(Pocket-lint) – Now more than ever, if your child needs to do school work at home, or watch TV on a screen that doesn’t take up the main family TV, you might be considering whether to buy them a laptop pretty soon. 

• Best tablet for kids: Hardy devices for young people to enjoy

For most kids (and parents) a laptop makes a lot of sense in this context. Letting them work or play whether they’re at the kitchen table or at school means that they’re able to use their computer to the full. So, we’ve taken a look at the laptops currently on the market to whittle them down to a list of the best ones for you to consider for your child. 

Our priorities for this list are durability, affordability and performance — so you won’t find any high-end Macbooks or ultrabooks here. These aren’t intended as powerhouses, but rather as useful machines for their young users. 

Our guide to the best kids’ laptops to buy today

HP

HP Stream 11

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Our top Windows 10 laptop for kids and also one of the best cheap laptops full stop. What would be a little slow for an adult using a laptop all day could be just about perfect for a kid learning the ropes. A

child is unlikely to be using their laptop for more than a couple of hours at a time (unless you’re letting them!). HP’s Stream 11 is, therefore, a great bet for a kid that needs a small laptop to get started with. You don’t get much storage or much power, but it’s extremely affordable. 

Lenovo

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3

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This convertible Chromebook is one of the best laptops in its class and the device will adapt to pretty much every scenario. 

It’s not a powerhouse of course, with Intel Celeron, 64GB of storage and 4GB of memory but it really does offer a lot for the price point. 

Pocket-lint

Acer Chromebook 314

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Acer’s 14-inch Chromebook has a solid list of specs for the outlay, including the Intel Celeron N4000, 4GB RAM, 32GB of storage (like other Chromebooks you’ll need to take advantage of cloud storage). There are also two USB-C ports.

You should be able to get a full day of battery life from it, while the HD display works well in all lighting conditions. 

Asus

Asus Chromebook C223

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Completing a hat-trick for Asus, it’s another Chromebook, but this time an extremely dinky one. If your kid wants a bit of a smaller machine, this could be the answer. Despite its 11.6-inch size, it’s still got a decent keyboard squeezed in, and being small makes it super portable. 

It’s not got much power under the hood, but it’s also almost jaw-droppingly inexpensive, and in the computing world you do generally have to pay for performance.

With Chrome’s system prioritising cloud storage, if you’ve got a decent internet connection to work with, your kid should be able to do most things they’ll need to on this tiny little number. 

Pocket-lint

Surface Go 2

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The 10.5-inch Surface Go 2 is a super-portable machine designed for gettings bits and pieces done when on the go – emailing, taking notes in a class, watching a bit of Netflix on the way home – rather than trying to be an all-powerful Surface product. 

While the basic cost matches the 2-in-1’s small-scale you need to add a Type Cover and Surface Pen that cost extra. 

• Microsoft Surface Go 2 review: A portable little Windows package

Writing by Max Freeman-Mills. Editing by Dan Grabham.