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Search Wirecutter For: Search Reviews for the real world Browse Close. Browse Close. After spending 30 hours researching and testing the top five contenders, we found that the is the best laptop for creative professionals. The Surface Book 2 had some of the fastest 4K rendering speeds we tested, and it has an excellent keyboard and trackpad and a healthy variety of ports. Its 4K display is the most accurate of the Windows laptops we tested this year, though it isn’t accurate enough for video color grading or print production work; if you do those things, pick up the 15-inch. The configuration we recommend costs around $2,900—we know!
Keep reading—and it has a 4K display, an eighth-generation 1.9 GHz Intel Core i7-8650U processor, 16 GB of RAM, and a 512 GB solid-state drive. It also comes with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 6 GB VRAM, a powerful graphics processor that can handle demanding tasks—like quickly exporting 4K footage in Adobe Premiere Pro—much faster than the GPU in the MacBook Pro (it’s also good for gaming). The Surface Book 2’s keyboard is clicky and comfortable to use for long periods of time, and its trackpad is even better: It tracks smoothly and accurately, and it executes gestures and other Windows-related tasks with ease. It also has all the necessary ports and connections: two USB 3.0 ports, a USB-C port (though not Thunderbolt 3), as well as a full-size SD card reader, and a. It also had the longest battery life of any laptop we tested this year by about 20 minutes, and you can even detach its screen and use it as a tablet if you want. If you need a laptop with a screen precise enough for print photo production or video color grading, get the Apple. The MacBook Pro’s 15.4-inch Retina display has a resolution of 2880×1800—lower than the 4K screens on the Surface Book 2 or the XPS 15 Touch—but it was more color accurate than its competition, and it’s the only one of our picks that’s technically accurate enough for color grading and print production work.
It also reproduced more of the sRGB color gamut than the Surface Book 2, and it supports the DCI/P3 color gamut, while our top pick doesn’t. It also has the best trackpad we’ve used on a laptop. But it has a shallow keyboard, it lacks legacy ports, it’s expensive, and it has a shorter battery life than we’d like. While it had fast performance overall, it was slower at exporting 4K video in Adobe Premiere Pro than any of the Windows laptops we tested due to its weaker graphics card. We recommend the $2,800 model—about as much as the Surface Book 2—with a 2.6 GHz eighth-generation Intel Core i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB of solid-state storage, and Radeon Pro 560X dedicated graphics with 4 GB of memory.
If you’re looking for a cheaper option, you don’t need to do precise color work, or you don’t mind relying on an external monitor when you do, get the. It is not as accurate as the Microsoft Surface Book 2, much less the MacBook Pro: Its reds, in particular, were so oversaturated that we don’t recommend it for photo editing or color grading video. Instead, pair the Dell XPS 15 Touch with our favorite 4K monitor pick, the, which is accurate enough for photo and video production work, and buying the XPS 15 plus the Z27 still costs less than one Microsoft Surface Book 2. We recommend the configuration with an eighth-generation, Intel Core i7-8750H processor, 16 GB of RAM, a 512 GB solid-state drive, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti, and a 15.6-inch 3840×2160 IPS touchscreen. At the time of this guide’s publishing, this configuration cost around $1,930. It was a few seconds faster than the Microsoft Surface Book 2 at exporting 4K video in Adobe Premiere Pro.
It’s about as portable as the Surface Book 2, and its keyboard and trackpad are decent but not as enjoyable to use. Unfortunately, its webcam is located below its screen, and it fell about a half hour behind the Surface Book 2 in battery-life testing. Wirecutter has been researching and testing laptops since 2013, and our PC team has more than 37 years of collective experience reviewing all kinds of laptops—in addition to the 60 hours we’ve spent researching and testing laptops for video and photo editing work over the past two years. For this guide, we interviewed 11 creative professionals—three music producers, three product or graphic designers, one 3D modeler, two photographers, a game developer, and a Web developer—to find out what they need in a laptop. Among the experts we spoke to are a composer for Bob’s Burgers, a developer and composer behind the video game Night in the Woods, a senior 3D modeler at Weta Digital, and a graphic designer and illustrator whose work has appeared in The New York Times (parent company of Wirecutter). Who should get this.
A good laptop for photo and video editing should have a high-resolution, high-quality 15-inch screen, but it should also be portable. Photo: Sarah Kobos If you’re a creative professional looking for a laptop that can perform demanding tasks—including photo editing, video editing, graphic design, drawing, programming and developing, game design, and audio production—on the go, you should get what we call a power notebook.
If you work in print production or color grade video, you should buy a MacBook Pro. While an can perform some of these tasks, a power notebook will let you do more and faster; it will also have a dedicated graphics card, more RAM, often a more powerful processor, and a larger, higher-resolution screen that’s better for doing creative work.
A or workstation has the power for these tasks, but a power notebook is more portable, durable, and stylish. (We don’t cover mobile workstations here—most people who need one have very specific needs or will get it through an employer—but if you need a recommendation, is a good place to start). Power notebooks are more expensive than most people need though—some cost upwards of $2,500—so it makes sense to spend the money only if you need one for your job. If you work in print production or color grade video, you should buy a MacBook Pro.
Our Windows pick’s display is accurate enough for other video and photo work, though. If you’re in Web development, music production, or game design, and you don’t need production-quality color accuracy, or need it for only part of your workflow, you can buy a less expensive, less color-accurate laptop like our. For print-quality work, you can even buy our budget pick and pair it with, which is more accurate than our top pick, for about $400 less. Apple’s MacBook Pro line has long been the standard-bearer of power notebooks, and most of the creative professionals we interviewed use Macs.
But over the past two years, Windows manufacturers have largely caught up with (and in some cases surpassed) MacBooks when it comes to sleek designs, great screens, and powerful hardware—though that doesn’t matter if the software you use only works on Macs. We have picks for both Mac and Windows users. How we picked. Our favorite laptops for video and photo editing.
From top: Microsoft Surface Book 2, 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro, Dell XPS 15 Touch. Photo: Sarah Kobos The most important features in a power notebook (in rough order of importance) are the processor; memory; storage; dedicated graphics; screen size, resolution, and quality; keyboard and trackpad; weight; ports; and battery life. But not all creative professionals need the same features. The photographers and graphic designers we spoke to emphasized their need for a good screen, for example, while product designers and audio producers prioritized a machine’s available ports. These are the features that you should look for in a laptop for creative work, but the order will vary based on the work you do:. Processor: We recommend a quad-core (or better) for processor-intensive workloads like rendering 4K video, 3D modeling work, and heavy multitasking.
Memory: We recommend 16 GB as a minimum for smooth performance while multitasking (especially if you’re running RAM-hungry software like Photoshop). A 4K video editor and a 3D modeler who frequently render large scenes told us they want 32 GB of RAM, so we noted laptop models that have the option to upgrade. Solid-state storage: A solid-state drive (SSD) can read and write data much faster than a traditional hard drive.
Having an SSD speeds up any task that requires accessing data, like booting up your laptop, saving and loading files, or rendering video. As for the amount of storage space—the more, the better. A 512 GB SSD is the most cost-effective option for those with large media collections. Dedicated graphics: A discrete GPU has its own processor and memory (VRAM) that handles graphics processing and allows the laptop’s processor and memory to manage other workloads concurrently. Dedicated graphics are especially important if you work in 4K video editing, 3D rendering, or animation. In 2018, we tested a Windows laptop with Radeon RX Vega M GL graphics against laptops with Nvidia GTX 10-Series graphics, and found that the Vega M GPU was much slower, so we don’t recommend laptops that have it for creative work. We tested color accuracy and gamut coverage on five laptops, including the Dell XPS 15 Touch (left) and the Microsoft Surface Book 2 (right).
Photo: Sarah Kobos. Display: Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Pro models have a 2880×1800 resolution, which we consider to be the minimum for laptops in this category.
But our research and expert interviews showed that many creative professionals prefer the highest resolution possible—in this case, 4K resolution (3840×2160)—for tasks like photo and video editing. For this reason, we prioritized high-quality laptop screens, with accurate colors and wide gamuts out of the box. SRGB color gamut coverage is important because that’s the display mode most people use most of the time. In laptops with an expanded color gamut, like the Dell XPS 15 and the MacBook Pro (2018), we also tested DCI/P3 color gamut coverage, because that’s what you’re paying more for—a wider range of colors.
The screen should also be, not, because IPS panels provide much better viewing angles and color reproduction. Keyboard and trackpad: Even if your work setup includes an external keyboard and mouse, your laptop’s keyboard and trackpad should be responsive and comfortable to use for long periods of time when you need them. A poor keyboard and trackpad can ruin an otherwise decent laptop. Size: Around 80 percent of the creative professionals we interviewed use 15-inch laptops, and we think laptops that weigh around 5 pounds with that size screen provide the best balance of screen real estate and portability. (We didn’t consider mobile workstations because they’re too bulky and heavy to be reasonably portable.).
Ports: Most of the photographers, audio producers, and developers we spoke with require a variety of ports on their laptops. Different ports matter to different users, but a couple of USB 3.0 Type-A ports are universally useful, as is an HDMI port.
A Thunderbolt 3 port is handy for future-proofing. (If you buy a laptop with only Thunderbolt 3 ports, check out.) If you’re a photographer, an SD card slot will be important, too. Battery life: A laptop should have long enough battery life to get you through most of an eight-hour workday, but most creative professionals we spoke to have their laptops plugged in at all times because they work in a fixed location. For this reason, we tested battery life, but it didn’t disqualify any of our contenders. We checked laptop manufacturers’ websites—companies like, and —and found 23 models that matched our criteria.
We looked at reviews of those laptops from trusted sources like. We eliminated models with dealbreaking flaws mentioned in reviews, like a dull screen or poor build quality, as well as laptops that were unavailable. Then we used what we learned from speaking to 11 creative professionals—three music producers, three product or graphic designers, one 3D modeler, two photographers, a gaming developer, and a Web developer—about their laptop needs, in 2016.
Using their expert input, we winnowed our list to five models: the,. We’re interested in testing the, and the in the future, and will update this guide when we do. How we tested. We worked with Chris Heinonen, senior AV staff writer for Wirecutter, to test the contrast ratio, color accuracy, and gamut of each laptop’s display using customized tests in the software-calibration suite. For contrast ratio, we expect a result of at least 1,000:1, and all of the laptops we tested for this guide passed that threshold.
It wasn’t a differentiating factor for our picks. The CalMAN tests also produce DeltaE 2000 numbers for each screen, which show us how close the displayed color is to what it’s supposed to be; the lower the number, the better. A value of under 1.0 is nearly perfect, and under 2.0 is sufficient for print production work.
At around 3.0, you begin to see a difference between the screen and its reference., or the range of colors that can be accurately represented on a device, is also important, so we used our CalMAN tests to determine how much of the (and, when applicable, the ) each laptop screen could reproduce. The ideal score is 100 percent; our numbers will not go past that, because reporting numbers larger than 100 percent can give the impression of full gamut coverage even in cases where that isn’t true.
To test each laptop’s rendering speed, we worked with our photography team to export 4K video footage using a compression preset in Adobe Premiere Pro. We tested each laptop’s real-world battery life by setting each laptop’s screen backlight to 150 nits (candelas per square meter; cd/m²) and ran a Web-browsing battery test that cycles through Web pages, email, Google docs, and video. Because we set each laptop to the same brightness, the results were directly comparable.
