If you are like me and travel quite a bit and need the ability to edit while abroad or edit on location far from your home, this post is for you.
I am often editing in a hotel room, so I need a computer that I can take with me and get still get a lot of work done. After exhaustive research and after using my laptop for the past two months I am very happy with my choice. The performance is awesome and I would definitely buy it again.
So what was I looking for in a laptop? After suffering for years with an underpowered and frustratingly slow laptop, I decided to treat myself (a head nod to Parks and Rec fans) and get a laptop with decent RAM, a fast processor and a graphics card optimized for Adobe Creative cloud as I do most of my work in Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop and Lightroom. In regards to the PC vs Mac debate, I am operating system agnostic. At my last job I worked on a Mac Pro tower with OS X Snow Leopard and at home my old laptop was a PC with Windows. Both OS’ worked fine and had their own sets of benefits and drawbacks. There are many fanatics on both sides of the OS debate who will happily tell you why Mac is your best bet and many others who support getting a PC. I went into my research as unbiased as possible, just looking for the laptop that would suit my needs and budget best.
One of the main features I was looking for was portability. I wanted something I could slip into my camera backpack without adding a ton of weight. However, I wouldn’t look at any laptop with a screen less than 15”, no matter how light, as that is too little screen real estate.
A few areas where I wasn’t so demanding – and this opened up my choices significantly – were battery life, speaker quality, touchscreen and a 1080p max resolution. When travelling my laptop is plugged in 99% of the time, so a long battery life, while awesome, wasn’t a huge selling point. I also use headphones when editing so even though it would also be a benefit, great speakers are not a requirement. And for those times I am home I can use my external speakers.I don’t need touch screen, I have used it on friends’ laptops and it is cool, but not a necessity. There are several good Windows laptop models out there that have UHD or 4K screens (the MacBook Pro’s Retina Display goes up to 2880X1800), but Windows still needs to scale many applications that aren’t at those resolutions and the effects can sometimes be less than ideal.
I had a very rough budget of $1,500 to $2,000, which I stretched to include the MacBook Pro, but would be happy to spend less if possible and reallocate the savings to my camera budget.
Even before I started my research I knew I had two options, a MacBook Pro or anything else. MacBook Pros are the laptop of choice for creative people looking for a powerful laptop and with good reason. The OS is stable, they have gorgeous displays with very high color reproduction specs, and battery life is outstanding. It is a clear choice for someone who doesn’t want to work on a Windows machine. For my purposes I wanted to scour the market and find a computer that was the best bang for my hard earned dollar and I started the search by looking at the most obvious contender, a MacBook Pro.
Top 5 Laptops
1. Apple MacBook Pro 15.4″ Notebook Computer with Retina Display, Force Touch, Intel Core i7 2.5GHz, AMD Radeon R9 M370ZX Graphics (2GB), 16GB RAM, 512GB PCIe-Based Flash Storage, MacOS X 10.10 Yosemite (2015)
This is the bar against which all laptops are measured. Even ardent Windows fans have to acknowledge that Apple puts out an amazing laptop. So what makes this laptop so amazing?
First off the display is stunning. The IPS Retina display is 2880X1800 pixels on the 15” MacBook Pro, which I preferred over the 13” version. In person this display is extremely sharp and videos look absolutely amazing. The colors are vibrant and accurate. The IPS Retina display is a big selling point for the MacBook Pro 15”.
The most recent 2015 release of the MacBook Pro also saw the GPU updated to the new AMD R9 graphics card, which was a much needed improvement as the previous NVIDIA GT750M was getting long in the tooth, having been used for the last 2 generations of MacBook Pro.I was not thrilled with Apple’s choiceof AMD as the NVIDIA 900 series GPUs are more powerful and NVIDIA generally works better with Adobe’s products. I’m guessing they went with the AMD GPU in order to conserve battery life since they aren’t targeting the gamer market which wants as much power as possible.
The MacBook Pro comes with an Intel Core-i7 quad core CPU that you can get in several configurations, you get up to 16GB of RAM which isn’t upgradeable, and the storage is PCIe based SSD starting from 256gb, going up to 512GB for the AMD R9 dedicated graphics card and if you want the 1tb drive you have to pony up another $500, which is too much money in my opinion. The speed of the drive is blazing and has to be used to be appreciated. Another big selling point for the MacBook Pro.
The laptop weighs in at a very respectable 4.5lbs (2kgs) and the body is solid and exactly what you expect if you’ve ever seen a MacBook Pro. The keyboard has an excellent feel and the Force Touch trackpad is hands down the best trackpad out there.
The battery life is outstanding at a reported 9 hours. In my tests it does come very close to that reported time. This is another huge selling point for many users out there, but as I mentioned above I am mostly plugged in when travelling so this wasn’t as big a selling point for me.
The MacBook Pro I would go with would be the 512GB SSD with the AMD R9 GPU. This model is 4.5lbs (2kgs), 0.7” (1.8cm) thick and can be had for the not insignificant cost of $2,349.00. Which is well over my budget, but I was willing to include it as it is the laptop all my video production friends swear by.
After researching the MacBook Pro lineup I went searching for the top of the line Windows laptops that fit my criteria and found that my preferences lined up very closely and unsurprisingly with the gaming community’s needs. High spec laptops are aimed at the gaming market for good reason, as they account for the largest demographic of power laptop users. Many of the gaming laptops I looked at were designed with a certain amount of flashiness. While having a crazy dragon logo or a weird futuristic looking frame isn’t my personal preference, I was also not put off by them as I was looking for the best power to price ratio within my budget. Below are the Windows laptops I whittled down to being a good fit for my needs.
2. Asus ROG 15.6″ Ultra HD Gaming Notebook Computer, Intel Core i7-4720HQ 2.6GHz, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX960M 2GB, Windows 8.1 (Free Upgrade to Win 10)
This laptop has great specs in small frame. Its SSD is both large and fast. The Republic of Gamers (ROG) is a well-known and respected brand in the gaming world and this is one of Asus’ lighter, more portable options.
The graphics card is the NVIDIA GTX960M with 2GB of GDDR5. This graphics card is in the lower end of the NVIDIA GTX900 line, but it still performs very well. This is one area where there is a tradeoff of some power for budgetary reasons. The one thing I noted was that the graphics card didn’t handle 4K footage as well as I was expecting and I attribute that primarily to the graphics card. However, if your budget falls right around the $1,500 range, this is an excellent price to power ratio.
The 512GB SSD is PCIe which is extremely fast, and at this price point getting 512GB of super-fast SSD is truly amazing.
It has 16GB of RAM which is great for keeping processing and render times down.
The display is decent and UHD video looks great, but I found the other laptops to have truer color reproduction.
This model weighs in at 5lbs (2.27kgs), is 0.83” (2.1cm) thick and is currently selling for$1,559.00.
3. Lenovo ThinkPad W550s 15.5″ 3K IPS Notebook Computer, Intel Core i7-5500U 2.4GHz, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, NVIDIA Quadro K620M, Windows 7 Pro (Free Upgrade to Win 10 Pro)
ThinkPads are constructed to be workhorse workstations. This model is no exception. The ThinkPadW550s is built like a tank and has great features like a spill resistant keyboard, a very tough case including the display, which you can press hard on and feel very little flex. It is also built to handle extremes in temperature as well with Lenovo stating that it has passed military levels of testing.
The W550s comes with an NVIDIA Quadro K620M with 2GB of memory. The Quadro is NVIDIA’s professional line of graphics made primarily for CAD designers, but they work excellently with video as well.
Where this computer is a bit weak is in its dual core instead of quad core Intel processor. The Intel Core i7-5500U will process 1080p videos fine, but I would feel more comfortable with a quad core when I start editing 4K regularly which could happen very soon.
The computer comes with 8GB of RAM installed which Lenovo states can be increased to a max of 16GB, but I have read that 32GB is entirely possible, though expensive with the two RAM slots requiring 16GB modules each.
The W550 weighs in at 5lbs (2.3kgs), is 0.88″ (22.35mm) thick, and is currently selling for $1,799.99
4. MSI GE62 Apache Pro-055 15.6″ Full HD Gaming Notebook Computer, Intel Core i7-4720HQ 2.6-3.6GHz, 12GB RAM, 128GB SSD+1TB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M 3GB, Windows 8.1 (Free Upgrade to Win 10), Aluminum Black
The MSI GE62 Apache Pro is a solid amount of power in a small-ish frame. It has a strong feature set, but tips the scales at 5.3lbs (2.4kgs).
