Laptop for very SPECIFIC use

[Ins1795]

Hello long time viewer here, first time I post.

I am looking to replace my laptop. I watched almost every single review on the channel, but my needs are very specific and does not include gaming, so I am a bit confused and need help.

My usage is really specific

Usage:

1.     On the go, dump pictures on the disk (2000 pics on a slow day, 6000 most of the time)
2.     When home, edit the pictures using external monitor
3.     When done, save pictures on cloud and/or NAS

That's it.

No games, no video editing, nothing else. In fact I am using the following 4 programs for 99.999% of my work

Photoshop

Lightroom

Firefox

Direttore

Current setup: Asus i5/4Gb(upgraded to 8Gb)/500Gb HDD

What Do I Care About;

1. Fastest SSD/USB for step 1 above. I know that this depends on the other end, also (card reader, CF/SD card speed) My current bottleneck is USB 2 and/or HDD(?)
2. Laptop should be able to drive a 4K external monitor (separate buy). This confuses me. Does it mean I need a graphics card ???? What kind of in/out should the laptop/monitor have ??? HDMI? Display Port ? some kind of USB?. Totally lost here. Last time I bought a laptop it was just HDMI
3. I do not care about primary monitor resolution, 1080 is just fine. Also I never put my fingers on the screen (smudges) so no touchscreen.
4. RAM: Enough to keep the laptop agile for 5-6 years. 32Gb? or maybe 64?.
5. Disk space: 512Gb is more than enough. It's always one project after the other
6. CPU: Anything modern should do the trick, but on the channel I saw excellent reviews for AMD 4000, and since all the apps I mentioned above are multi thread, I am thinking AMD.
7. Price; Whatever it takes to keep the laptop for a minimum of 5-6 years.

Any comment/guide would be greatly appreciated. the goal here is to spent money on things i care about only.

Thanks

[Electronics Wizardy]

How big are the total size of the pictures.

 

Basically any laptop these days will runa. 4k monitor.

 

Really all the midrange and up laptops will work fine here, they have usb3, and a ssd, so they will copy plenty fast. 

[jaslion]

Xmg core 15 amd version? The 4600h base config would be plenty good and probably the cheapest laptop to get 32gb of ram in or more. Same with storage as it's also fully upgrade able and configurable on the site.

[Ins1795]

@Electronics Wizardy Size is 70-180Gb per project

I watched this video

and go to HP configurator with 32 Gb ram and a good AMD cpu I am getting price range around 1400. I wouldn't call that mid range, but that's fine. I don't mind 1400 or even more, as long as I can keep the laptop for at list 5-6 years

@jaslion Thanks I am looking this now.

 

I should have told that i am in Europe but advise on brands/models will do just fine. When i got to HP I got totally lost with all different models.

Thank you both

 

[Bombastinator]

38 minutes ago, Ins1795 said:

@Electronics Wizardy Size is 70-180Gb per project

I watched this video

and go to HP configurator with 32 Gb ram and a good AMD cpu I am getting price range around 1400. I wouldn't call that mid range, but that's fine. I don't mind 1400 or even more, as long as I can keep the laptop for at list 5-6 years

@jaslion Thanks I am looking this now.

 

I should have told that i am in Europe but advise on brands/models will do just fine. When i got to HP I got totally lost with all different models.

Thank you both

 

So is that 70-180gb per pic? Or 70-180gb divided by between 2000 to several thousand? Doing some division it seems to be somewhere are out 30-35mb per pic? (Though at least several thousand of them)   If this is correct and you’re only editing one pic at a time you shouldn’t even need a lot of memory.  If you’re doing more than one at once (which seems likely) though, where you for example color shift the next 200 photos for 5 points of blue or something, memory requirements could get significant. I would thing the most important aspect of this thing would be a color correct monitor. 

[jaslion]

1 hour ago, Ins1795 said:

@Electronics Wizardy Size is 70-180Gb per project

I watched this video

and go to HP configurator with 32 Gb ram and a good AMD cpu I am getting price range around 1400. I wouldn't call that mid range, but that's fine. I don't mind 1400 or even more, as long as I can keep the laptop for at list 5-6 years

@jaslion Thanks I am looking this now.

 

I should have told that i am in Europe but advise on brands/models will do just fine. When i got to HP I got totally lost with all different models.

Thank you both

 

Oh yeah for 14000 you are better off with the xmg one. Better laptop overall really and more powerful too. Still gets around 5 hours of battery life. Main good thing about it is the very very good colour accurate display which may or may not be a great asset for you.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, Ins1795 said:

@Electronics Wizardy Size is 70-180Gb per project

I watched this video

and go to HP configurator with 32 Gb ram and a good AMD cpu I am getting price range around 1400. I wouldn't call that mid range, but that's fine. I don't mind 1400 or even more, as long as I can keep the laptop for at list 5-6 years

@jaslion Thanks I am looking this now.

 

I should have told that i am in Europe but advise on brands/models will do just fine. When i got to HP I got totally lost with all different models.

Thank you both

 

32gb of ram is probably pretty overkill here, or upgrade it your self later.

 

You can get those specs much cheaper if you don't need a thin and light laptop, is that a requirement?

 

 

[Ins1795]

20 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

So is that 70-180gb per pic? Or 70-180gb divided by between 2000 to several thousand? Doing some division it seems to be somewhere are out 30-35mb per pic? (Though at least several thousand of them)   If this is correct and you’re only editing one pic at a time you shouldn’t even need a lot of memory.  If you’re doing more than one at once (which seems likely) though, where you for example color shift the next 200 photos for 5 points of blue or something, memory requirements could get significant. I would thing the most important aspect of this thing would be a color correct monitor. 

70 - 180Gb per project. It is a combo of RAW C-RAW and jpegs.

Multiple corrections on Lightroom(you are spot on) while having 10-15 pics on Photoshop, one of them being a multi layer poster around 2 gb in size.

I really need the memory. With my current setup if I color shift the next 200 pics I must go make coffee, drink half of it and return.

Thank god the lighting conditions (or my position relative to the subject) change as I shoot, so I only have to color correct on small burst of 5-10 pics and then move on to the next batch.

I am doing this at home not on the go. I have several calibrating hardware for my external monitors.

I do not care for the laptop screen color accuracy. You can not get color accuracy on them anyways, i just use it for Photoshop  toolboxes

[Ins1795]

19 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

32gb of ram is probably pretty overkill here, or upgrade it your self later.

 

You can get those specs much cheaper if you don't need a thin and light laptop, is that a requirement?

 

 

You can get those specs much cheaper if you don't need a thin and light laptop, is that a requirement?

Ok that got my attention. No I do not need thin and light. When I say on the go I don't mean nature, I mean theaters, hall rooms, hotels etc. There is always a desk and power. I don't even need 5 hour battery. I don't need aluminum, modern looking etc. I need a tool. Like a farmer needs a tractor, not a Ferrari. It has to be strong but not slick

 

Ok now I just have to look for bulky, heavy, with basic screen, small battery, GOOD CPU, 32Gb RAM laptop. (still considering 64, but maybe for later)

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Ins1795 said:

You can get those specs much cheaper if you don't need a thin and light laptop, is that a requirement?

Ok that got my attention. No I do not need thin and light. When I say on the go I don't mean nature, I mean theaters, hall rooms, hotels etc. There is always a desk and power. I don't even need 5 hour battery. I don't need aluminum, modern looking etc. I need a tool. Like a farmer needs a tractor, not a Ferrari. It has to be strong but not slick

 

Ok now I just have to look for bulky, heavy, with basic screen, small battery, GOOD CPU, 32Gb RAM laptop. (still considering 64, but maybe for later)

 

 

all of the budget gaming laptops will do this easily, something like a asus g14 is cheaper and much faster, and if you want to get even cheaper, something like a acer nitro 5, dell g5 and others iwll work well here.  

[Ins1795]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

all of the budget gaming laptops will do this easily, something like a asus g14 is cheaper and much faster, and if you want to get even cheaper, something like a acer nitro 5, dell g5 and others iwll work well here.  

Thanks man I'll check those out.

It is ironic that I started this thread because all the reviews I saw was "gaming" oriented, so I thought "This isn't for me" but the answer at the end was " budget gaming laptops".

Now I know where to look .Thanks again

[Selle]

Make sure to check the speed of the built in card reader. Some laptops have card readers that are connected internaly with usb 2.0

[Ins1795]

Just now, Selle said:

Make sure to check the speed of the built in card reader. Some laptops have card readers that are connected internaly with usb 2.0

Thanks man, great tip, I'll look into it, although not a deal breaker I usually use one of my many multi card readers with USB, but it's a great tip as I said.

[Ins1795]

@Electronics Wizardy I am looking asus g14. It looks right, I'm going through models/options/resellers right now. My current laptop is asus and I am very pleased with it. I will research the details for a few days. Thanks again

[Bombastinator]

Re:#7 price:  The only “future proofing” I know of is specifically for games, and that is all about the morphology of the consoles.  Anything 4core is still totally useful for office tasks and I don’t see that changing in the near future.  With non game stuff it seems to be mostly a question of speed.  
 

re#4

one of the things about ram is you don’t need more than you need.  The app itself isn’t going to use much in the way of memory and neither is an individual picture.  Large amounts of memory could only even come into play for batch processing.  If you don’t do that there isn’t much need.  If you do it very much becomes a question of how much memory you use for your specific actions, and is something I really can’t answer.  Most Common memory minimums are 8, 16, (games usually), 32 (which is “I need more than 16 but not a lot more”), and infinite.  literally as much as you can stuff in will never be enough.  There are a few users who will actually hit between 16 and 64. Not all that many though.