Finally, we used each laptop for at least one workday to get a feel for its keyboard, trackpad, screen, and speakers, and we traveled with them to and from a coffee shop to get a feel for portability. Our pick: Microsoft Surface Book 2. The is the best Windows laptop for creative professionals because it has the best combination of performance, screen quality, and portability. In tests, the Microsoft Surface Book 2 showed that it’s powerful enough to handle demanding workloads, and it renders 4K video very fast—faster than most of the competition. It has the most color-accurate screen of any Windows laptop we tested—though not as accurate as the MacBook Pro, the only laptop we recommend for video color grading and print production work—and it covers 95 percent of the sRGB color gamut. Plus, the Surface Book 2 has a great keyboard and trackpad, it has a variety of ports, and it’s light enough to carry around for work.
It has the longest battery life of all the laptops we tested, too, at 7 hours, 20 minutes. You can even detach its screen and use it as a tablet if you want. But its screen isn’t quite accurate enough for print production work, it’s much thicker than the competition, and when closed it has a wide gap near its hinge thanks to that detachable screen. The Microsoft Surface Book 2 and the Dell XPS 15 Touch were, by far, the fastest at exporting 4K footage in Adobe Premiere Pro; shorter bars indicate better performance.
We tested the 15-inch MacBook Pro (2018) with an Intel Core i9 processor; the i7 processor we recommend will be slower. The Surface Book 2 we recommend has a 15.6-inch 3840×2160 IPS display, an eighth-generation 1.9 GHz Intel Core i7-8650U processor, 16 GB of RAM—which isn’t upgradable—an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 6 GB VRAM, and a 512 GB solid-state drive.
In real-world performance testing, the Surface Book 2 exported our 4K footage sample in 2 minutes, 5 seconds, just 5 seconds slower than the Dell XPS 15 Touch, although this difference is within the margin of error. The Microsoft Surface Book 2 scored a 2.8 in color points testing. The blues and purples drifted most from their targets, while the others—reds, especially—remained accurate. The Microsoft Surface Book 2 had the most color-accurate display of the Windows laptops we tested, although none of the Windows laptops we tested were as accurate as the Apple MacBook Pro, and we don’t recommend them for video color grading or print production work. In our CalMAN test, the Surface Book 2 had an average grayscale dE2000 of 2.6, which means that images are mostly free of color tint, aren’t washed out, and details are visible in dark shadows, so the images on your screen will look like the creator intended.
(Lower is better: A score below 1.0 means the difference between the displayed color and a reference is invisible to the eye when side by side; a score under 2.0 is sufficient for print-production work; and a score below 3.0 means the differences between the display and a reference are considered indiscernible when in motion.) The Microsoft Surface Book 2 measured a 2.9 score in ColorChecker, 3.0 in Saturation Sweep, and a 2.8 in color points; all of which test the display’s ability to accurately show a variety of colors’ hues and saturations. A wide color gamut is important for tasks like photo editing because if you can’t see the full gamut, some of the colors you’re seeing are inaccurate. We found that the Microsoft Surface Book 2’s screen covers nearly all (95 percent) of the sRGB color gamut; which most people interested in serious video- and photo-editing will be using.
It lacks support for the DCI/P3 color gamut, but the creative professionals we spoke to weren’t as concerned with DCI/P3 as they were with sRGB. The MacBook Pro (2018) covers more of the sRGB color gamut (99.8 percent), and a lot of the DCI/P3 color gamut (75.9 percent). The Microsoft Surface Book 2 had a comfortable keyboard and an accurate trackpad—some of the best we tested this year. Photo: Sarah Kobos The Surface Book 2 had one of the best keyboards we tested this year. ( measured 1.2 millimeter of key travel.
The Dell XPS 15 and Apple MacBook Pro both feel shallower, with 0.8 millimeter and 0.7 millimeter of key travel, respectively.) Its keys bounced back when we used them, and they offered an easy and enjoyable typing experience. The Surface Book 2’s trackpad has a crisp physical click when pressed, and we never experienced any issues with palm rejection or gestures, like using two fingers to right-click, scroll, and zoom. The medium-size touchpad fit the size of our hands better, which felt less awkward to use than the MacBook Pro’s huge one, but your mileage may vary. The Surface Book 2 has the smallest width of any laptop we tested at 13.5 inches, though its 9.9 inches in length made it longer than all of the other laptops we brought in; but the size differences from model to model weren’t so major that they were noticeable in our testing. The biggest difference between the Surface Book 2 and the competition is its thickness: In part because of its detachable screen and odd hinge, it’s 0.88 inch thick, with a large gap between the screen and keyboard at the hinge, while the Apple MacBook Pro is just 0.38 inch, and the Dell XPS 15 Touch is 0.63 inch thick.
The Surface Book 2 is on the lighter side of the laptops we tested, though, at 4.2 pounds; all of the power notebooks we tested were between 4 pounds and 4.6 pounds. The Surface Book 2 has all the necessary ports: two USB 3.0 ports, a USB-C port (though not Thunderbolt 3), as well as a full-size SD card reader and a.
We’d like to see Microsoft incorporate a Thunderbolt 3 port into its line of Surface Books in the future, since it’s the fastest, most versatile port—it can transfer data at speeds up to 40 Gbps, and carry power and display data over a single cable—and many other companies have now incorporated Thunderbolt 3 into their laptops. The Microsoft Surface Book 2 had the longest battery life of any laptop we tested, at 7 hours, 20 minutes; longer bars indicate better performance. The Surface Book 2 had the longest battery life of any laptop we tested, at 7 hours, 20 minutes in our Web-browsing test. This means that it should last a full day of work, although those with heavier workloads should expect shorter battery life.
While the Surface Book 2 had the longest battery life, the 2018 Apple MacBook Pro had one of the shorter battery lives we tested, at 4 hours, 28 minutes. Our budget pick had 6 hours, 53 minutes of battery life, too.
