Alternatives to Mac & Surface laptops for Graphic design?

[Vanessa9595]

Hi there.
My 16 year old artistic and gamer son needs a first laptop computer (using an old chromebook). I'd like to get him a student Adobe creative cloud account to use Illustrator & Photoshop and let him run Steam for a few games. I've seen that a Mac & Surface will def do the job, but I'm wondering if anyone has a less expensive alternative out there? I think we're talking about 8 gigs or ram and a graphics card that has some extra ram, maybe an i5? What do you think? Thanks for any ideas!

 

[hang-the-9]

Neither Macs nor Surface computers are very good for gaming, Macs usually because the games don't run on them, Surfaces mostly due to the video card.

Surface is good if you want a drawing tablet built into the computer, but you can always use an external dedicated drawing table along with an actual gaming laptop.

A middle of the road gaming laptop would be about $1,000 and would be fast enough to run Adobe products with good results. If you have a BestBuy around, this is a pretty good price for the video card in the system https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-1...MrdGgAab4FEaTxfWHQlP9xoC4aTw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds