8 AO.com deals that actually make sense for students right now
From a desktop that fits a shoebox room to a gaming laptop that can survive a full lecture day unplugged, here’s what’s worth adding to the basket before term starts.
Back to school tech shopping has a habit of turning into either “spend nothing and regret it by October” or “spend everything and regret it in a different way.” We went through what AO.com currently has on offer and picked out eight things actually worth the money, whatever your budget or course. Here’s where to put it.
ASUS V400 AiO desktop
A 23.8-inch screen, a full-size wireless keyboard and mouse, and Windows Hello face login are already in the box with the ASUS V400 AiO, which means it’s genuinely ready to use the moment it’s unpacked on a desk that has zero spare inches for a tower. The Intel Core 5 210H handles lecture slides, browser tabs and light photo editing without complaint, and 16GB of RAM keeps a dozen Chrome tabs from grinding everything to a halt. The 512GB SSD loads Windows and apps quickly, and Dolby Atmos gives video calls and Netflix evenings more depth than the tinny speakers built into most all-in-ones. It won’t touch serious gaming, but for essay writing, timetabling and everything else university throws at a desk, it’s hard to beat for the space it takes up.
Was £999, now £599
HP Smart Tank 5105 printer
Printer running costs are the part nobody budgets for at the start of term, and the Smart Tank 5105 solves that by shipping with roughly three years’ worth of ink already in the box, refilled from resealable bottles rather than replaced cartridge by cartridge. Print quality tops out at a sharp 4800 x 1200dpi, plenty for essays, timetables and the odd photo, and mobile printing support means a document can go straight from a phone to the tray without ever touching a laptop. It’s not fast, managing five pages a minute in colour, but for the sporadic printing most students actually do, speed matters far less than never running out of ink mid-deadline. Self-healing Wi-Fi is a small but genuinely useful touch, reconnecting on its own after a router restart instead of needing to be set up from scratch.
£209, you can save £42 with AO member price
Apple iPad Pro 13″ M5
Apple’s M5 chip turns the iPad Pro into something that can genuinely replace a laptop for lecture notes, essay drafts and light video editing, not just a bigger phone for watching lectures back later. The 13-inch Ultra Retina XDR display uses a tandem OLED panel that’s bright enough to read outside on a campus lawn, and ProMotion keeps handwriting with the Apple Pencil Pro (sold separately) feeling instant rather than laggy. Wi-Fi 7 and Thunderbolt support future-proof it for a few years of use, and 12GB of RAM means Split View and Stage Manager multitasking hold up under real pressure. Pair it with the Magic Keyboard and it becomes a genuinely capable note-taking and writing machine, though that accessory alone adds a serious chunk to the total spend.
£1,499, you can save £33 with AO member price
Apple AirPods Max 2
The H2 chip inside the AirPods Max 2 is the same silicon powering Apple’s current AirPods Pro, and it shows in noise cancellation rated at 1.5 times more effective than the original Max, useful in a shared library or a noisy halls kitchen. Live Translation and Conversation Awareness are genuinely handy extras for anyone on a course with international coursemates or lecturers, letting the headphones drop the volume to hear someone speak without pausing the music manually. Twenty hours of battery covers a full day of lectures and revision sessions, and lossless audio over USB-C is a meaningful step up for anyone who cares how their music actually sounds. They’re still a serious spend for headphones, but the build quality and sound justify it for anyone who’ll wear them daily.
£499, you can save £25 with AO member price
Samsung Galaxy Watch8 LTE
Built-in LTE means the Galaxy Watch8 can take calls, send texts and stream music on its own, useful for anyone who wants to leave their phone in a bag during a run or a gym session between lectures without losing contact entirely. Samsung’s 3nm processor runs Galaxy AI features like sleep coaching and a Running Coach that actually adapts training suggestions to fitness level rather than firing out generic targets, and Vascular Load tracking plus an antioxidant index, a genuine world-first for a smartwatch, go further than most rivals bother to. Google Gemini is built in too, so a raised wrist and a spoken question gets a real answer without reaching for a phone. Forty hours of battery life comfortably covers a full day of lectures, a workout and the walk home, though an LTE model like this one needs its own separate data plan to make full use of the calling and streaming features away from a phone.
Was £399, now £359
ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16
A 2.5K OLED panel running at 240Hz is not something you’d expect to find in a laptop this thin, but the ROG Zephyrus G16 packs one in alongside genuinely capable gaming hardware. The RTX 5060 with 8GB of GDDR7 handles current titles at high settings without pushing into the territory of a laptop that overheats and throttles after twenty minutes, and the Core Ultra 7 processor keeps coursework, browser tabs and Discord running in the background without a stutter. 16GB of RAM is on the lighter side for heavy multitasking alongside gaming, and it’s soldered in, so it’s worth treating as a ceiling rather than a starting point. Thunderbolt 4 and Wi-Fi 7 make it a genuinely future-proof choice for anyone who wants one laptop that does lectures by day and gaming by night.
Was £2,499; now £1,999
Lenovo Legion 7
Where the ASUS above caps out at 16GB, the Legion 7 doubles it to 32GB of RAM, which matters if gaming, streaming and a dozen browser tabs are all meant to run at once without anything grinding to a halt. Lenovo’s Legion ColdFront Hyper cooling system is built to keep the same RTX 5060 GPU running at full tilt for longer sessions than most 16-inch gaming laptops can sustain, and the WQXGA OLED display matches the ASUS for sharpness while adding a numeric keypad that the Zephyrus skips. Battery life rated at nearly 15 hours of video playback is unusually strong for a gaming laptop this powerful, useful for the days it needs to survive lectures before it gets anywhere near a plug socket. It’s the pricier of the two gaming laptops here, but the extra RAM and battery life are a genuine reason to pay more.
MSI MPG 321CURX QD-OLED monitor
A 0.03-millisecond response time makes the MPG 321CURX one of the fastest-reacting monitors available at this size, and paired with a 240Hz refresh rate it’s built for competitive gaming rather than just looking good. The QD-OLED panel delivers genuinely deep blacks and wide colour coverage that a standard IPS screen can’t match, and the 1700R curve wraps the 32-inch, 4K frame around your peripheral vision without the fisheye distortion that overly aggressive curves can introduce. Height, tilt and swivel adjustment mean it’ll actually sit at the right eye level on a desk, not just look impressive in a product photo, and a three-year warranty is reassuring for a panel type some buyers still worry about burning in. It’s an outright splurge for a student budget, but for anyone serious about gaming or video editing between lectures, the jump in image quality is obvious within minutes of using it.