The Surface Book 2’s screen is detachable—you can remove its top half from the keyboard by pressing a dedicated key to unlock the hinge. Then you can use the Surface Book as a 1.8-pound tablet with integrated graphics to draw, take notes, watch videos, or browse the Web. It’s compatible with the $100 stylus, but we weren’t able to test it. The Surface Book 2 has its own Surface Connect port, so it can be charged separate from the keyboard.
This detachable screen is a neat addition, especially for illustrators and artists, though it’s not a requirement for laptops in this category. Flaws but not dealbreakers. The Surface Book 2 is much thicker than its competition, at 0.88 inch, with a sizeable gap between the two halves. The Apple MacBook Pro (top), by comparison, is extremely thin, at 0.38 inch. Photo: Sarah Kobos The Surface Book 2 is much thicker than the competition when it’s closed, and it has a wide gap near its hinge because of its detachable screen. With its lid shut, the laptop measures 0.88 inch thick near the hinge and 0.59 inch at its thinnest point; comparatively, the MacBook Pro is just 0.38 inch thick, and the XPS 15 Touch is 0.63 inch thick.
The Surface Book 2’s thickness is caused in part by the hinge we mentioned, and in part because the Surface Book 2’s screen half contains components that allow it to be detached for use as a tablet. Dirt or dust can fall into this opening and gunk up your screen and keyboard. We haven’t experienced or read reports of any damage to the screen or keyboard, but this is a poor design decision nonetheless. If you want a Mac: MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018). If your workflow requires macOS, is the best option. The newest MacBook offers solid performance and the best screen and trackpad of any laptop we’ve tested, and it’s the only one of our picks that’s technically accurate enough for video color grading and print production work out of the box.
Although the MacBook Pro has a shallow keyboard, its battery lasted only 4 hours, 28 minutes, and it lacks legacy ports—which nearly half of the creative professionals we interviewed said was a disqualifying inconvenience—the 15-inch model is the only MacBook powerful enough for creative professionals. We recommend the 2018 15-inch model with a 2.6 GHz six-core eighth-generation Intel Core i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB of solid-state storage, and a Radeon Pro 560X dedicated graphics card with 4 GB of memory—a configuration that costs about $2,800 at the time of publication. It also has a 15.4-inch, 2880×1800 Retina display. (You can customize your MacBook Pro with 32 GB of RAM instead, if you know you need the extra memory.) The configuration we recommend offers performance generally equivalent to that of the Microsoft Surface Book 2, except in Adobe Premiere and battery testing.
The 2018 MacBook Pro we tested took an average 6 minutes, 41 seconds to export 4K video footage with Adobe Premiere Pro—more than three times as long as it took the Surface Book 2. This difference is likely the result of the MacBook Pro’s slower GPU—a Radeon Pro 560X—versus the significantly more powerful Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 in the Surface Book 2. The MacBook Pro scored 1.1 in color points testing, which is essentially perfect. The MacBook Pro’s colors all remained within their targets, a feat that none of the other laptops we tested were able to accomplish. The 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro had the most color-accurate display out of the box and a wide color gamut, making it the only one of our picks that’s technically accurate enough for print production work. In our CalMAN test, the MacBook Pro scored an average grayscale dE2000 of 1.8, much better than the Microsoft Surface Book 2’s score of 2.6.
(The closer to zero, the better.) It had an impressive score of 1.4 in the ColorChecker test; its Saturations and color points scores both landed at extremely accurate 1.1 point. We found that the MacBook Pro covered 99.83 percent of the sRGB color gamut and 75.86 percent of the DCI/P3 color gamut; the Dell XPS 15 Touch was the only laptop that covered more of both gamuts than the MacBook did, although its colors weren’t nearly as accurate. The 2018 MacBook Pro has a shallow keyboard that takes some getting used to, even though it’s an improvement over previous versions, but it has the best trackpad we’ve used on a laptop. Photo: Sarah Kobos The 2018 MacBook Pro has a shallow keyboard, with keys that offer only 0.8 mm of travel, though it does have an updated keyboard designed to prevent dust from entering the undersides of its keys. It appears to be as well; iFixit that there is a silicone cover underneath every key to prevent dust and dirt from getting below the keys.
After a while, you may become accustomed to the less-clicky, short-travel keys of the MacBook Pro, but, it still isn’t as enjoyable to use as the keys on the. The 2018 MacBook Pro’s trackpad is the most accurate we’ve used on a laptop; you can click anywhere on the touchpad and receive the same response because it has no hinge, and its haptic feedback is gratifying. Its width can occasionally be annoying, though. Despite seeming like a nifty feature, the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar, which the traditional row of physical function keys (including the!) with a touch-sensitive strip of virtual buttons, was occasionally a nuisance, disrupting our workflow. And although you can use its Touch Bar for quick and easy timeline scrubbing, its lack of physical keys will be for developers, graphic designers, and other creative professionals, who rely heavily on keyboard shortcuts and muscle memory to do their work. The addition of Touch ID is really convenient for unlocking the laptop and making purchases, though. The 2018 MacBook Pro is a smidge bigger than the Microsoft Surface Book 2, at 13.8 inches by 9.5 inches, but it weighs about 0.2 pound less, at 4.02 pounds—and it’s much thinner with its lid closed, at 0.38 inch, versus the Surface Book 2’s 0.88 inch.
It has four Thunderbolt 3 ports, which allow the laptop to charge, transfer data, and connect to displays from any of its ports. But it has no legacy ports, something that nearly half of the creative professionals we interviewed in 2016 said is a dealbreaker. This lack of traditional ports requires creative professionals to change their workflows—which likely includes lots of peripherals—to include for connecting crucial accessories, and that costs money, time, and convenience. But the 2018 MacBook Pro is the only MacBook with a discrete graphics card, so creative Mac professionals will have to stock up on dongles and deal. The 2018 MacBook Pro didn’t perform well in our battery life test, running for 4 hours, 28 minutes; this is low compared with our other picks, and it won’t last a full workday without being charged.
