Graphic design laptop

[boratemporal]

Hey all, my friend is a graphics designer. He needs a new laptop and he's very interested in the new xps 15 with coffee lake and a gtx 1050ti, he would like 4k and a super colour accurate display for around 2300 dollars. I'm not quite sure what to recommend. He has a wacom drawing pad that he uses and he doesn't have an issue with storage. He says 16 gig ram is preferable and an option for thunderbolt 3 to use his 1070 externally would be ideal. 

 

I thought maybe if he got an Asus gaming laptop with a 1070 and an 8750H for instance and used an external monitor for colour sensitive work that might be an option worth considering. What's your guys opinions? 

[r2724r16]

The new Dell XPS 15 is pretty damn powerful so I'd go for that, battery life is one of it's strongest points if that's important to him at all. 

[Streetguru]

8 minutes ago, seeker105401 said:

 

Unless he 100% needs the laptop display to be perfect, just grab any old laptop with an i7/GTX 1050 or an R5 2500U machine

 

and spend the rest on a professional 4k monitor.

[boratemporal]

1 minute ago, Streetguru said:

Unless he 100% needs the laptop display to be perfect, just grab any old laptop with an i7/GTX 1050 or an R5 2500U machine

 

and spend the rest on a professional 4k monitor.

R5 2500u?

 

Sorry, I'm from South Africa I'm assuming that's an amd based laptop... I don't spend tonnes of time in the laptop world so I'm a bit out of my depth. So are there documented issues with the xps 15 line? He's probably going to be running around and travelling a lot next year since he's emigrating from South Africa to Australia so I think the xps would be great if the build holds up for 4 or so years 

[Streetguru]

4 minutes ago, seeker105401 said:

R5 2500u?

 

Sorry, I'm from South Africa I'm assuming that's an amd based laptop... I don't spend tonnes of time in the laptop world so I'm a bit out of my depth. So are there documented issues with the xps 15 line? He's probably going to be running around and travelling a lot next year since he's emigrating from South Africa to Australia so I think the xps would be great if the build holds up for 4 or so years 

Ya, 4 cores 8 threads, pretty alright onboard graphics, potentially with decent battery life while gaming if you tweak your settings, not sure if someone's done that test.

Mostly it would be cheap/effective or should be anyways

@ZM Fong

is the laptop guy around here, most every modern laptop has some issues though, nothing like the perfect machines of the past, like a T420 Thinkpad

 

[r2724r16]

7 minutes ago, seeker105401 said:

He's probably going to be running around and travelling a lot next year since he's emigrating from South Africa to Australia so I think the xps would be great if the build holds up for 4 or so years 

Intel and AMD seem to be adding more and more cores to their CPUs so even a quad core with a decent clock speed might get old pretty soon.

[boratemporal]

17 minutes ago, Rasbir Singh said:

Intel and AMD seem to be adding more and more cores to their CPUs so even a quad core with a decent clock speed might get old pretty soon.

That's why he wants to wait for coffee lake xps 15. Any experience with that machine. One of my classmates has an xps 13, is the screen on the 15 as good as that or better? 

[r2724r16]

1 minute ago, seeker105401 said:

That's why he wants to wait for coffee lake xps 15. Any experience with that machine. One of my classmates has an xps 13, is the screen on the 15 as good as that or better? 

The new Dell XPS 15 already has an 8th gen Intel CPU (which is coffee lake).

[Streetguru]

23 minutes ago, seeker105401 said:

That's why he wants to wait for coffee lake xps 15. Any experience with that machine. One of my classmates has an xps 13, is the screen on the 15 as good as that or better? 

 

21 minutes ago, Rasbir Singh said:

The new Dell XPS 15 already has an 8th gen Intel CPU (which is coffee lake).

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12605/dells-8th-gen-alienware-laptops-and-monitors/4

[genexis_x]

3 hours ago, seeker105401 said:

2300 dollars

Use external monitor and eGPU. Get an Ultrabook like XPS 13 9370

[ERM64bit]

Even though your friend is a graphic designer, they actually won't need a ton of power, depending on what they're doing. If it's just regular design work using Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop, honestly most any laptop with an i5 and 8GB of RAM will handle it without a hiccup. If they're doing more intense video editing or 3D modeling, then a 1070 is necessary. My wife, who has been a professional graphic designer for about 5 years, is just using a Macbook Pro 13" w/ Touchbar for about 2 years, and has a 5K iMac at work and cannot tell a difference in performance. The XPS 15 would be able to do everything, especially with the new 6 core, but if you want to save some money and get some very competent hardware, the Dell Precision 5520s are in the same clamshell as the XPS lineup, and you get the options for Quadro and Xeon, along with ISV certifications. You can save even more money by going through the Dell Outlet on something like this one: http://outlet.us.dell.com/ArbOnlineSales/Online/SecondaryInventorySearch.aspx?c=us&cs=28&l=en&s=dfb&sign=PXhcOSHtr1T4IOw%2fPR7UdfaeGYN%2fArlJRPEfecs8%2fMi7AzP%2bti63G3Gkavd9T8JRE3SRjDyCGx7ArDlZMtwyK6g0n5DJx5bcxkpL6tve4n7bXb%2fkwxfIYv83g4%2b71OgivzKT4L%2bEuHpv86sOfJERmu42Rsy9a6DQkLt%2bVlV3zqbBf2Q%2bU%2fqLuHFgpYIbNiPZ

 

*In case the link expires, its a Dell Precision 5520 with a Core i7 7820HQ with Win 10 Pro & Thunderbolt 3 with 4 PCIe lanes, 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD, 16GB RAM (1x slot, can upgrade to 32GB) 4K Touch display that's 100% Adobe RGB, and a Nvidia Quadro M1200 4GB for $1611 USD. 

 

If this is being used for just work, this would be one of your least expensive options. Other thing they need to consider: if they're eventually going to work at a firm or do freelance. Most firms will either provide a computer, or require that you are in their ecosystem (in 4/5 cases, Apple ecosystem). I'd hate for your friend to spend $2k on a system and show up to work just to have the manager tell them "Nope, it has to be a Mac." (I say this because was the reason that my wife had to go Apple for her work computer. Her manager told her that he would refuse to let her connect to his network unless she had a Macbook).