes in class, but you might even be able to get away with a cheaper device like a tablet and keyboard folio. For the purposes of this back-to-school guide, we selected five machines -- two Macs and three PCs -- including two systems built for gaming. Here's what we recommend.
Is the latest Mac Mini a worthy challenger?
When Engadget video producer Chris Schodt reviewed the new Mac Mini back in November, it had been four years since the previous model was released. The 2018 upgrade includes an eighth-generation Intel processor and a plethora of ports in a space gray recycled aluminum body, all of which make for a polished and flexible machine. However, Chris thought the lack of a dedicated GPU was a big miss here, particularly for the sort of pro users Apple was trying to court.
The best mini desktop PCs
By Thorin Klosowski This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commission. Read the full mini desktop PCs guide here. If you're shopping for a desktop computer rather than a laptop because you prefer to work at a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, consider a mini PC. They're powerful enough for most people and take up much less space than a full-sized desktop computer. The Intel NUC8i5BEKPA1 is the best because it strikes a balance of cost, processing power, and compact design. Intel offers a few different NUC configurations, many of which don't come with memory, storage, or an OS. But for people who want a prebuilt PC with Windows 10 already installed, we recommend the model with a quad-core Intel Core i5-8259U processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB solid-state drive. Every NUC has four USB ports, a Thunderbolt 3 port, a microSD port, and an HDMI port. That amounts to the same power you'd get from something like an ultrabook or a comparable business laptop for about half the price (though you do need to provide a monitor, keyboard, and mouse). A NUC is less powerful and upgradable than a full-sized desktop PC, but it takes up a tiny fraction of the space; that size is why you buy a NUC. You can easily upgrade the storage and memory through a removable panel, and while the NUC's fans are loud, we never found them distracting. If you're comfortable installing your own memory, storage, and OS, you can save a decent chunk of money with the barebones version of this NUC, which we talk about below. If you only need a computer for browsing the web and basic productivity work, the Asus Chromebox 3 is a good value. Thanks to Google's Chrome OS, the Asus Chromebox 3-N017U is faster than a $250 Windows PC at browsing the web, basic word processing, and watching movies. Unlike a Windows or Mac computer, a Chrome OS device can't use desktop apps. In fact, the app you'll use for almost everything is the Chrome web browser, and you'll have to be connected to the internet for most tasks. Though the Chromebox does support Android apps, we found those clunky and unpleasant to use with a mouse. If you prefer using macOS, get the Apple Mac mini (2018). The base model, which we recommend for most people, has a quad-core Intel Core i3-8100 processor, 8 GB of memory, and a 128 GB SSD. The Mac mini is larger and more expensive than the NUC and has less storage for the money. But it runs silently, and the desktop-class i3 processor is about as fast as the NUC's mobile i5 CPU. (You can customize the Mac mini with faster six-core processors and more memory and storage, but it's expensive.) The Mac mini has four Thunderbolt 3 ports, more than any mini PC we tested, as well as HDMI, two USB 3.0 ports, Ethernet, and a headphone jack. Unlike many of its Windows counterparts, the Mac Mini doesn't have any unnecessary preinstalled software, and macOS comes with useful software for editing documents, spreadsheets, video, photos, and audio, making it easier than Windows to set up and start using immediately. If you prefer to have more control over the parts in a PC, or if you don't need a Windows license, you can save money buying a barebones mini PC and providing your own storage, memory, and operating system. The Intel NUC8i5BEK is identical to the NUC8i5BEKPA, but since it doesn't have storage, memory, or Windows installed, it costs about half the price. Even after buying memory, twice the amount of storage, and Windows 10, the barebones NUC is cheaper than the prebuilt option.
Apple's iPad and Mac event: By the numbers
For the second time in as many months, Apple's executive leadership took to the stage to reveal the company's latest luxury computing products. This time around we saw a new iPad Pro with a fancy magnetic stylus, a Retina-enabled MacBook Air (made entirely of recycled aluminum), a new Mac Mini, and $9 headphone dongles to make the tablet you just dropped a grand on minimally functional in polite society.
