Need help picking a laptop

[WhiteUAV]

Hello! 

 

I'm currently looking to buy a laptop for around $1,200 as my on the go workhorse as I'm a videographer / photographer that is constantly on the go and sometimes I don't have enough time to go all the way back home to work on something but have a little spare time that If I had a laptop I'd be able to get some work done. I edit 4.6k Raw footage and Large Raw photographs. Can someone point me in the right direction of what laptop to get? Thanks!

[Aaron_T]

Many brands make good laptops, however, for your use case, it seems like you are going to need a powerful multi-core laptop with good cooling.

 

For your workload CPU performance will be king. If you want to game on it you can buy a machine with a decent GPU but that is secondary.

 

I'd say if you have to buy now, a i7-9750H is your baseline, if you can wait the Ryzen mobile 4000 series chips look very promising.

[WhiteUAV]

Any suggestions for any models and would you pe

22 minutes ago, AaronThomas said:

Many brands make good laptops, however, for your use case, it seems like you are going to need a powerful multi-core laptop with good cooling.

 

For your workload CPU performance will be king. If you want to game on it you can buy a machine with a decent GPU but that is secondary.

 

I'd say if you have to buy now, a i7-9750H is your baseline, if you can wait the Ryzen mobile 4000 series chips look very promising.

Any model suggestions? And would you personally prioritize a better cpu in my case over a better gpu?

[Aaron_T]

14 hours ago, WhiteUAV said:

Any model suggestions? And would you personally prioritize a better cpu in my case over a better gpu?

Yes, CPU is going to be your priority, but laptops don't have a ton of choice, so once you know you need a decent CPU your priority is going to shift a bit to a laptop with the best cooling you can get in your budget.

 

With high performance laptops, you can have two laptops with the same CPU, and one boosts to barely over base clock, maybe 3ghz to 3.2ghz for extended workloads, then the other with superior cooling might boost to near 4ghz for extended workloads, and even though they both have the same CPU their performance is going to be wildly different.

 

This laptop seems to fit your budget, and cpu requirements, with a dual fan, mulit-heat pipe cooling configuration. https://www.amazon.com/Gaming-GeForce-i7-9750H-Windows-GL531GT-EB76/dp/B07SDFFRJJ/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=Asus%2BROG%2BStrix%2BGL502&qid=1582915578&s=electronics&sr=1-3&th=1

The GPU isn't great, but it'll play eSports titles fine.

 

As with anything, higher budget gets you more of course, and with a $2k to $2.5k budget you can move into the realm of much more serious workhorse laptops like the MSI Titan or Alienware Area-51m