Help finding best value laptop 2k budget.

[aiHAL]

Looking for a laptop for school (music engineering) and gaming (cyberpunk). My budget is $2000. 

Preferences:
Will be using a lot of audio equipment mostly wired mics and headsets so would like for it to contain ports for them.
Would like for it to have up gradable memory and a large battery.
Willing to pay more for a good quality build/thermals/aesthetics. 
Ryzen cpu since I hear that is all the rave right now. 
16 gigabytes of ram for my audio programs. 

[boggy77]

asus rog zephyrus g14

[SupaKomputa]

asus rog zephyrus g14

This is the best currently.

There's also an Alan Walker edition:

[Escapenz]

3 minutes ago, boggy77 said:

asus rog zephyrus g14

would be my pick as well. Maybe slap the ram upto 32gb if you need to

[Devryd]

Are you sure you need a laptop that powerful?
for that budget, you might could build a strong tower and get a lower budget laptop

Especially when working with audio a lot, a laptop might be too loud

[5x5]

1 hour ago, aiHAL said:

Looking for a laptop for school (music engineering) and gaming (cyberpunk). My budget is $2000. 

Preferences:
Will be using a lot of audio equipment mostly wired mics and headsets so would like for it to contain ports for them.
Would like for it to have up gradable memory and a large battery.
Willing to pay more for a good quality build/thermals/aesthetics. 
Ryzen cpu since I hear that is all the rave right now. 
16 gigabytes of ram for my audio programs. 

The best bet is the Asus Zephyrus G14. If the audio quality is okay for you, the Lenovo Legion 5 will soon be available with Ryzen and a 2060 as well

[ggk]

9 hours ago, aiHAL said:

Looking for a laptop for school (music engineering) and gaming (cyberpunk). My budget is $2000. 

Preferences:
Will be using a lot of audio equipment mostly wired mics and headsets so would like for it to contain ports for them.
Would like for it to have up gradable memory and a large battery.
Willing to pay more for a good quality build/thermals/aesthetics. 
Ryzen cpu since I hear that is all the rave right now. 
16 gigabytes of ram for my audio programs. 

 

Hey aiHAL. Before chiming in I'll flag that I don't do audio work professionally, so weigh this as you will, but it has been something I've been a primary interest of mine outside of my career, and I've spent a lot of time (15 years-ish)/money/research in this world.  Re the need for i/o for audio equipment, you'll end up using some sort of external sound card (ie, presumably you'll be using multiple mics with XLR outs that need phantom power, line-level ins and outs, etc, and no laptop will be able to interface with these on its own). There is a ton of variance in what these look like, from ones that just do analog to digital conversion/digital to analog conversion which you would then hook up to a separate mixing board/external pre-amps/headphone amps etc vs ones that have onboard pre-amps, controls and outputs for headphones and monitors etc. As to be expected, there is also a wide variance in quality and price-range. Here is a link to moog's page with audio interfaces for a quick reference: https://www.moogaudio.com/en/all/audio-interfaces 

 

I wonder if it's possible to check with your music engineering program to see if there is 1) any expectation that you have access to your own interface vs accessing the programs equipment, 2) if there is a way to check to see if you'll need to be hooking up your personal computer to an interface the school provides, and if so, what that might be so you can check for compatibility. 3) even if there isn't an expectation that you have and audio interface, it might be worth thinking about if you want one anyways. I'm guessing you won't have unlimited access to a studio and having even a basic interface would give you a lot more freedom to work on projects/experiment at home on your off time (assuming you want to use external analog equipment, with microphones being the most obvious candidate here), or do mobile/location recording.  

 

Maybe you've already done this, but I'd really encourage you to do some research on windows vs macOS for audio work. I understand that a mac won't hit a bunch of your requirements, but for audio-work this feels like an elephant in the room for me as a mac is very well suited to this purpose and is, I think, the default answer to picking a machine for this use-case. In general, I prefer windows computers, however after about 12 years of doing audio/music production in windows, switching to a mac really streamlined things, and until something changes in the windows eco-system, I'll be living on a mac for music related projects. With windows it’s been my experience (which I think is echoed on the internet if you have a look) that there are often problems with getting smooth audio in a digital audio workstation (ie. pro-tools, logic, ableton, reaper, etc)—clicks and pops in the audio are a common issue. I have been able to optimize windows machines to address this, but it’s a headache, and I was never completely confident the issue had resolved. When working with audio there are a lot of opportunities for clicks and pops to be introduced into the signal chain (ie at the audio source, the mic, a faulty mic cord, an issue with the pre-amp or a compressor, or whatever), and if this is happening on the computers end, trouble shooting the above becomes more complicated. It becomes an even bigger issue if you're working with live talent in a finite window of time—technical issues need to be resolved quickly. MacOS just works for this stuff without the hassle.

 

8 hours ago, Devryd said:

Are you sure you need a laptop that powerful?
for that budget, you might could build a strong tower and get a lower budget laptop

Especially when working with audio a lot, a laptop might be too loud

I think this is a question of use-case. Is there an expectation that heavy-audio work on your personal computer will happen primarily at home, or will you be mobile, in studios, on locations, etc (my guess is if you’re planning to work with live talent, the latter will happen)?