Between classes, home assignments, study sessions with classmates, and, for some, work, students have a lot going on. Being able to work on essays on the go without major inconveniences is important. With that in mind, what device is the right choice?
Let’s compare affordable laptops for college students to tablets to see which option essay writers will find more practical.
Note-Taking and Annotations
Writing an essay doesn’t start with actually sitting down to write the text of your assignment. If you approach the task diligently, you’ll first need to spend quite a while researching, taking notes, and making annotations in the assigned readings. All of these can be done on both tablets and laptops, but tablets for students might be the more convenient option.
Tablets
Thanks to a touchscreen and a stylus (if you have one), tablets are great for note-taking and annotating. What’s more, there are tons of helpful writing apps for Android , some of which you can’t use on your laptop. That’s a big reason to consider using a tablet over a laptop, at least for research and prewriting.
Laptops
Note-taking and especially annotating on a tablet are often more seamless, but it doesn’t mean you can’t do that on a laptop. Basic apps for laptops for students – like Microsoft OneNote and Apple Notes – get the job done well enough. So, while prewriting can be easier on a tablet, it’s fine on a laptop, too, and depends largely on what you’re used to.
Typing Speed and Convenience
Once the research and outlining stage of writing is done, how quickly you’ll finish an essay boils down to your typing speed. Sure, skills and experience are the most important part of it, but how convenient the keyboard is matters, too. Laptops definitely win in this category – even if you’re using an external keyboard with your tablet.
Tablets
Using a touchscreen for typing is manageable, and you can get used to it, yet you’ll likely never achieve the typing speed you have when using a regular keyboard, no matter how much you practice.
So, believe Michael Perkins, who heads the team of expert essay writers at essaywriters.com: when you have a 3,000-word essay due in a few hours – which is all too common for students – a tablet will slow you down. Tablets for writing aren’t really a thing.
Tablet users can find a way around the typing speed issue by using an external keyboard. Your typing will still be slower than it is on a laptop, but it’s a decent solution.
However, with how thin and light some laptops are these days, it might not make sense to switch to a tablet for the sake of portability if you have to carry both a tablet and a keyboard around.
Laptops
Typing on a laptop is faster and more convenient because its keyboard is ergonomically designed for fast and accurate typing. To achieve the same, or at least a comparable, typing speed with a tablet, you will need a full-sized external keyboard.
But the thing is, such a keyboard will double the weight of your tablet and the amount of space it takes up in your bag, making it nearly as heavy and bulky as a laptop. So, is there even a point? Cheap laptops for students are designed to be carried around anyway.
Software Options and Multitasking
Everyone who writes academic assignments often enough knows that it comes with dozens of tabs open simultaneously. You’re copying a quote from somewhere, then formatting a proper reference in a citation generator somewhere else, then fact-checking a statement in a third place, etc.
Having access to everything at once is essential – otherwise, the writing process gets considerably harder.
Tablets
As convenient as tablets are for prewriting, they aren’t designed for multitasking. Navigating countless tabs open at once is way trickier on a tablet than on a laptop.
Also, as good laptops for college students are generally more powerful, all the open tabs and several apps running simultaneously won’t slow down a laptop as much as they will a tablet. That’s another major point for laptops.
Laptops
When writing on a laptop, you can have a textbook opened in a reader, tons of tabs across a couple of browser windows, a separate app with all your prewriting notes, and maybe even your favorite show in the background – and your laptop will probably still perform fairly well. This is the case even for budget laptops for students.
That’s not achievable with tablets, which are designed for simpler tasks. You can use ChatGPT for research on your tablet with zero issues, but doing research while writing and fact-checking all at once will slow your device (and your writing) down.
Battery Life and Portability
Arguably, portability is the most important reason why some people consider using a tablet as an alternative to low cost laptops for students.
Unless you’re studying remotely, you have to carry your device around a lot – to classes, to the library, to a study session with a classmate at a coffee shop, and more. Choosing the option that weighs less and has a longer battery life is tempting.
Tablets
On average, you can use a tablet with a decent battery for up to 12 hours (or even more) without having to recharge it. That’s almost twice the time you get with a laptop, even if you go with one of the tablets for college students that aren’t considered “high-end.”
However, keep in mind that the more tabs you have open and the more apps you’re using simultaneously, the shorter the battery life. So, while tablets do last longer than laptops, the difference might not be that big when you’re using your device for essay writing.
Laptops
Most laptops for college students can’t last as long as a tablet can. You’ll probably need to carry around a charger or risk having your essay-writing session cut short. But considering that a laptop is significantly more convenient for writing than a tablet, it might make sense to compromise.
There are great options these days: for example, the MacBook Pro 14 is both light and has an impressive battery life (about 10 hours on average).
Laptops vs Tablets Pros and Cons: Final Verdict
Overall, whether you should choose a tablet or a laptop as your go-to essay-writing device depends on your priorities. If it’s portability and battery life, you can go with a tablet.
We wouldn’t recommend that, though. Writing an essay involves a lot of multitasking and having to switch between tabs and apps, which is easier to do with a laptop. With so many light, power-efficient, and affordable laptops for students available, you can definitely find a model that’s lightweight enough for daily use.
Alternatively, 2-in-1 laptops are an option. Use the tablet mode for research and note-taking and the laptop mode for writing – and you’ll get the best of both worlds.
