advice on buying a small laptop

BirdyTheMighty · March 12, 2023

Since my sister hijacked my surface pro (an older gen one) which i kinda just let her keep it since it tends to get a little wee be hot. I just need one to edit photos since I've return to photography hobby, but I've been out of the loop on computer tech for a long while. Soo just need a little advice on a laptop that wont break the bank that is good enough and small for me to take overseas and to run Gimp, Lightroom or Darktable.

LloydLynx · March 12, 2023

You definitely want an IPS or OLED type display in a laptop for any photo/graphical work. OLED being the very best but also expensive. IPS being the upper midrange nowadays. TN and VA displays being the lowend cheap options and not good for photo work, especially TN.

You'll probably want a refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad with a 1920x1080 IPS display since you want budget. I would recommend the T480/T480s. They usually come with an 8th gen i5 or i7 CPU, 8GB-16GB of RAM, and of course you'll want an SSD instead of an HDD, as old style hard drives (HDD) are wayyy slower. The size of the SSD storage is up to you for your needs. The T480 and T480s are very plentiful under $400 USD on Ebay.

And the reason I recommend a Thinkpad first is because of the Thinkpad culture and strong community support if/when you need help. Other good laptop models are the Dell Latitude and HP Elitebook. They both compete with the Thinkpad and each other, but aren't as popular among nerds.

Qyygle · March 13, 2023

If photo editing is the main draw, although the T-series thinkpads are well known for being solid machines, I actually wouldn't recommend them.

Lenovo is pretty skimpy on screen specs for most of the business line, and unless it was a top tier machine back in the day, the screens may be FHD and IPS, but color accuracy and coverage of the sRGB, adobeRGB are likely pretty bad.

I think something like an older HP Spectrex360 or Dell XPS13 could work well. As they are flagship line models, they're most likely to have been fitted with the higher quality screens. If you'd still prefer a Thinkpad, an older X1 Carbon could also work. A used LG Gram 14 could be another lineup you could consider for the extreme end of light/portable.

BirdyTheMighty · March 13, 2023

hmm i never thought about looking for a refurbish laptop. Thats a good suggestion. I found some refurbish t480s on ebay that sells them locally with a 256 SSD. I will also check out the HP and Dell laptops