The Microsoft Surface Book 2 lasted for 7 hours, 20 minutes, nearly 3 hours longer, and our budget pick, the Dell XPS 15 Touch, lasted for 6 hours, 53 minutes, nearly 2.5 hours longer. Budget pick: Dell XPS 15 Touch. If you want a cheaper option, or if you need a laptop for music producing, game design, or Web developing, we recommend the. Although its screen is much better at displaying accurate color than your average laptop’s screen, it isn’t as color accurate as the Apple MacBook Pro or the Microsoft Surface Book 2, and its reds in particular were so oversaturated that you can’t rely on it for color grading video or still images unless you pair it with an accurate external monitor. It quickly exported 4K video in Adobe Premiere Pro, though, and its battery life is nearly as long as our best contenders.
But its webcam is located in an inconvenient place below its screen. For around $2,100—almost $1,000 less than our top pick—the XPS 15 Touch has a 15.6-inch 3840×2160 IPS touchscreen, an Intel Core i7-8750H processor, 16 GB of RAM, a 512 GB solid-state drive, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti graphics card with 4 GB of VRAM. In real-world performance testing, the Dell XPS 15 Touch exported 4K footage with Adobe Premiere Pro five seconds faster than the Microsoft Surface Book 2 (within the margin of error), at 2 minutes flat. The Dell XPS 15 Touch’s color-points score of 5.0 is flat-out bad.
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Most of the color points are way outside their targets—the reds and blues are oversaturated, and purples and greens have hue errors. Its screen is much better than the HP Spectre x360’s and the Asus ZenBook Pro 15’s, but it isn’t as color accurate as the Microsoft Surface Book 2’s, and it wasn’t reliable enough for accurate video and photo editing.
In our CalMAN test, the Dell XPS 15 Touch scored an average grayscale dE2000 of 2.0, which is very good, better than the Microsoft Surface Book 2’s 2.6; it means that grays will be mostly free of color tint, so images will look as the creator intended. We found the reds were oversaturated in our ColorChecker test, where it scored a 3.0, and all of the colors in the Saturation Sweep were too saturated; it scored an average dE2000 of 2.6. It also had a bad score of 5.0 in color-points testing; its reds and blues were very oversaturated, and its greens and purples may have hue errors, which means that you shouldn’t rely on this screen for accurate video- and photo-editing work. It’s a good budget option if you don’t need accuracy above all else, or if you can pair it with a color-accurate monitor. If you plan on using your XPS 15 Touch somewhere with enough room to house an external monitor, we recommend pairing it with our favorite 4K monitor, the.
The Z27 monitor has great, even CalMAN scores across the board, which we noted while we evaluated. In our ColorChecker test it scored at 2.68 points, and its Saturation Sweep came in at 2.42 points. It easily beat the Microsoft Surface Book 2, which scored 2.9 points in the ColorChecker test and 3.0 points in the Saturation Sweep, and much less variability in accuracy between colors. Buying the XPS 15 Touch and the monitor will cost less than one Surface Book 2, too. But we only recommend buying the XPS 15 Touch for photo editing if you’re able to use an external monitor 100 percent of the time that you’re doing editing work. The Dell XPS 15 Touch was able to display 100 percent of the sRGB color gamut, even more than the Microsoft Surface Book 2’s 95.2 percent.
But gamut doesn’t matter as much as color accuracy when you’re working in video and photo editing. The Dell XPS 15 Touch’s keyboard isn’t as deep as we’d like. Photo: Sarah Kobos The Dell XPS 15 Touch’s keyboard is shallower than we’d like; measured 0.7 mm of travel. Although key travel is on the shallower end of the spectrum, and its keys aren’t as punchy as those on the Windows Surface Book 2, it’s still bouncier and more responsive than what we experienced with the MacBook Pro or the Asus ZenBook Pro 15 we tested. Its trackpad was the perfect size for us in testing; it was easy to navigate Web pages and click where we meant to. Gestures worked well, and zooming in felt easy and natural.
We only recommend buying the XPS 15 Touch for photo editing if you’re able to use an external monitor 100 percent of the time. The XPS 15 is a little bigger than the Surface Book 2 at 14 inches by 9.3 inches, and it weighs a little more, at 4.5 pounds. The size and weight difference weren’t noticeable in everyday use, though. It’s thinner than the Surface Book 2 when its shut; we measured 0.63 inch, thinner than the Surface Book 2 by a little more than 0.2 inch. The XPS 15 Touch has a useful mix of old and new ports: one Thunderbolt 3 port—which our top pick lacks—one USB 3.0 port, an HDMI slot, an SD card reader, and a Noble lock slot. It also has a useful battery status indicator.
The Dell XPS 15 Touch lasted 6 hours, 53 minutes during our battery life test, about 30 minutes less than the Microsoft Surface Book 2, but long enough for a day spent recording and producing music, or completing a Web design project. The Dell XPS 15 Touch’s webcam is inconveniently placed below its screen. If you frequently make video calls and you’re concerned about meeting participants seeing up your nose, you may want to consider our other picks. What to look forward to. The new offers a 15.6-inch 4K touchscreen display and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card for $2,900. We plan on testing it soon, and we will update this guide with our thoughts. The new has a 15.6-inch 4K touchscreen display and an Nvidia Quadro P2000 graphics card for $2,300.
It could be a good budget contender. We’re hoping to test it over the next few months. Apple has quietly announced for the 15-inch MacBook Pro.
At the end of November 2018, the MacBook Pro will include Radeon Pro Vega GPU options. Once the new MacBook Pro becomes available, we will check it out for this guide. The competition. The had terrible CalMAN marks in our testing—all around the 4.0 mark and well beyond (ideally, we look for results below 3.0), and it was about twice as slow as the Microsoft Surface Book 2 and the Dell XPS 15 Touch when exporting 4K video. We enjoyed using its keyboard and trackpad for work, it had the second-longest battery life of the laptops we tested, and it’s a few hundred dollars less expensive than our budget pick for the same specs, but we can’t recommend it because of the test results we mentioned above. The gave us good CalMAN results, but it displays only in Adobe RGB, which doesn’t help those who will use the sRGB color spectrum (most video and photo editors). It took about 30 seconds longer than both the Microsoft Surface Book 2 and Dell XPS 15 Touch to export 4K video, and its keyboard and trackpad felt less natural to use than the other contenders we tested.
