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It’s dif­fi­cult to answer unequiv­o­cal­ly, because stu­dents are dif­fer­ent — there are human­i­ties stu­dents and there are “techies”, there are geeks and there are e‑sportsmen, there are advanced in com­put­er sci­ence and there are those who are pas­sion­ate about visu­al arts. It is more cor­rect to talk about a com­put­er for a teenag­er, who can be a school­boy, cadet, stu­dent of a school, col­lege or junior uni­ver­si­ty course.

Now we will talk about seri­ous com­put­ers, which are not toys at all, but tools for mod­ern edu­ca­tion in mod­ern areas. These are not com­put­ers for a child who is learn­ing to press the keys, but sys­tems for a teenag­er who knows in which direc­tion he needs to acquire skills and abil­i­ties for his spe­cial­ty, for his work.

Top 5 rating according to “KP”

Recall that the com­put­ers we are inter­est­ed in are designed “for growth”, focused on solv­ing com­plex prob­lems and should, as such, remain rel­e­vant over the next few sea­sons, so they are cheap — alas! — they can’t be. For edu­ca­tion­al tasks, the opti­mal con­fig­u­ra­tion is with an Intel Core i5 proces­sor (8300 or 8400), a GeForce GTX 1660 video card and 16 GB of RAM, Iri­na Shekhovtso­va (Nvidia) believes, and we agree with her.

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System Options

It may seem that the devices we rec­om­mend are expen­sive, but we note that they are slight­ly more expen­sive than a good mod­ern smart­phone. Remem­ber that you will have to buy a mon­i­tor to go with a desk­top, but this is a long-term invest­ment — it will last much longer than a com­put­er, and it will be good for a vari­ety of uses, includ­ing fam­i­ly movie view­ing. But let’s talk about com­put­ers.

Editor’s Choice

1. DEXP Mars E235 (from 48,000 rubles)

A desk­top com­put­er with the con­fig­u­ra­tion we are inter­est­ed in, pro­duced by a Russ­ian com­pa­ny. The com­put­er is placed in a mini-tow­er case, so high-per­for­mance com­po­nents will be well cooled, which will pos­i­tive­ly affect both the sta­bil­i­ty of the work and the dura­bil­i­ty of the com­put­er. The price of the sys­tem, placed in a strict black case with chopped out­lines, is from 48 thou­sand rubles. (but in some cas­es you will have to pay extra for the instal­la­tion of the sys­tem).

2. HP Pavilion Gaming 690–0029ur (from 60,000 rubles)

A mod­ern desk­top, but, first­ly, from a glob­al man­u­fac­tur­er, sec­ond­ly, with a pre-installed and con­fig­ured oper­at­ing sys­tem, third­ly, in a more ergonom­ic case (for exam­ple, many con­nec­tors are placed on the front pan­el for con­ve­nience), third­ly, with addi­tion­al ele­ments (for exam­ple, there is already a Blue­tooth adapter “on board”). True, such a sys­tem costs a lit­tle more than a Russ­ian-assem­bled com­put­er — from 60 thou­sand rubles.

3. Dell Alienware R8 (from 65,000 rubles)

I received a very styl­ish and rec­og­niz­able case in the Mid Tow­er form fac­tor, a real work of mod­ern art that will dec­o­rate any inte­ri­or. The man­u­fac­tur­er notes that the inter­nal space of the case is avail­able with­out tools, and can also be ordered in dif­fer­ent deliv­ery options (for exam­ple, with a liq­uid cool­ing sys­tem or with a blu­ray dri­ve), but we are inter­est­ed in a sys­tem in the min­i­mum con­fig­u­ra­tion — recall, Intel Core i5 (8300 or 8400 ) + Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 + 16 GB “RAM” — which will cost from 65 thou­sand rubles.

