Back to School Essentials for 2023 (UK)

The MacBook Air’s 2020 revision saw a switch from Intel’s CPUs to Apple’s own silicon, bringing with it an incredible battery life and more power than any MacBook Air rightfully should have had crammed into it. Seriously, other than a singular missing core on one of the two versions, the MacBook Air is pretty much on par with the 13″ 2020 MacBook Pro.

The only real issue you might find when buying the MacBook Air M1 is that it’s currently limited to 16GB of RAM, which is only an issue if you planned on doing a massive 3D Render in the blink of an eye. For your day-to-day school work, 8GB should suffice, while 16GB and the Air is perfect for the light creative work you might do at university or in your art, graphics, or (do they still do this one?) Design and Tech class.

You would need to also invest in some dongles, as Apple is still adamant about USB-C only, but then not providing enough USB-C ports to do much of anything with.

They are Thunderbolt 4 equipped though, so if you have the cash, you can absolutely spend it on some wickedly fast storage.

If you’re worried about the shift over from Intel to the M1 and your apps might not work, Apple has been pretty good at ’emulating’ the traditional PC environment with their Rosetta 2 software, which translates how applications built on traditional PC infrastructure (x86) into the M1’s ARM infrastructure, which is slowly becoming the norm across the board. Adobe, Blackmagic, and other creative applications, as well as many productivity apps, have also begun to shift their apps to natively support M1, with massive performance boosts for the MacBook Air, being able to supply a pretty powerful creative machine at a lower cost than the competitors.

I’m personally a big fan of the OmniCharge brand. They’re hugely ridiculous chargers that do a lot, while also being not entirely bulky that they become a hindrance. I’ve used the original Omni 20 previously and being able to charge phones, my Switch, and another power bank over a few hours was phenomenal.

Even with the lack of bulk, the full-fat OmniCharge products can be a bit much, but you still want the power out of them. That’s why I’m recommending the Omni Mobile, which can output a full whack of 60 watts out of the USB-C port, which is just about enough to charge a tablet, laptop, or portable console! It even has wireless charging, so you can just pop it on your desk with your phone without any cumbersome wires and get a trickle charge all day.

This is genuinely a great all-in-one charger to just have on hand, while I do prefer the bigger ones, this is the sensible choice to go with. It’ll do everything you need to and probably last a while too between charges or give you that extra boost you need towards the end of a hard day.

The Corsair K63 is such a good keyboard. Everything from how it performs in games, but also the comfortable Cherry MX keys are just excellent for typing on. Not my first choice, but also my first choice is a £88 investment that puts looks and stuff to the side while it works on providing the best key feel.

However, the K63 is great for those with limited desk space, as the small 60% size (it’s cut off the Numpad) allows you to keep more very important stuff on your desk instead of more keyboard bits that might not be entirely useful to you.

The really nice features that in my time using the keyboard were the things that I didn’t ever think that I’d ever really use. The media controls over volume, pause, etc., are just so handy to have on hand. Corsair’s keyboards are mostly into customization and while the program can seem a little like bloatware, having the option to control what certain keys do is great for those that want macro controls without the hassle of setting that up on Windows.

Thankfully, you can turn off the RGB lighting if you so wish.

Samsung’s T drives (T5 and T7) are ridiculously fast, large SSD storage that you can take pretty much anywhere you want. The small form factor allows it to be slotted anywhere and everywhere, but the speeds. The speeds.

If the drive itself is like a robust sandwich, the speeds are the dipping sauce that makes it all come together. With reading speeds of 1,050MBps and write speeds of 1,000MBps, combine this with our very recommended MacBook Air and you’ve got the makings of some excellent additions to your work. Files literally leap over during transfers, while the drive itself can be bought with storage up to 2TB.

This drive is also perfect for those doing more creative work, as files will be read and written to the drive so quickly, there’ll be no time wasted. This, however, does rely on you having a more up-to-date PC or Mac with support for the full power of USB 3.2. For regular files, this makes for a great “always on you” storage device and will even plug into modern USB-C tablets if that’s more your style.

Face it: the world changed and now you’ve got to do some classes from your home or student halls, you might even be a regular on Zoom calls or using Discord. So why are you still relying on your built-in webcam? Why aren’t you using the best you can get and then not only look your best but also have a high-quality 1080p camera that you can use for all occasions?

I do recommend getting a separate microphone for this still, but the dual-microphone setup on the front will be more than enough for a majority of people, bringing a clean signal into the PC with little fuzz. This webcam is the go-to for a lot of people due to the video quality it provides, it’s not over-the-top, but does its job incredibly well.

It connects to almost any laptop or desktop, with the option to set it on either the top of your monitor or flush on the desk. The clip isn’t a total grip though, so you would need enough room for it to balance on top at the same time.

The worst thing about webcams that you need to manually focus is never knowing until you’ve managed to sit back and test, but the Logitech C920 HD comes with auto-focus and built-in light correction, giving you the best image possible regardless of your current lighting situation.