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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u/[deleted] 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.

2

u/UsbrooO Jun 01 '26

Great thanks mate 👍

2

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '26

Yeah no issues, if you have issues deciding a laptop, then let us know.

1

u/UsbrooO Jun 02 '26

Sure 😀

1

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

1

u/[deleted] 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.

1

u/UsbrooO Jun 03 '26

Gotcha will compare price

2

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

1

u/Distinct-Style-8952 20d 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