4. HyperPC Neo (from 69,000 rubles)

It draws atten­tion with a design­er case, made in black and red col­ors and with dark red back­light­ing (which can be turned off). This is a Russ­ian com­pa­ny, on the web­site of which you can set up the con­fig­u­ra­tion of inter­est, which will be assem­bled espe­cial­ly for you. The com­put­er will be opti­mized, test­ed and guar­an­teed, which is impor­tant in this case — you want your child to under­stand the intri­ca­cies of math­e­mat­i­cal meth­ods and cre­ative pro­grams, and not repair com­put­ers, repair is also a decent job, but it requires a slight­ly dif­fer­ent qual­i­fi­ca­tion. The sys­tem in the con­fig­u­ra­tion we are inter­est­ed in costs from 69 thou­sand rubles.

5. Acer Nitro N50-600, DG.E0MER.007 (from 80,000 rubles)

Avail­able in the con­fig­u­ra­tion we need out of the box. It dif­fers from the sys­tems dis­cussed above by the pres­ence of a reg­u­lar opti­cal dri­ve and a com­plete­ly mod­ern design of the front pan­el. But this sys­tem is per­fect both for games and for the seri­ous tasks we have described for teach­ing a mod­ern stu­dent. Price — from 80 thou­sand rubles. Note that there are cheap­er offers, but Lin­ux is pre­in­stalled instead of Win­dows 10, which is not always good, so be sure to check the type of “OS” before buy­ing to avoid addi­tion­al costs.

You ask: “Why is it so expen­sive!? After all, there are inex­pen­sive sys­tems at prices many times less!” Yes, there are indeed inex­pen­sive com­put­ers on sale at more afford­able prices, they will sim­ply be “type­writ­ers” on which you can run Office, cre­ate sim­ple texts in World and pre­pare sim­ple pre­sen­ta­tions in Pow­er­Point, but noth­ing more. Even to cre­ate a mod­ern lon­gread requires some­thing much more pow­er­ful. And in order to work effec­tive­ly with tools designed to solve cre­ative prob­lems, and to teach the basics of com­put­er sci­ence (Com­put­er Sci­ence), the mod­ern teenag­er needs rad­i­cal­ly more pow­er­ful sys­tems, which we are talk­ing about now. Which pro­grams are adapt­ed to work on the “dual” sys­tems we rec­om­mend?

How to choose a computer for a student

Today, a com­put­er for a teenag­er should be “dou­ble”: the sys­tem should have a pow­er­ful cen­tral pro­cess­ing unit (CPU) and in addi­tion to it, a pow­er­ful graph­ics unit (GPU). Many peo­ple think that a graph­ics proces­sor is only need­ed for games, and a teenag­er should be pro­tect­ed from them as much as pos­si­ble so that he does not become a “gamer”. This is mis­take! A graph­ics card is bad­ly need­ed for many types of advanced tasks.

“A com­put­er for a teenag­er should be a uni­ver­sal plat­form that, in addi­tion to work­ing with doc­u­ments, will allow the stu­dent to acquire basic skills that are rel­e­vant for mod­ern pro­fes­sions: from a design­er and soft­ware devel­op­er to a spe­cial­ist in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and data analy­sis,” says Iri­na Shekhovtso­va, head of the com­mu­ni­ca­tions depart­ment of the Russ­ian rep­re­sen­ta­tive office of Nvidia.

Such “dual­i­ty” is need­ed for a vari­ety of tasks, from pho­to and video pro­cess­ing to 3D mod­el­ing and work with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.

Monitors: the choice is more difficult than a computer

The mod­ern com­put­ers we have reviewed for stu­dents are uni­ver­sal, and the choice of mon­i­tor is high­ly depen­dent on the usage pro­file that the young user will have. If the stu­dent is focus­ing on learn­ing com­put­er sci­ence, then a sim­ple office mon­i­tor will suf­fice (and save some mon­ey), visu­al arts will need a mod­el with high­er col­or accu­ra­cy (and it will cost a lit­tle more), and assum­ing that the com­put­er will used for both learn­ing tasks and games, it is still bet­ter to opt for a gam­ing mon­i­tor (with a short response time, but — alas! — with a fair­ly high price).

