Decent laptop for doing art whilst travelling

[jaslion]

So basically my 6700hq 970m laptop has been dead for a while and that 2012 macbook that I have is not really cutting it anymore.

 

I've been looking around and for some laptops but am kinda stuck. I basically just want a 6 core with a gpu that has cuda acceleration (was aiming for a 1650) and a decent screen (colour critical work will be checked at my desktop) and at the very least 4 hours on battery. I can't really find a laptop that fits these requirement without either having cooling issues, a poor screen or bad battery.

 

My budget is 2000€ but I would much prefer to keep it at around 1000€ as this is not a main machine but a used 2-3 times a week machine for 4 hours each.

 

I did find some decent laptops but those were really expensive for specs that are basically at the bottom of my requirements (couple asus 4600h + 1650 machines)

[Commodus]

I'm not sure I would focus so much on core counts and GPUs as overall performance.

 

What kind of screen size are you looking for, and what apps are you using? I'd point to the 13-inch MacBook Pro with an M1, but only if that screen size works. Now that Photoshop is native and Illustrator is available in beta, you might get very good performance for the class if you use those apps (even without a dedicated GPU). Apple actually cares about colour accuracy and battery life, too. But if you use apps that aren't M1-friendly or you really need CUDA specifically, you'll want something else.

[jaslion]

On 4/7/2021 at 3:27 PM, Commodus said:

I'm not sure I would focus so much on core counts and GPUs as overall performance.

 

What kind of screen size are you looking for, and what apps are you using? I'd point to the 13-inch MacBook Pro with an M1, but only if that screen size works. Now that Photoshop is native and Illustrator is available in beta, you might get very good performance for the class if you use those apps (even without a dedicated GPU). Apple actually cares about colour accuracy and battery life, too. But if you use apps that aren't M1-friendly or you really need CUDA specifically, you'll want something else.

No apple products preferably especially m1 as my tablet drivers do not work on them so those devices are pretty much useless for me.

 

I do really need cuda as I do Photoshop, illustrator, 3dsmax, blender, zbrush,... and so on. Preferably I'd like to stay in the 15 inch size as 13 is too small to be usable for me.

Colour accuracy for me 90% of the way is plenty got my Eizo monitor at home that I use for final checks anyway.