The Best Laptops for Hacking in 2022 (Ultimate Buyer’s guide)
What are the best hacking laptops available? If that’s the question that brought you here then you’re in the right place.
We know a good hacking computer needs to meet certain hardware requirements to enable it undertake without lagging, some of the heavy-duty tasks that we hackers carry out.
Such as running multiple virtual machines, simulating networks, cracking password hashes, coding, etc, and these consume a lot of computing resources.
That’s why it’s important to carefully think it through so that you can buy a laptop that has the sufficient resources to meet these requirements.
But not to worry, we’ve done the hard part for you. We spent some quality time researching and here is what we came up with…
The best laptops for hacking in 2022:
- 2020 Newest Acer Aspire 5
- Acer Nitro 5
- 2020 Lenovo ThinkPad T490
- OEM Lenovo ThinkPad E15
- MSI GS66 Stealth 10SGS-036
- New Alienware m17 R3
- 2020 HP Pavilion
- Razer Blade Stealth
- Dell Inspiron 17
- 2020 Asus Vivobook
In a hurry? Here are the top 5 best hacking laptops of 2022 summarized
Now before I continue, let’s take a look at the requirements we considered in choosing the above hacking laptops.
Best Hacking Laptop Requirements
So you may be asking, what specs do I need on a laptop to be used for hacking? Or what specs are important on a hacking laptop? The answer is, it depends on your budget!
If you can afford a super powerful and robust laptop to do your hacking, by all means, go for it.
But it’s also fine if what you can afford is a lower-end class laptop. Only be aware that it may not be able to effectively handle virtualizing a small local lab and some of the interesting hacker activities like password cracking.
In my experience, I found that any laptop with decent specs can do the job. And if there is something the laptop cannot do, then you know its time to upgrade either the entire laptop or parts of it.
Below is a list of important specs to watch out for when you’re in the market for a hacking laptop:
- RAM: You may get away with 4GB of RAM. But the minimum for a decent hacking laptop is 8GB of RAM. For the best experience, aim for 16GB or 32GB.
- Storage: An SSD drive is preferred over an HDD drive. But don’t sweat it if you can’t get an SSD. Then for storage capacity, 250GB HDD/SSD and above will suffice. Hacking doesn’t really require much storage capacity, but 500GB HDD looks like a good number to have.
- Processor: Anytime I will recommend the Intel Core CPUs. The Intel Core i3 is great but the minimum for a decent hacking laptop is their Intel Core i5 processor. But for the best performance, get the Intel Core i7. The CPU generation matters too. The newer the generation, say 8th generation, the better.
- Graphics card: Integrated graphics card are good but a dedicated GPU of 2GB will make a more powerful password cracking machine (if you are going to be doing that). And depending on how intensive your cracking operations will be, you may be needing a 4GB GPU at minimum.
- Others: Now apart from the above, there are other things like battery life and weight to be considered when choosing a hacking laptop. A laptop that has a long battery life and is also light in weight will maximize portability and hacking on the go at any given time. You don’t want your hacking laptop to be a dead weight on you.
Top 10 Best Hacking Laptops in 2022:
1. 2020 Newest Acer Aspire 5 ($569 check current price)
Cheapest laptop for hacking
This is the cheapest laptop for hackers on a budget. At under $600 this hacking laptop is relatively very cheap and perfectly fits for the purpose of hacking. The features it packs makes this laptop very powerful, enough to undertake most moderate hacking operations comfortably and the price is simply amazing!
2. Acer Nitro 5 ($727 check current price)
Best budget laptop for hacking
This is the best budget laptop for hacking. It has everything you will ever need in a hacking laptop. The dedicated 1650GTX GPU just makes it a computing beast. And that is the beastly kind of power you need to crack password encryptions, faster. I especially love this laptop because it is low priced even with the advanced hardware it packs.
3. 2020 Lenovo ThinkPad T490 ($899 check current price)
This is the most popular hacking laptop brand. Lenovo laptops are touted as the most popular amongst cybersecurity pros and that is for good reason. One thing you’ll notice about this hacking laptop is that every of its hardware is sought of an add-on that is upgradeable. The hardware components are not constricted to only what originally came with it. Plus that, this laptop brand is known for long battery life as well as light weightedness, and that’s what the typical hacker desires when he is on the go, hacking!
4. OEM Lenovo ThinkPad E15 ($1,159 check current prices)
Most popular hacking laptop brand
This is the most configurable hacking laptop. Like I said before, Lenovo laptops are highly customizable to fit your needs and also your budget. For this particular Lenovo ThinkPad, you can choose to go with the 8GB RAM, 250GB SSD ROM, Core i3 variant up to the more powerful 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD ROM, Core i7 variant. Whichever variant you choose, depending on your needs/budget, you can’t go wrong because the computing resources are strong enough to handle extreme hacking operations with ease.
5. MSI GS66 Stealth 10SGS-036 ($2,999 check current price)
Most powerful laptop for hacking
This is the most powerful laptop for hacking in 2022. The MSI GS66 is a monstrous beast in terms of computing power. For a laptop, it is yet, the fastest and toughest in terms of virtualization, password cracking, running high resource software simultaneously. Although you do not need this super extra power for a hacking laptop but if you can afford it, go for it.
6. New Alienware m17 R3 ($2,006 check current price)
Alienware laptops are popular for gaming but they make great hacking laptops. The new 2020 Alienware laptops have seen improved redesign and are a lot thinner, lighter, and sleeker than their predecessors. Not only that, with it’s newer & faster NVIDIA graphics card, 10th Gen processor, and mammoth 17.3 inches display, you will enjoy this laptop for hacking.
7. 2020 HP Pavilion ($989 check current price)
This is the new HP Pavilion, flagship laptop of HP with high performance specs and that easily qualifies it as one of the best laptops for hacking. It has great storage and computing power so much that if you wanted to run dual booting of operating systems say, Windows 10 and Kali Linux, it will handle that effectively without hassle.
8. Razer Blade Stealth ($1,499 check current price)
Here is Razer Blade Stealth a popular high-performance gaming laptop that’s excellent for hacking purposes too. This hacking laptop combines an irresistible blend of aesthetics, portability & quality performance in one, but comes at a price. If this is what you want in a hacking laptop by all means go it.
9. Dell Inspiron 17 ($749 check current price)
The Dell Inspiron is a powerful hacking laptop with multithreading capabilities. It will handle all your hacking operations without compromising on performance especially if you’re going to be virtualizing a lot. The dedicated Radeon graphics card will take care of intensive hacking applications with noticeable ease. It’s large screen display, sleekness and portability is just something to behold.
10. 2020 Asus Vivobook ($829 check current price)
The Asus is a pretty but powerful hacking laptop. It has a stunning premium look and feel, highly portable with good battery life. It spots very impressive specs that make it able to handle your most intensive hacking operations or activities. The Asus IceCool technology which keeps the device cool and silent even during heavy operations is probably my best in this precious piece of hardware. You won’t regret having this laptop for hacking.
Ok there you have it, the best laptops for hacking in 2022. You can’t make a mistake going with one of any of the laptops on this list. Don’t overthink your decision, pick a laptop and get hacking. In no time, you’ll become a master hacker.
Leave me a comment below if you have a question, I’ll get to them ASAP!
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