Do you know someone headed off to college soon? It’s a cherished rite of passage that many look forward to, but it inevitably brings with it a very important purchase decision that some may be dreading: What laptop to buy for school.

After all, while a college-bound computer notebook’s primary intention is, of course, to help with schoolwork, realistically it’s also going to be used to do just about everything else. A new student will need something for communicating with friends and family, watching favorite programs and movies, gaming, and much more.

Thankfully, the PC industry offers an impressive range of choices, many of which are particularly well-suited to new (and returning) students.

While most of the latest PCs can cover the basics, it is important to remember that different fields of study are going to place different demands on the type of computer that’s best suited for a given student.

What are your college laptop options?

For people studying topics in the liberal arts or business, a good option to consider is a range of high-performance general purpose computers powered by giant chipmaker Intel’s Evo platform.

Evo, which is now in its third iteration, is a set of various standards and recommendations designed to make the experience of using PCs as positive as possible.

It does so via requirements for things like longer battery life (a minimum of nine “real-world” hours), wake times of less than a second, latest generation WiFi 6E support for faster wireless connections, a full HD or 1080P resolution webcam and the latest Intel 12th generation processors, or CPUs.

Big PC vendors Dell, HP, Lenov, and Microsoft (via their Surface line) along with some lesser-known names like Asus and MSI, all make numerous laptops that match the core Evo standard (you can simply look for the Evo badge on the box).

Note, however, that not all Evo systems are the same – parts of the standard only include recommendations instead of requirements – and there are inevitably differences in things like screen size and type, amount of memory and storage, all of which translate into different price points.