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We rec­om­mend choos­ing a mon­i­tor with a diag­o­nal of at least 24 inch­es — such mod­els are opti­mal for the price. An increase in the diag­o­nal entails a notice­able increase in the price.

1. Samsung C24F390FHI (8,990 rubles)

Opti­mum 24″ Full­HD mon­i­tor with 250 cd/m2 bright­ness, 3000:1 con­trast ratio, 4ms response time, 72Hz refresh rate. Of the pleas­ant fea­tures — the cur­va­ture of the dis­play, which with such a diag­o­nal is not very nec­es­sary from a prac­ti­cal point of view, but it looks styl­ish.

2. Acer K242HLDbid (8,790 rubles)

The diag­o­nal, res­o­lu­tion and bright­ness are the same, the con­trast is low­er (1000:1), the response time is bet­ter (1 ms), the refresh rate is 60 Hz. There are no fea­tures.

3. LG 27MK600M‑B (12,990 rubles)

A three-inch larg­er 27″ mon­i­tor with the same res­o­lu­tion and bright­ness, 1000:1 con­trast ratio, 5ms response time, and 72Hz refresh rate. The forms are clas­sic, straight, suit­able for work­ing with doc­u­ments, num­bers and data visu­al­iza­tion.

Gam­ing mon­i­tors have faster response times and high­er refresh rates, which are good for dis­play­ing dynam­ic scenes that are often found in mod­ern games. For research and cre­ative tasks, they are, of course, suit­able for the stu­dent, but they are notice­ably more expen­sive than usu­al ones.

4. AOC G2460PG (24,990 rubles)

With the same dimen­sions and res­o­lu­tion, it received increased bright­ness (350 cd / sq.m), a con­trast ratio of 1000: 1, a response time of 1 ms, a refresh rate of 144 Hz, and, impor­tant­ly for games, sup­port for G‑Sync tech­nol­o­gy that opti­mizes per­for­mance with Nvidia video accel­er­a­tors.

5. Asus ROG Swift PG248Q (31,999 rubles)

In terms of basic para­me­ters, it is a “twin” of the gam­ing mod­el dis­cussed above (includ­ing G‑Sync sup­port), but sev­er­al fea­tures (for exam­ple, the abil­i­ty to deploy it ver­ti­cal­ly, which is con­ve­nient for a num­ber of work appli­ca­tions) make it more expen­sive.

6. Samsung C24RG50FQI (14,990 rubles)

Its main para­me­ters are exact­ly the same as those of the mod­el of the same man­u­fac­tur­er dis­cussed above, but the refresh rate is 144 Hz. The mod­el is notice­ably more afford­able than its com­peti­tors, how­ev­er, it does not sup­port G‑Sync.

We will not con­sid­er mon­i­tors for cre­ative tasks, since their choice strong­ly depends on the type of tasks them­selves, and they can be very, very dif­fer­ent: for exam­ple, for pho­to pro­cess­ing — one, for graph­ic design — oth­ers, for video — still oth­ers.

What are the challenges facing students?

Let’s start with the well-known Pho­to­shop, as well as oth­er graph­ic edi­tors need­ed for advanced high-res­o­lu­tion pho­to pro­cess­ing. Today, such pro­grams have learned to use the resources of a graph­ics card, which has a pos­i­tive effect on the speed of work. To work with video, dis­crete graph­ics are also very nec­es­sary — Pre­mier Pro and oth­ers have also learned to use the capa­bil­i­ties of the GPU. Pop­u­lar sys­tems relat­ed to 3D mod­el­ing and 3D appli­ca­tions (eg Maya, 3dsMax, Unre­al Engine 4, etc.) as well as many ani­ma­tion pro­grams become rad­i­cal­ly faster when run on a “dual com­put­er”. Are you famil­iar with these names? Ask your child — he will explain to you!