It also had shockingly poor battery life—3 hours, 44 minutes in our test—so we don’t think the ZenBook Pro 15 is the right choice for video and photo editing. We considered mobile workstations like the and the, but both models have slower, seventh-generation processors, and the Precision 7520 weighs more than 6 pounds.
The is also a mobile workstation,and the is a business laptop, so we eliminated them from the competition. Although it has a new, eighth-generation processor and powerful GPU, the is thicker, wider, and deeper than all the laptops we tested, at 14.2 inches by 10.4 inches by 1 inch.
It also weighs nearly 6 pounds; the laptops we brought in for testing were all 4.5 pounds or less. We tested the with Radeon RX Vega M GL graphics with 4 GB HMB2 VRAM and an eighth-generation i7-8705G processor. In our Adobe Premiere Pro tests, the HP took more than twice as long to export 4K video as the other laptops we tested with Nvidia graphics; it took 4 minutes, 42 seconds, while the Microsoft Surface Book 2 with Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics exported 4K video in 2 minutes, 5 seconds.
The 15-inch MacBook Pro we tested has an Intel Core i9 processor with 32 GB of RAM, but we recommend purchasing the i7 processor with 16 GB of RAM. You’ll see slower speeds than we found here, but the upgrade isn’t worth the extra $300 for the processor, or $400 for more RAM for most video- and photo-editing tasks.
A Complete Buyers Guide For Laptops That Are Ideal For Creative Photoshop Graphic Designers & Photographers Over time, the software programs used to edit photos have undergone significant improvements, and photo editing has become an activity that anyone can do. As the software for editing photos becomes more advanced, it will require better hardware for smooth operation. Many of the newest photo editing programs can load high-definition files, perform very precise edits and manipulate photos on a grand scale. To take advantage of these innovative features, you need to have a laptop that can handle them. Laptops are very convenient for photographers because they make field editing possible. If you have a laptop, you can snap some incredible photos, and you don’t have to wait until you get home to edit the pictures.
Unfortunately, you’ll almost never get the same level of performance from a laptop or a that you’d get from a desktop for the same price, but you should understand that you’re sacrificing a small portion of computing power for portability, which is a huge benefit for photographers. If you’re looking for the best laptop for photo editing, you need to know what to look for. What to Look For When Buying A Laptop For Photo Editing & Photoshop Work A high-quality photograph contains many fine details, and to display these details properly, a significant amount of computing power is needed. The laptop or CPU inside of your laptop is what handles the processing, so to get faster processing, you need a faster CPU. Although the other components are important, the processor within your laptop holds the greatest importance because it will handle most of the tasks associated with photo editing. Many modern laptops come with an integrated graphics card, which is built into the CPU or motherboard.
The GPU inside of your laptop is the graphics card, and it’s not nearly as important as the CPU. To make edits to HD pictures, you need the fastest processor that you can get for your budget. The i5 or i7 Processors Many of the newest laptops come with an i5 or i7 CPU, and these are two of the best types of processors available.
After looking at the base clock speed, it’s quite common for consumers to believe that all i7 processors are automatically faster than i5 processors, and the reality is that several i5 processors offer faster processing than their i7 counterparts. It’s important to consider the year that the processor was made because it’s important for determining the true speed of the CPU. The chip architectures that are used in modern computer processors are always changing, so an i5 processor that was made one year ago is likely to deliver faster processing than an i7 chip that was made four years ago. Most people don’t realize that there is a secret to getting the best price on a laptop. You can always purchase the laptop that has the newest CPU, but the CPU might only be marginally faster than a CPU that costs half the price. It’s almost always better to choose a laptop that doesn’t have the newest CPU on the market because it can save you a lot of money.
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The i5 and i7 CPUs are very popular, and they should provide plenty of power for photo editing, but you can always get a laptop that has an AMD processor or older Intel CPU. The performance from an older model might not be as smooth as possible, but it should be enough to accomplish your photo editing goals. Storage Capacity and RAM The newest cameras can snap stunning digital photos, and some of the best cameras are built into the latest smartphones. If you’ve ever unloaded your smartphone photos onto your computer, you might’ve notice that the files are quite large and require a lot of space on your hard drive. For most photo editing purposes, 8GB of Ram should be plenty, and it is enough memory to hold large editing projects.
However, if you’re planning to carry out a lot of Photoshop editing, then you might want to consider upgrading to 16GB of RAM. The amount of money needed to upgrade a laptop beyond 16GB of RAM is almost never worth the boost in performance that you’d get from the memory. Most modern laptops come with two slots for RAM and can hold up to 8GB per slot. Photos that are created with several different layers tend to use up the largest amount of space, so they require a large hard drive to store them. The best laptop for photo editing should have about 1TB of space, which is 1,000 Gigabytes. With a 1TB hard drive, you’ll have a professional laptop, and you shouldn’t have any trouble storing massive amounts of photos. However, if you don’t want to spend the money, you can consider using a cloud storage service, and you can wait to purchase a larger hard drive.
There is also the option of purchasing an external drive, which can hold huge amounts of photos. Resolution and Screen Size When it comes to for your laptop, you’re stuck with the built-in screen. The monitor that a laptop uses is built-into the computer, and while this can be very convenient, it also makes it nearly impossible to choose your own screen. When searching for the best laptop for photo editing, you’ll find several different screen sizes to consider. Whether you realize it or not, the screen size has a major impact on the overall size of your laptop. It’s always nice to have a bigger screen, but you might have to sacrifice some of the convenience that comes from having a smaller screen. Most laptop owners enjoy a screen size between 12 to 15 inches.
