Any suggestions for laptops that are good for photo editing?

Tom Pinchenzo

Tom Pinchenzo

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Tom
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I’m looking to buy a new laptop (I currently use my partner’s work laptop for my photo editing but we’ve decided we should probably get our own!). We have a budget of around £500 and photo editing will probably be the most demanding thing it does. Having used a very cheap laptop up until now I’d like something with a good screen!

What do you folks use? Any recommendations? I’ve heard ASUS Zenbooks are fairly good...

Thanks!
 
The quick answer is "get a desktop" at that budget.
What you really need, in order of importance is
Excellent Monitor IPS preferably
Good quality input devices
Plenty of RAM
CPU
Storage

I looked at Zen Books on PCWorld and the cheapest was £649, for that you get
14" monitor - a bit small, and they aren't stating IPS, so it may not be.
8GB RAM - Only just enough
i5 - Yeah, that'll do
256GB SSD - space for ~ 3000 14bit RAWs and not much else (after Windows 10 and your editing suite)
The 15.6" on PC World was £999.

A quick look on Amazon found a
BenQ GW2765HT for £270
And a generic tower for £370
(Windows 10 OS (3.9GHz AMD A4 Dual-Core Processor, Radeon 8370D Graphics Chip, 16GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM, 1TB HDD))
Or you can pick up mini PCs of around the same spec for roughly the same.
 
I second the suggestion above.
Get 16GB of RAM with a SSD drive (possibly 512GB. Laptop only if you really, really need the portability, otherwise is better desktop
Then as soon as you can get an external drive to store your images and probably you will want a big screen
 
All very well suggesting desktop but not everyone is in a position to have both so a multipurpose laptop is the only option.
Ive run lightroom and now Darktable on a I3 core (original not dual/quad core) and 4GB RAM. Granted its not speedy but usable.

Ive been looking at the ZEN BOOK and they do have ISP monitors. They also do a Vario which is slightly cheaper. Granted its £649 but shop around theres bound to be a sale on.

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/compu...enbook-ux430-14-laptop-navy-10157746-pdt.html
Has the spec im looking at
 
Thanks for all your thoughts. I can see what you mean about getting much better spec for your money with a desktop but as AgentOrange suggests, I don’t have desk space for a desktop and I’d rather go a bit over-budget on a laptop. I’m not a pro so I won’t need to process lots of images in a short space of time. I’m currently using my partner’s £200 super-budget laptop so anything will be an improvement!
 
You have to go to a shop and see what you think is a "good screen"

The best screens in my opinion have a clear glass looking type screen rather than the matt anti-glare type screens found on most laptops.

They suffer from glare a lot but are far more clear to my eye. The anti-glare matt ones don't suffer from glare but look poorer in my opinion.
 
Hi All,

I’ve gone for a Zenbook UX410.

It has a 14” IPS screen with nearly 300 pixels per inch, i5 processor and 8GB RAM.

Ended up paying £600 for a refurbished one rather than £800 for a new one.

Thanks for all the advice!

Tom
 
I've just built a desktop, mainly for photo PP, but also a little bit of gaming and that still cost £700+ and I haven't even bought a graphics card (not convinced it's required for LR/PS). I'm going to echo much that has been said above. IPS screen (HD), 8GB RAM min and you will only be able to run either LR or PS. 16GB is worth it. SSD drive and an external HD and a high MHz processor. I got the i5 8600K. I suspect you will need to up your budget!
 
Thanks Skiking, as I mentioned, I've bought the Zenbook - been using it for a few weeks now and I'm really happy with it! Great screen and runs all my processing software a treat. It seems to tick your boxes of screen quality, RAM and processor.
 
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