Com­put­er Sci­ence — “com­put­er sci­ence” — a real “new lit­er­a­cy”. This is not pro­gram­ming, not the abil­i­ty to write code, but data skills. Knowl­edge of numer­i­cal meth­ods, basic sta­tis­tics, math­e­mat­i­cal analy­sis, mod­el­ing and oth­er spe­cial­ized areas is required. The mod­ern trend is neur­al net­works, which are also bet­ter to cre­ate, train and debug if there is a com­put­er with a GPU, “wired” in which math­e­mat­ics turns out to be very rel­e­vant here. If a teenag­er wants to learn the basics of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence — from com­put­er vision to robot­ics! — to expand the capa­bil­i­ties of “voice assis­tants” and “smart homes”, to learn the math­e­mat­i­cal foun­da­tions of work­ing with Big­Da­ta and oth­er mod­ern areas, then he also needs a high-pow­ered com­put­er. The sys­tems we have con­sid­ered above should be con­sid­ered inex­pen­sive in the class of mod­ern mod­els we are con­sid­er­ing.

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Do you need a computer or is a smartphone sufficient?

Look at the tasks that your child needs to solve: as part of the mod­ern edu­ca­tion­al process, pre­pare reports, abstracts, pre­sen­ta­tions, long reads and oth­er doc­u­ments in the most mod­ern for­mats. Many teenagers, we note, cope with this much bet­ter than the aver­age office work­er, so yes­ter­day’s kinder­garten­ers today need a com­put­er! And some­times even more pow­er­ful than enough for the office.

Gad­gets are a tool for enter­tain­ment, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, read­ing, Inter­net surf­ing and many oth­er tasks, while a com­put­er allows you to do all of the above, plus it is con­ve­nient for work. A com­put­er is a device with rad­i­cal­ly more com­put­ing pow­er, a larg­er screen, a key­board that is com­fort­able for typ­ing large amounts of text, and a wide range of con­nec­tiv­i­ty for var­i­ous periph­er­als — from graph­ics tablets to vir­tu­al real­i­ty hel­mets.

Mod­ern smart­phones are very pow­er­ful devices, they allow you to do a lot of inter­est­ing things, and even teenagers are famil­iar with such gad­gets, but you still need a com­put­er to study for the rea­sons described above.

Actu­al prod­uct

Monoblock — the gold­en mean between a com­put­er and a lap­top

How can you save?

The main method of sav­ing is to buy tomor­row’s device today. Why does a com­put­er need to be “for growth”? Because a teenag­er should have every­thing a lit­tle “for growth”! It is bet­ter to approach the pur­chase wise­ly now than in a year to send a thing that has become “cramped” and lim­it­ing in pos­si­bil­i­ties to the mez­za­nine and spend mon­ey again on acquir­ing a new one.

Buy­ing a com­put­er, like any oth­er expen­sive item, requires accu­ra­cy, not impul­sive­ness. After choos­ing the right option with your teenag­er, com­pare prices, which can dif­fer marked­ly for the same mod­el in dif­fer­ent stores, pay atten­tion to sales, bonus pro­grams, dis­counts and oth­er sav­ings oppor­tu­ni­ties. With some luck, you can actu­al­ly save 5–7% of the pur­chase price — or even more! — this is a seri­ous amount that can real­ly be saved for the fam­i­ly bud­get when buy­ing a mod­ern com­put­er.

Desktop or laptop?

Tech­ni­cal­ly opti­mal set — lap­top + mon­i­tor. Mod­ern teenagers are very dynam­ic, they often mix with their “lap­top” and they often have to work on the road / while wait­ing for com­rades / at breaks, etc. Even with­in the apart­ment, it is con­ve­nient for a young user to “change loca­tions”: either at the desk, or on the bal­cony, or on the sofa — they say this allows you to change your mood and look at the tasks being solved in a new way.

“Two out of three com­put­ers that our com­pa­ny sells to Rus­sians are lap­tops,” notes Sergey Melts, Game Sys­tems Devel­op­ment Man­ag­er, HP.

Rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly, pow­er­ful video cards sim­ply did not fit in a lap­top, but today the sit­u­a­tion has changed — mod­ern per­for­mance solu­tions are suc­cess­ful­ly placed in thin and light lap­tops that are per­fect for teenagers. Mak­ing mobile com­put­ers lighter and more com­pact allows both the devel­op­ment of elec­tron­ics and a num­ber of oth­er engi­neer­ing solu­tions, says Denis Minov, Dell Client Prod­ucts Man­ag­er in Rus­siasuch as the use of mag­ne­sium alloy for cas­es, thin bezel dis­plays, inno­v­a­tive cool­ing sys­tems, etc.

But it will be eco­nom­i­cal­ly opti­mal to pur­chase a desk­top. In many cas­es, a pro­duc­tive PC will cost less than a lap­top of sim­i­lar per­for­mance, Iri­na Shekhovtso­va notes. This is clear­ly seen on sys­tems of the “above aver­age” class, which are need­ed by teenagers who are mov­ing on to solv­ing more com­plex tasks on com­put­ers (and you need to buy a sys­tem a lit­tle “for growth”). Seri­ous tasks that require mod­ern “dou­ble” com­put­ers require per­se­ver­ance, you can’t do them “on the run”, so in this case, from a psy­cho­log­i­cal / ped­a­gog­i­cal point of view, a desk­top will also be opti­mal.

Home print­er

How to choose the best and not leave a for­tune in the store

Read more

Expert advice

Impor­tant! Choose a com­put­er with your teenag­er! First­ly, it is he who knows what device he needs for his dai­ly tasks, and he knows bet­ter than you, so this approach will be cor­rect. Sec­ond­ly, you will learn more about your child’s tasks, his hob­bies, his views on aes­thet­ics, plans and much more. And he learns about the price the fam­i­ly pays for his devel­op­ment and edu­ca­tion. Also very use­ful knowl­edge.

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What if you take a lap­top? Then it will turn out much more expen­sive, as we warned. We will con­sid­er mod­els with a fif­teen-inch Full­HD screen, which will be opti­mal at prices in their class — you will have to pay even more mon­ey for oth­er con­fig­u­ra­tions.

Asus TUF Gam­ing FX504GM-E4411 — a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a new series of lap­tops from a well-known Tai­wanese com­pa­ny, which is inter­est­ing in the same way as oth­er mod­els of this class — pow­er­ful “stuff­ing”, opti­mized cool­ing, advanced sur­round sound, etc. The com­put­er weighs 2.3 kg, although it also has a sys­tem of two dri­ves (SDD + HDD) “on board”. Price — from 83 thou­sand rubles.

Leno­vo Legion Y530-15ICH with sim­i­lar basic para­me­ters, but only a sol­id-state dri­ve will be installed on it (although the sys­tem is still the same 2.3 kg). This mod­el is inter­est­ing for its advanced screen (it has a high­er screen refresh rate — 144 Hz — which is nice for games). As you can see, a seri­ous pow­er­ful machine in a mobile ver­sion, today avail­able in stores at a price of 88 thou­sand rubles.

HP Pavil­ion Gam­ing 15-dp0093ur is a lap­top spe­cial­ly designed for home users with advanced tasks. It “under the hood” has a set of basic com­po­nents of inter­est to us, oth­er­wise it is sim­i­lar to its com­peti­tors, only it is the light­est of all con­sid­ered — it weighs 2.2 kg, and in the pres­ence of SSD and HDD. Price — from 83 thou­sand rubles.

You can, of course, choose a cheap­er lap­top, there are mod­els on Celeron and Pen­tium, if you search, you can find on the Core i5 of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions, which did not have time to sell even with dis­counts. But we’re talk­ing about a mod­ern learn­ing com­put­er that needs to be pow­er­ful! Oth­er­wise, you will have to buy a new com­put­er every year, which will be even more expen­sive.

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