What laptop should i buy for Video/Image/Music editing?

[axelfelix]

Hello people,

I hope you can help me, I'll buy a new laptop but I don't know much about specifications, so I can't decide... I need it for Video/Music/Image Editing, ex: I need to use After Effects, vegas pro, photoshop, premiere, audition, illustrator, etc... If it can play games, nice, but i'm not a gamer so it really doesnt matter at all. My first selection is the Dell XPS 13 (2015) (Dell Website) but could't decide between i5-5200U or i7-5500U and there is a significant difference between prices, maybe I dont need i7 for videoediting, but i really don't know about that stuff. There are other options like the Asus Zenbook UX305, but those optons have Intel M, and i've read that those are worse.

I've found some links that could help:

Techradar link
Businessnewsdaily Link

Thank you so much

 

[Haywoodjr]

I would say the i5 if it has plenty of ram image,video and music don't use a lot of the CPU there more ram heavy as storing and downloading the processed images ect. so if the i5 has more than 8 or more GB of ram i would get that one and use the money to upgrade the ram and increase the amount to graphics in the bios for image and video editing for a better image hope this helped.

 

[C12Friedman]

What's your budget?
What size do you prefer and is weight a concern?

Ideally, you'll have a hyper-threaded (Core i7) CPU and a professional graphics card or NVidia card with 16GB or more of ram.
I'd personally be looking at the MSI GT60 2OKWS-674US as an option. If gaming is a factor, then I'd say something like the
Sager NP8258 which is built on the Clevo P157SM-A platform - upgrade the graphics to the GTX 980M and you'll have a very nice gamer along with the ability to run your programs smoothly. Those are ideals though (expensive ones too IMO) and budget may be a factor

 

[axelfelix]

Sorry I forget to say that the maximum price I'm looking for is $ 1,500 dlls

I found this laptop: http/www.amazon.com/Zenbook-UX303LN-DB71T-Quad-HD-Display-Touchscreen/dp/B00KTL21RA/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1431196779&sr=1-1&keywords=ASUS+UX303LB-DS71T

what do you think? it is better than the XPS 13 2015 right?

 

[C12Friedman]

The Zenbook looks to be good for what you want but I'd personally like a quad core CPU rather than the dual core i7-4510U but it does feature hyper-threading so it will (at times) act like a quad core.
Also, the Sager/Clevo NP8258 would be a much higher performer for not too much more $$$ (although more weight) since it features a more powerful graphics GTX 870M vs GT 840M and a quad core i7-4710MQ 2.5GHz CPU vs the dual core i7-4510u 2.0GHz. My only complaint about the Sager models is that an OS is not included in pricing - it's considered an option near the bottom of the configuration page

Either would work fine though and yes, I believe either would be a better option than the XPS 13

 

[velo3100]

I would go with the sagar laptop that C12Friedman has suggested as not only is the cpu and gpu better, the screen is larger which make a huge difference when editing a video.

Also you have to take into account the rendering times for the video for each laptop.

But I would say that the n series of asus is the best deal as they are made for this in mind and as long as you are not doing very heavy video editing in which case the rog series would be better for you.

An alternative is a workstation laptop but I don't know what gpu adobe is optimised for.

 

[N0BOX]

I set out on a similar mission a month or so ago, though with a much, much lower budget. I ended up finding a Dell Precision M6600 for >$500 with a quad-core i7 with HT (i7-2720qm -- great for software video encoding), 8GB DDR3-1333 (which I upgraded to 24GB a week or so later), 1920x1080 WLED IPS screen, and an NVidia Quadro 3000M 2GB GDDR5 GPU (good for hardware-accelerated encoding and Adobe's hardware acceleration). I also ended up putting a 250GB mSata SSD in it, which really made it feel like it could have rolled off the shelf at an electronics store recently.

Even though the laptop is three generations old at this point, it is still a beast when it comes to processing power. The things that I have given up by saving $1000~$2500 (yes, these workstation-class laptops are EXPENSIVE when they are new) are the power savings I would have gotten from the newest generation of CPUs and GPUs, possibly a better (maybe higher-resolution, better color gamut) LCD panel, and the warranty you get with a new machine. Since I'm comfortable working on my laptop, I'm willing to risk going without the warranty. If you need the warranty, you might find yourself way out of your budget if you go looking for a mobile workstation. I believe these start at around $2000 new and go up in price fast when you start asking for an i7 and one of the NVidia GPUs (BTW, I believe Adobe CS6 is capable of using both AMD and NVidia GPUs for hardware acceleration, but older versions started with only NVidia GPU support in 2014)

Pretty much all of the mobile workstations eat battery and weigh a ton, though, so if you need your laptop to be very mobile, this isn't really the way to go. I did grab an M4600 for my dad, and it is certainly more mobile, but it still burns through battery, and is still heavy for a 15.6" laptop. Unfortunately, the 15" laptops can't utilize the more powerful GPUs found in the 17" laptops, so that is another consideration.

So, for those of us willing to poke around inside their laptop, refurbished or what they call "off lease" (laptops that were on lease to a company or university and have since been turned back in and replaced with the new crop of laptops) machines are a great way to save a bunch of money on a system that was built to last and to be easily upgraded in the future (you can even do your own upgrade of the CPU and graphics card in these mobile workstations... I'm planning on trying to find a good deal on an NVidia K4100M or K5100M for this M6600 and attempting an upgrade).