College Laptop Choice with Video Editing/Photo Edits on the Side

[tkbh312]

1. What is your budget? Around $1000-$1500

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 13 inch or 15.6 inch

3. What screen resolution do you want? At least 1080p, 2k 3k or 4k would also be nice since I will be doing video editing and photowork

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? Portability is preferred, but it will need to be able to perform in terms of being able to render video smoothly without hiccups and do some light gaming.

5. How much battery life do you need? 4-5 hours at the very least. Anything above that is great.

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)? GTA V 1080p max settings at least 50 fps

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) Photo and video editing

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? I can go with a small ssd (120) and standard hard drive (1tb) or if its in the budget just get a 500gb ssd

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. OriginPC, Xiotic, Newegg, Sager

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? Solid 4-5 years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? None

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.

- Macbook Pro 13 inch - Solid video and photo editing capabilities, small and light, good screen, great battery life, but pricey for specs and small capacity ssd

- Origin EON15-S-RTS - Amazing specs (i7, gtx 880m, 16 gb ram), solid build, great speakers, but its bulky and battery life is 5 hours on battery saving mode. Link to it is here.

- Sager NP8651-S - i7 with gtx 970m, 500gb ssd, 16gb ram, but it is advertised on xioticpc as having 2 hours battery life? I'm not sure if this is accurate, since there aren't a lot of reviews on this laptop, so if anyone has any experience with this laptop, can you talk about the battery life experience?

- Lenovo Y50 - i7 with gtx 860m, 4K UHD touch display, 512gb ssd. It has a pretty good balance, battery life is advertised at 5 hrs max, which is ok, but I've heard it is somewhat flimsy, and that the screen has a yellow tint to it.

13. What country do you live in? United States

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed. I am planning to major in Computer Science

 

[velo3100]

First I don't think it is possible to get a light laptop that is in your price range that can play gta 5 at max settings in 1080p as the gpu will produce too much heat. Second to play gta 5 at the settings you said you will have to sacrifice on battery life. I have linked a laptop that should be good if weight and battery life wasn't an issue:

http/www.xoticpc.com/force-msi-1781-22429-970m-msi-gt72-barebones-p-8113.html

 

[tkbh312]

First I don't think it is possible to get a light laptop that is in your price range that can play gta 5 at max settings in 1080p as the gpu will produce too much heat. Second to play gta 5 at the settings you said you will have to sacrifice on battery life. I have linked a laptop that should be good if weight and battery life wasn't an issue:

http/www.xoticpc.com/force-msi-1781-22429-970m-msi-gt72-barebones-p-8113.html

Thanks for the input. It doesn't necessarily have to play GTA V on max settings, I don't really game much, but to put it in retrospect, if I went with a windows laptop, I'd want at least a gtx 970M. Are there are 15 inch laptops that you know of? 17 inches is quite bulky and I don't know how portable it will be.

 

[velo3100]

Try this: http/www.xoticpc.com/msi-gt60-dominator1065-p-7599.html?wconfigure=yes

 

[tkbh312]

Try this: http/www.xoticpc.com/msi-gt60-dominator1065-p-7599.html?wconfigure=yes

Looks like a good option, but the specs are similar to that of the Origin EON15-S-RTS laptop that I posted, and the Origin laptop is a lot thinner. Can I get your opinon on that, as well as the Lenovo Y50 4K UHD Touch display laptop? Here are the links to them.

Link to Origin PC

Link to Lenovo Y50

 

[velo3100]

It depends on how important battery life is. The origin pc has a better batter life due to the weaker gpu but won't be as good for games as the msi. The lenovo is not good for this purpose as its refresh rate is limited to 48ghz rather than 60.

Also there will be a difference in the time it takes to render video as the gtx 970m is much stronger than the 880m.

 

[tkbh312]

It depends on how important battery life is. The origin pc has a better batter life due to the weaker gpu but won't be as good for games as the msi. The lenovo is not good for this purpose as its refresh rate is limited to 48ghz rather than 60.

Also there will be a difference in the time it takes to render video as the gtx 970m is much stronger than the 880m.

Oh ok, I wasn't really sure how different the performance was between the 880M and the 970M. I was recently looking at the Aorus X3Plus, which is a very portable gaming laptop with a good build. Only thing though, is that it has 8 gb of ram. Will that be enough for video rendering. Also, do you know anything on the battery life for this laptop, as well as its reputation? Also, to answer your question, battery life is important. I am looking for at least 5 hours just browsing the web and watching youtube videos.

 

[velo3100]

Aorus has a very good reputation of making thin gaming laptops. They have powerful cooling which will keep the fan cool but will make more noise than drts but less noise than thin laptop like the msi ghost range. 8 gigs should be enough for video rendering unless you do heavy multi tasking. This is where having more vram is more important as it is a faster memory than normal ram which gets used for the os as well as applications.

I don't know how good the battery life is though.

 

[tkbh312]

Aorus has a very good reputation of making thin gaming laptops. They have powerful cooling which will keep the fan cool but will make more noise than drts but less noise than thin laptop like the msi ghost range. 8 gigs should be enough for video rendering unless you do heavy multi tasking. This is where having more vram is more important as it is a faster memory than normal ram which gets used for the os as well as applications.

I don't know how good the battery life is though.

Would you suggest it over the other options? After reading a review about the Aorusx3 Plus on LaptopMag, the reviewers there were able to get 5 hours and 30 minutes of battery life from browsing the web, which is pretty good.

 

[velo3100]

Depends on if you want something portable. The auros is good assuming you don't game on 4k but the cooling will be a lot weaker than the msi.