When it comes to choosing a screen, resolution is very important because it allows you to make edits to the finest details of your photographs. The color produced by your laptop screen determines how much correction you can do for each photo. Considering Your Budget When shopping for the perfect laptop for photo editing, you should consider your budget. If you’re considering photo editing as a professional career, then you’ll need a laptop in the mid to high-end range. To save money and get the best deal, mid-range computers are the best products. Many consumers choose to spend a large amount of money upfront because they want to avoid having to spend money on future upgrades.
For hobbyists, some of the best laptops for photo editing reside in the low to mid-range categories. You can always start out with a cheaper model, and later, spend some money to upgrade the components. However, you should also know that laptops can be quite difficult and costly to upgrade.
Mac Versus PC Almost all modern computers come in the form of a Mac or PC, and when it comes to photo editing, most professionals prefer a Mac over a PC. Apple is well-known for releasing excellent software programs for their operating systems, and the company spends a lot of money on the development of display technology. In other words, most Apple products are known for having a bright, vibrant display.
Mac computers use the proprietary Retina brand, which gives photographers a much better look at their photos. By choosing a Mac, you can almost always expect better photo editing. If you’re looking for raw computing performance, Windows PCs tend to offer more than a Mac.
The problem that many consumers have with Mac computers is the price, which tends to be significantly higher than what you’d pay for a comparable PC. Other Considerations A laptop computer can help you to unlock the full potential of your digital photos, and with some of the latest software programs, you can turn boring images into stunning works of art. Although Apple is the preferred brand for photo editing, Windows computers offer a variety of free applications for editing. If you’re looking for the best value, consider getting a laptop with an AMD A10 or Intel Core i5. These processors can handle extensive editing, and they’ll allow you to edit several images at the same time.
A 1TB hard drive can hold many large image files, but it won’t be as fast as a Solid-State Drive, which costs more money. Some final considerations to make relate to compatibility. You should consider getting a laptop that has multiple USB and card readers because you’ll need a way to transfer photos from your digital camera to your computer.
Although it’s not nearly as important as the other features, battery life is worth considering. Below, you’ll find reviews for some of the best laptops for photo editing. By choosing one of these hand-picked products, you can save time and money. High-End Laptops for Photo Editing Most media professionals prefer Apple computers, and the Apple MacBook Air MJVG2LL/A is a great example of a high-end product. Since it offers long batter life, you get the convenience of being able to edit digital photos from almost anywhere.
The Apple MJVG2LL/A is designed to be powerful, light and thin, which increases convenience. It comes with support for 802.11ac Wi-Fi and provides all-flash storage. When compared to standard hard drives, flash storage devices are significantly faster, and some of the latest flash devices are 22 times faster than a traditional hard drive.
With a 1.6GHz intel Core i5, this MacBook offers smooth photo editing, and the processor can use Turbo Boost technology to reach speeds up to 2.7GHz. It has 4GB of LPDDR3 RAM and features a 13.3-inch display. The resolution is crisp enough to edit the finest details of your photos and helps to reduce eye strain.
Many of the latest gaming laptops work well for photo editing because they’re built for performance. The Dell i7559-763BLK features a 6th Generation Intel Core i5-6300HQ, which contains four powerful computing cores.
With a maximum clock speed of 3.2GHz, the i5 processor inside of this laptop can crunch some serious editing projects. The i7559-763BLK comes with Windows 10, and it has 8GB of DDR3L RAM. For the smoothest image editing, it comes equipped with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4GB GDDR5 graphics card. Although the 256GB Solid-State Drive doesn’t have an enormous amount of storage space, it’s significantly faster than a traditional hard drive, and if you need more storage space, you always have the option of purchasing an.
For convenient photo downloading, this laptop has a 2-in-1 media card reader, and it uses the latest USB 3.0 technology. To maximize your photo editing experience, it has a 15.6-inch FHD display. The ASUS ROG GL552VW-DH71 has several features that make it suitable for photo editing. For starters, it has an Intel Core i7-6700HQ 2.6GHz processor, and to make it much easier to manage huge image files, it comes equipped with 16GB of RAM. The primary storage device in this laptop is a 1TB hard drive, which operates at 7,200 RPMs. The 15.6-inch FHD display shows the finest details in every image, and it offers a full HD resolution. With an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M graphics card, this laptop is just as useful for gaming as it is for photo editing.
It comes with the latest USB technology, which offers the fastest image downloading and uploading. For a solid feel, the ASUS ROG GL552VW-DH71 is made with 100 solder points, and the built-in keyboard is engineered for maximum comfort. Mid-Range Laptops for Photo Editing You don’t need to have a high-end laptop for photo editing, and the HP ENVY TouchSmart laptop proves this point. It comes with a 4th Generation Intel Core i5-4210M processor, which operates at a base clock speed of 2.6GHz. Since it’s equipped with a 64-bit version of Windows 10, it’s compatible with a many of the latest versions of photo editing software. For smooth, efficient multitasking, it has 8GB of DDR3L SDRAM.
Although it doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card, the Intel HD graphics 4600 should be enough for most photo editing projects. To make sharing photos easier, the HP ENVY TouchSmart comes with a built-in 802.11ac wireless card and Bluetooth interface, and with a 750GB hard drive, there is plenty of room for large image files. The Acer Touch V3-372T is another mid-range laptop to consider, and it features an ultra-thin design. It comes with the latest version of Windows 10, and since it’s built with an Intel Core i7-6500U processor, it can handle the latest software applications for photo editing. The CPU has a clock speed of 2.5GHz, but with Turbo Boost technology, it can reach speeds up to 3.1GHz. The 13.3-inch display allows you to view your photos in full HD, so you shouldn’t have any trouble editing the finest details of any image.
