Time for a laptop upgrade top spec reccomendations

rgrebby

Suspended / Banned
Messages
2,835
Name
Richard
Edit My Images
Yes
I've never been one for apple products, mainly because I'm just not rich enough however I was looking eagerly at the latest apple macbook pro that came out earlier this year but when it did I was quite disappointed with the specs.
Apple as a brand seem to be failing more and more each year so i'm looking to the future and have been trying to find a replacement for my old sony viao, which is coming on to 4 years old now.

A little background, I run a studio, I shoot photos and video and have pretty heavy expectations on my computer equipment. My desktop, which I built myself is getting fairly old too so I thought it might be an idea to kill two birds with one stone (perhaps)

I'm looking for a powerful laptop which could replace my desktop. It needs to have support to add monitors, D-GPU and enough RAM and SSD space on the main drive that I can install all the Adobe products I require. It should also have fast connections for external drives ad a screen thats sharp. I personally dont think full HD will cut it now days.
I'm also looking for portability, this needs to be a location laptop too.

The end goal is to have a clean laptop system that I can arrive in the studio, hook it up and be ready to run.


So the brief (cant be arsed to read the rest) version.

  • Laptop
  • D-GPU
  • 16+gb ram
  • decent SSD
  • good connectivity
  • portable (ie 13" or 15" max)
  • ability to score high on benchmarks
  • ultra HD screen with IPS of course
Money is pretty much no object right now.

Laptops I've been looking at but unsettled
  • HP Spectre 15" (whichever came out this year)
  • MS Surface book
  • Porsche design book one (when its released)
  • MS surface book 2 (if it ever gets released)

The other option I do have is to purchase a slightly less expensive laptop and put some spare money into the desktop I have, upgrade gpu. cpu and drives, maybe the mainboard and monitor too...
 
Dell XPS15. i7 quad core, QHD screen, mix of carbon & ali for light weight, separate GPU, SSD etc etc. Upgrades are easy too, if you need to add or tweak, and they do a decent 3 years next business day onsite warranty.
 
Dell XPS15. i7 quad core, QHD screen, mix of carbon & ali for light weight, separate GPU, SSD etc etc. Upgrades are easy too, if you need to add or tweak, and they do a decent 3 years next business day onsite warranty.
What he said. High end dell's are very good. The paid aftercare is also very good, better than applecare imo.

Started to have more exposure to hp kit recently, not seen the high end stuff but the mid range is good performing if a bit plasticy.
 
What he said. High end dell's are very good. The paid aftercare is also very good, better than applecare imo.

Started to have more exposure to hp kit recently, not seen the high end stuff but the mid range is good performing if a bit plasticy.

Definitely better after-sales service than Applecare - none of this having to take it to an Applestore & being without the machine for a week until it comes back, or having the 'genius' sucking his teeth and telling you it will be £69.95 if they don't find the fault. It's not completely painless, because you have to go through a filter system designed to weed out time wasters, but it's much better than taking half a day off work to deliver & another to collect + waiting a week.

Our son has a slightly higher end HP laptop, and it's definitely plasticky and old-fashioned in styling, but seems to function well. 2 years old & no problems.
 
Last edited:
I've had a Dell XPS15 since about 2015, never regretted buying for one minute, it's a lovely laptop, excellent performance, lovely screen, very nice feel to the keyboard and touch pad, not cheap but well worth it as it still does all I want and more and I've no reason to even consider an upgrade yet.
Dell Outlet have refurbished ones for good prices.
 
Last edited:
I used PC Specialist & done my own laptop spec.

Octane Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080)


Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-6700k (4.0GHz) 8MB Cache Memory (RAM)

32GB HyperX IMPACT 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (4 x 8GB)

NVIDIA® Quadro® M3000M - 4GB DDR5 Video RAM - DX® 12 (G-SYNC Not Included)

500GB Samsung 850 EVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
750GB WD BLACK 2.5" WD7500BPKX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
mSATA/M.2 SSD Drive
256GB SAMSUNG SM951 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 2150MB/R, 1260MB/W)
External DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x Samsung Slim USB 2.0 External DVD-RW
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8260 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) +BT 4.0, vPRO
USB Options
4 x USB 3.0 PORTS (1 x POWERED) + 1 e-SATA/USB 3.0 PORT COMBINED
 
I used PC Specialist & done my own laptop spec.

Octane Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080)


Intel[emoji768] Core[emoji769]i7 Quad Core Processor i7-6700k (4.0GHz) 8MB Cache Memory (RAM)

32GB HyperX IMPACT 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (4 x 8GB)

NVIDIA[emoji768] Quadro[emoji768] M3000M - 4GB DDR5 Video RAM - DX[emoji768] 12 (G-SYNC Not Included)

500GB Samsung 850 EVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
750GB WD BLACK 2.5" WD7500BPKX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
mSATA/M.2 SSD Drive
256GB SAMSUNG SM951 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 2150MB/R, 1260MB/W)
External DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x Samsung Slim USB 2.0 External DVD-RW
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL[emoji768] AC-8260 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) +BT 4.0, vPRO
USB Options
4 x USB 3.0 PORTS (1 x POWERED) + 1 e-SATA/USB 3.0 PORT COMBINED
That doesn't sound cheap, Jim?
 
£2000, worth every penny, Windows fires up in about 10 seconds, photoshop 2 seconds.
Best laptops is to time how long Windows takes to fire up, so off the shelves laptops need to check this, faster the better.
 
£2000, worth every penny, Windows fires up in about 10 seconds, photoshop 2 seconds.
Best laptops is to time how long Windows takes to fire up, so off the shelves laptops need to check this, faster the better.
Pretty reasonable when compared with the specification of say a MBP then. Course, it's not just the spec your paying for with that.
 
Pretty reasonable when compared with the specification of say a MBP then. Course, it's not just the spec your paying for with that.

yep, that also include full 3 years collection/delivery repair insurance.
 
It was a tough choice. I wanted something a bit more portable that will run what I want.
Lots of choices as I started off wanting the surface book as drawing on it would be cool but how often would I do that. Ruled out the hp in same way.
I was thinking about a alienware 13 r3 but the battery life wasn't great and its pretty heavy.

After all that I went with a custom build xps13 with the iris card as it's slightly better than the usual 620s in most ultrabooks.
4k on a 13inch might be a bit small but it was cheaper than any other option but still powerful enough to do what I want. Hopefully..
 
Back
Top