The graphics card is the very solid NVIDIA GTX970M with 3GB of GDDR5 RAM. This is one of NVIDIA’s newest 900 series graphics cards, albeit the mid-level 970M not the higher powered 980M. Though the performance is still very strong. Anytime you want the current top of the line graphics card the laptop price shoots up, so this is a good buy for this much power.
There is 12GB of RAM which can be upgraded to 16GB with the two available memory slots. While not topped out, this is a lot of working RAM.
The processor is the Intel Mobile Core i7-4720HQ 2.6GH. While not as powerful as the MSI GS60 Ghost Pro listed below, this is a respectable processor with good speeds.
There are two drives included, a 128GB M.2 SSD which not as fast as PCIe, still delivers very fast times. This drive can be replaced with a higher capacity drive. There is also a standard 1TB 2.5 inch 7200 RPM which you can load media and not take up space on the SSD allowing for faster boot times.
The battery life is around 3 hours for non-intensive uses and much less for any processor intensive programs.
The weight of 5.3lbs (2.4kgs) is not that light, and at 1.06” (2.69cm) it isn’t the thinnest either, but the tradeoff is that you get a lower price of $1,299.99 which is a solid value.
5. MSI GS60 Ghost Pro-606 15.6″ Full HD Gaming Notebook Computer, Intel Core i7-5700HQ 2.7-3.5GHz, 16GB RAM, 128GB SSD+1TB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M 3GB, Windows 8.1 (Free Upgrade to Win 10), Aluminum Black
The specs on this laptop and the ultra-lightweight and super thin frame really peaked my interest. The Ghost Pro GS60-606 has similar specs to the Apache Pro with some areas outshining it, but in a much slimmer and lighter frame.
The GS60 Ghost Pro has the same drive configuration as the Apache Pro above with a 128GB M.2 SSD and a 1TB 7200RPM standard drive. It also has the same graphics card, the NVIDIA GTX970M with 3GB of GDDR5 RAM which is a solid graphics card.
This laptop has a stronger processor than the Apace Pro, the Intel i7-5700HQ instead of the Intel i7-4720HQ. It also comes maxed out with 16GB of RAM, and has a much lighter body.
The biggest selling point is that this powerful laptop weighs in at a svelte 4.2lbs (1.9kgs) and a 0.78” (1.98cm) thickness. It is superbly light for the amount of power it packs. All this power in a thin body does come at a premium though as the price is currently $1,699.99.
So at the end it was a contest between the MSI GS60 Ghost Pro and the Apple MacBook Pro. While I was sold on the feature set of the Ghost Pro and my hands on experience confirmed what I learned from my research, I was still trepidatious about going with a company I hadn’t heard of previously. I know I can rely on Apple, which is part of the reason they can charge a premium for their laptops. In the end however, the low weight, processing power and much, much lower price sold me and I went with the MSI GS60 Ghost Pro. It was the light weight powerhouse I was looking for.
This post was typed mostly while on a train from Berlin to Bavaria to enjoy a Bierfest in a small village town. I have had this laptop for the past 3 months and this laptop still ticks all the right boxes for me. The display is excellent and I have heard from a few friends who got the 3K version that they wished they had saved the money and gotten the 1080p model I now own. The speed of the SSD, the processor and the graphics card are blazing fast and I am very pleased with the massive reduction on my render times as well as the speed with which programs open and run. While I didn’t think I would enjoy the colorful backlit keys, I have actually put them to good use. But my favorite thing about this laptop is the weight. At 4.2lbs (1.9Kgs), and only 0.78” (19.9mm) my Ghost Pro is super portable and I smile when I slide it into my photo backpack.
While my initial reasoning on not requiring a long battery life were correct as I am plugged in nearly all the time, I do wish I could have it all, especially on longer flights.
My laptop, which I call Lappy 386 (nod to Homestar Runner fans), powers through my editing, photo and video, renders my After Effects projects like a boss and does this all in an ultra-portable chassis. I am very happy and will hopefully be so for years to come.