This laptop doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card, but the integrated Intel HD graphics 520 should be enough for most editing purposes. The Acer Touch V3-372T comes with 8GB of DDR3 memory, which can be expanded to 16GB. A 512GB Solid State drive gives you plenty of space for your photos, and the SSD is much faster than a traditional hard drive.
Here we another mid-range laptop for photo editing, and unlike many of the other products on this list, this computer is powered by an AMD A12-9700P processor. With a base clock speed of 2.5GHz, this AMD processor has no trouble handling demanding photo editing applications. Since it comes equipped with 12GB of RAM, it’s very useful for multitasking, and it will allow you to simultaneously edit several different photos.
The 15.6-inch display features LED backlighting and delivers a resolution of 1366×768. It comes with Windows 10, so you can enjoy a wide range of different software applications for image editing. The Lenovo Ideapad 310 features impressive sound and performance, and it’s designed with 802.11ac wireless connectivity, which allows you to quickly share your finished photos. It has integrated AMD Radeon graphics and delivers enough storage for thousands of images. Budget Laptops for Photo Editing If you’re on a tighter budget, consider the Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575G-53VG. With an Intel Core i5-6200U processor, this laptop offers enough performance for most photo editing applications.
The base speed of the CPU is 2.8GHz, and it’s designed to be compatible with Windows 10. It has a 15.6-inch full HD display, which is very important for photo editing. To back up the powerful display, this laptop comes equipped with an NVIDIA GeForce 940MX 2GB graphics card.
Since it has 8GB of DDR4 memory, you can multitask and enjoy a variety of applications while you’re editing your favorite photos. The Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575G-53VG comes with Windows 10 Home, and a backlit keyboard makes it possible to edit photos at night, which is a huge benefit for astrophotography. With a six-cell Li-Ion battery, this laptop will run for 12 hours on a full charge. Here we have another budget laptop for photo editing, and it features an Intel i5 processor, which has two independent operating cores. The CPU runs at a base speed of 1.6GHz, and with the Turbo Boost technology, it can reach speeds up to 2.3GHz. Since this laptop falls into the budget category, it comes with only 2GB of RAM, which is enough memory for basic photo editing needs.
It comes with a 64GB SSD HD, so you might want to consider purchasing an external drive with it. The Apple MacBook Air has an 11.6-inch screen and delivers a resolution of 1366×768. It has Intel HD graphics 3000 and runs on the Mac operating system.
Although the 64GB flash storage device is small, it’s much faster than a traditional hard drive. The ASUS F556UA-AB54 NB Windows laptop is equipped with an Intel Core i5-7200U, so it’s a great choice for photo and image editing. The 2.5GHz processor is powerful enough to edit several photos at the same time, and it almost guarantees that most video editing software applications will run smoothly.
For even smoother multitasking, this laptop comes with 8GB of DDR4 memory. It can boot up and load files at lightning speeds because it features a built-in 256GB SSD hard drive. With several different USB slots, the ASUS F556UA-AB54 NB is compatible with most small devices, and it allows you to upload and download photos quickly and efficiently. It also has a card reader, which is needed to read the SD cards that most digital cameras use to store photos on. Cheap Laptops for Photo Editing Most people don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on a new laptop, and the HP 14-an013nr is one of the cheapest laptops that you can buy.
One of its best features is the 14-inch full HD IPS display. The screen delivers full HD resolution, and for optimal brightness, it’s illuminated with LED backlighting.
To satisfy the needs of most photo editing programs, this laptop is equipped with an AMD E2-7110 QC processor, which operates at 1.8GHz. The CPU is a tiny powerhouse, and it operates with a total of four cores, which is especially important for photo and video editing software. It comes with 4GB of DDr3L SDRAM, so you can be much more productive while editing your favorite photos. The HP 14-an013nr ships from the factory with Windows 10 and gives you plenty of options for image editing software.
Although it’s not the best choice for professional photo editing, it’s capable of handling the basic needs of the average consumer or hobbyist. If you’re searching for the cheapest laptops for photo editing, the Acer Chromebook CB3-131-C3SZ is a popular choice. Since it’s equipped with an Intel Celeron N2840 2.16GHz processor, it can be useful for editing images. However, it’s not a great choice for large Photoshop projects. With 2GB of DDR3L SDRAM, it has enough memory for basic functions, but it’s not the best choice for larger editing projects. Since it only has an internal storage capacity of 16GB, you might want to consider purchasing an external hard drive to use with this computer.
Although the raw performance isn’t terribly impressive, the Acer Chromebook CB3-131-C3SZ has a beautiful 11.6-inch HD IPS screen, which is powered by Intel HD graphics. On a full charge, the battery will last for nine hours, so you’ll have plenty of time to finish editing while away from home.
Conclusion Photo editing can be a lot of fun, but you need to have a suitable laptop for the job. You can use editing to enhance beautiful photos and make them look even better.
Many of the newest laptops are equipped with more than enough computing power to handle demanding photo editing applications, but it’s important to remember that you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to get a great laptop. If you’d like to save money, you’ll find most of the value in the mid-range products.
You can use almost any laptop to get started with photo editing, but to operate on a professional level, you’ll want to consider upgrading or purchasing one of the high-end products. Related Guides: What good is having a great laptop when you’re sitting in an uncomfortable chair? Have a read of my to get an idea on what you should be looking out for when buying a comfy office chair. Thanks for a very knowledgable well written concise, easy to read and easy to understand article. It’s perfect for someone like myself who has to make a purchasing decision with due diligence on an a complicated topic that has hundreds of items and thousands of techie recommendations that are all in “techie speak” to the point in listening to them you begin to wonder if it’s all about numbers and how much they are being paid to promote a brand.
You have cut through the morass clearly and concisely. Now I can start the purchase journey well armed and knowledgeable no longer feeling overwhelmed by a million choices wondering if I was going in the right direction. WELL DONE AND MANY THANKS.