Laptop for mostly music production and graphic design

[drphils_mustache]

Hey everyone
Just looking for some recommendations on my next purchase.

1. What is your budget?
Preferably under $2000, but will stretch to maybe 2200 if absolutely necessary.

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
I'm not that concerned, as long as the display is at least around 13 inches or larger.

3. What screen resolution do you want?
As I will be doing a lot of visually oriented work, the higher the better. Sorry if this is a bit vague, I'm not really sure at this point.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Being able to cart it around easily would be nice, but I definitely prefer capability over portability.

5. How much battery life do you need?
Not too concerned about that. I usually end up using my laptop plugged in anyway.

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)?

I'd like to play games on occasion, but I'm only a very casual gamer really, and it's not the focus of this laptop. That being said, I like to play around with game development from time to time, Unity and Unreal engine etc.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
The main purpose of this laptop will be using photo and video editing software like Photoshop, Illustrator & After Effects, music production using Ableton Live, and also some 3D modelling with programs like Blender and 3DS max.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
Again, the higher the better. I'm somewhat obsessive in collecting music and films, so it would be handy to have a lot of space, though I'm happy to use external hard drives for this as well. My last laptop only had about 128GB I think and that was far too little space for me.


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

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
At least 3 years would be nice

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
I don't need an optical drive.

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.
I'm pretty open to anything at this point.

13. What country do you live in?
Australia

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
Apologies if I'm being a bit ambiguous with this, I came here because I wasn't really sure what to look for and was overwhelmed by all the options. Really just want something that can handle a lot of audio and visual editing without any problems. A lot of the stuff I do can be quite taxing i.e live multi-track recording, editing music with a lot of tracks and plugins, some CG work etc. but I'm not sure if a behemoth gaming machine is really suitable for this? Any advice much appreciated

 

[hang-the-9]

I am not familiar with Australia availability, but for your budget you should be able to find a real quad core i5 system with possibly a 4k 17" screen for that price. If not a 15.6" with 1080 for sure. You'd want a CPU with HQ at the end, and a solid state drive. Video card does not matter much in your case but a system with a fast CPU will also often come with a fast video card. See if the Lenovo workstation laptops are priced in your budget in your area, those are made for work like yours without needing a gaming system.