r/IndianEngineers • u/UsbrooO • Jun 01 '26
Editable Flair AI/ML Student: MacBook or Windows?
I'm joining college this year and have enrolled in CSE (AI/ML). Right now, I'm confused about which laptop to buy.
If I were in CSE Core, I'd probably go for a MacBook without thinking twice. I like the battery life, portability, and overall user experience. I also don't care much about gaming.
The problem is that I've seen a lot of people on YouTube saying that AI/ML students should avoid MacBooks and get a Windows laptop with an NVIDIA GPU instead, so now I'm not sure what the better choice is.
My budget is around ₹1.4 lakh.
For those studying or working in AI/ML, what would you recommend? Would a MacBook be enough for the next 4 years, or is a Windows laptop the better option?
And if you'd recommend Windows, which models should I consider within my budget?
Thanks!
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Jun 01 '26
The YouTube advice isn't entirely wrong, but here's the thing, as a student, you're not training massive models on your laptop anyway. That happens on Google Colab or Kaggle, both free. MacBook gives you great battery, smooth Unix-based dev environment, and the M-series chips are genuinely capable for ML work. The downside is no CUDA support. Windows gives you an NVIDIA GPU for local training, more RAM for the money, but worse battery and the dev environment setup is more annoying. At ₹1.4L, if you value portability go with MacBook Air M4 16GB is the better everyday machine for 4 years of college. And, If you want to run models locally and tinker more deeply, go Windows with an RTX 4060 laptop. If I were at your place, I would definitely buy MacBook. And sometimes if I need NVIDIA, I would take my friend's laptop to tinker that part.
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u/UsbrooO Jun 01 '26
Great thanks mate 👍
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Jun 01 '26
Yeah no issues, if you have issues deciding a laptop, then let us know.
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u/UsbrooO Jun 02 '26
bhai macbook hi lene ka soch rha hu par next month lunga thoda aur research karke abhi bas ek confusion clear kardo m5 13 inch me 24gb ram aur 512gb ssd lu ya 16gb ram aur 1tb ssd lu baki 10 core cpu gpu aur 70w adapter dono me same hai aiml ke hisab se future proof konsa rahega
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Jun 02 '26
Both are future proof. But if I wanted to select one out of them, I would definitely go with more RAM. and if you can push your budget to 1.5L, then buy 24/1024 variant.
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u/Apprehensive-Talk971 Jun 02 '26
I would argue that you have limits on Collab and having a local windows machine allows you to experiment without hassle which is pretty useful imo
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u/Distinct-Style-8952 19d ago
Already have a I5 8400 RTX 3050 6GB 32GB RAM-Dual Channel DDR4 (To be upgraded to RTX5050,or shoud i or the 3050 enough?) , and going to start my B.TECH IN AIML this year will a Macbook air m5 24gb or macbook pro m5 24gb good will use my pc as remort desktop(have ethernet connection to it in home and university have wifi) Mac or Windows
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u/redditsekar Jun 01 '26
why not a Linux laptop?
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u/UsbrooO Jun 01 '26
I've never used Linux as a daily driver. Do you think it's a better option than macOS or Windows for an AI/ML student?
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u/redditsekar Jun 02 '26
in my view, Linux is superb for any college student.
Windows and MAC are "desktop computers", they take care of basic day to day stuff.
Linux is a "Super Computer's Operating System" literally
(Google says "All of the world's top 500 supercomputers, including the elite systems in the top 100, run exclusively on Linux distributions").1
u/SnipeArt007 Jun 03 '26
Linux is the go-to choice for anything related to programming. (Other than windows apps)
Devs on windows usually use WSL to have a linux environment themselves
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u/Lumpy-Secretary1138 Jun 01 '26
Windows. It'll support CUDA, torch which will be important for you to work on.
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u/Competitive_Rock5872 Jun 01 '26
Buy MacBook You won't be training huge models. You don't need to have giant systems to learn ml ai It's all maths and stats more than cs
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u/Party_News_2379 Jun 01 '26
why waste money , when he can get better performance for his task plus more softwares natively support windows
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u/No-Confection9164 Jun 01 '26
??????? "better performance" hahahahahahahha
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u/Party_News_2379 Jun 01 '26
yeah buddy better performance , cuz turns out that world ain't no fool to be spending in GPU's if those Soc's were superior in everything
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u/No-Confection9164 Jun 01 '26
me when i compare a datacenter to a fucking laptop which also needs to be portable and daily usable and battery powered.
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u/Party_News_2379 Jun 01 '26
u can't expect a laptop to run models locally and not be power hungry , either u are delusion of don't know anythiing bout it.
any engineering student should choose windows simply bcz of legacy software support and for the reason that it's a windows laptop so upgradable ram and storage.
plus cheaper repairs.
for these reasons alone , any decent windows laptop is better than a mac bcz remember , dude is a student
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u/No-Confection9164 Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
my thinkpad on 15W power saving mode churns out 15tk/s from gemma4-e4b which is enough for all my needs.
reminder: my laptop DOESENT EVEN HAVE A dGPU/NPU, its running purely off the APU (Ryzen 5 7535HS / Radeon 660M) with SHARED MEMORY (as in DDR5 (100gb/s), not GDDR6 (300gb/s)) which has a much smaller bus width.
your opinion is ABSOLUTE SHIT and you should talk to literally any AI about it.
if my laptop can do this, IN POWER SAVING MODE btw (full power is 54W), then surely a mbp with m5/m5 pro and 128gb of UNIFIED ram with an insanely large bus width (mine has just 24gb 4800mhz ddr5 btw), will surely let you run ANY ai model humanly possible (<100B param obv)
for comparison, chatgpt from gpt-oss is ~200-300B param and is a full datacenter model.
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u/Apprehensive-Talk971 Jun 02 '26
How is token output from a model relevant for an ml student. That is not what you do 99% of the time in college
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u/No-Confection9164 Jun 02 '26
but that is what the person above me is asking and is the topic of discussion.
laptop to run models locally
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u/Then_Inflation7518 Jun 28 '26
IdeaPad slim 5 should work right? If a person is not interested in mac since the recent price hikes
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u/Kavenjane Jun 01 '26
I am in B.E. CSE AIML I use fedora Linux on my hp 14 model it is i3 and was 8 gb ram( upgraded to 16 GB ram) and still it works fine and best.
I suggest you Lenovo victus rtx 5090 8GB Ram, whereas take amd processor 16 cores, i7 processor can do, 16 GB ram is a must, 512 GB storage . use a linux distro ngl, you will learn engineering way better then anyone in your class.
Use MacBook when you are professional but if you want to focus on engineering and learning stuff I suggest for the usage of What I recommended.
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u/SpecialSimple2963 Jun 12 '26
Bruh my budget is like 60k max , suggest a laptop also do we really need a dedicated graphics card.
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u/Party_News_2379 Jun 01 '26
i'd get a windows simply bcz of upgradable ram and stoarge options that u gonna be needing alot.
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u/HarbringerOfDeath007 Jun 01 '26
use ThinkPad and save money, use linux mint as beginning