As children get older, their Back to School needs change, and in the lead up to their exams at age 14, and at 16, the emphasis of the PC changes from a learning aid to an essential part of their education.
As the type of work children need to do changes, so do the decisions that parents need to make about the PC they require. While younger children can make do with a small Chromebook, this becomes unsuitable for young adults with more demanding needs.
A Chromebook is uncomfortable for exam study, and often complex and demanding programs are needed to do coursework effectively. The curriculum for many exams puts much more focus on IT, even if they're not specifically studying the subject.
Coursework is expected to be completed on a computer, be it English essays, French writing pieces, or history assignments. Research for coursework isn't done in the library, but on the internet, and often this can be enormous in volume. All of this means that using a computer is essential.
Back to school: three great laptops for 14-18-year-olds
Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
Just because you're bringing a cheap laptop into school doesn't mean it has to look cheap, as the excellent Asus Zenbook UX305 demonstrates.
It has the looks to rival Apple's finest, with an impressively low price tag. It also offers up impressive performance, a lovely looking screen and a speedy 256GB SSD to keep Windows 10 running smoothly.
Read the full review: Zenbook UX305
Thanks to the super-slim bezels around the Dell XPS 13, you get a lovely 13.3-inch screen in a laptop that remains slim, light and easy to carry between classrooms.
It's got some pretty great components as well, making this a powerful performer that will handle almost any coursework with ease.
Read the full review: Dell XPS 13
A higher resolution screen, a thinner design and a move to Intel's more powerful Skylake processors all help to make this portable tablet a capable replacement for your laptop.
You'll need to buy the Type Cover keyboard separately to turn it into a full laptop replacement, but the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 combines power with convenience in this excellent all-round package for students heading back to school.
Read the full review: Microsoft Surface Pro 4
For more laptop suggestions, visit our list of the 10 best laptops for students.
Choosing a back to school PC for teenagers
Any child who is starting to study seriously needs a full form computer, which can be a laptop or a desktop PC. If you're looking for a laptop, this means looking for machines that are 15-inch or above, with a full size keyboard that is comfortable to type at.
It's very rare that pupils of this age need to carry their laptop to school, so you can comfortably dispense with machines that are lightweight, because this often negatively impacts performance, and can exponentially increase the price.
In terms of performance, school age children don't require much in the way of speed, which is determined by the processor and RAM. The latest generation of Core i3, i5 or i7 machines are vastly overpowered for basic needs, and if cost is an issue, you can easily make do with lesser processors.
Common models you may find in the lower end of the market are Intel Celeron, Intel Atom or AMD Athlon, which still offer decent performance for basic tasks such as running Microsoft Office 365, using demanding internet applications and, most importantly, doing both these things at the same time.
The upshot of all this technical talk is price, and if you're worried about the cost of arming your teenager with a laptop for school, you'l be pleased to know this type of laptop falls into the bottom category.
A Celeron or Athlon dual-core processor will set you back between US$450 (around £350, AU$600) and $520 (around £400, AU$700), and this will be perfectly adequate for the needs of most secondary/high school students.
