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PC laptop for a friend - video editing

gigatoaster

gigatoaster

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 22, 2018
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France
Hello there

My friend is looking for a new laptop. It will be basic usage and a lot of video editing in 4K. She doesn't know Mac and requested a PC but I know nothing about PCs.

Should I push her to switch to Mac or are there good, decent alternatives for PCs?

What models, brands and specs would you recommend?
 
gigatoaster said:
Hello there

My friend is looking for a new laptop. It will be basic usage and a lot of video editing in 4K. She doesn't know Mac and requested a PC but I know nothing about PCs.

Should I push her to switch to Mac or are there good, decent alternatives for PCs?

What models, brands and specs would you recommend?
Click to expand...
What's her budget range?
 
For Windows machines, I'd suggest Dell XPS 15" with 32GB+ RAM and 1TB+ storage, although that might put her above that budget a bit. Using SSD external storage could help lower the storage costs, and perhaps she could go with a 512.

Edit: I take back this recommendation based on many negative reviews here on MR in this same forum.
 
Last edited:
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Just to generalize what others have posted, you will be trying to get at least an i7, plenty of RAM and SSD, and discreet GPU. Also, good cooling is a must as encoding videos will stress out the computer. I would actually recommend a gaming laptop as those will at least have better cooling that a regular consumer laptop. HP Z Books or Razor laptops are great.

Also factor in the cost of the software if she's looking into Adobe Premiere. 4K video editing is not a "basic" usage. Luckily there's a free pro editor called Davinci Resolve.
 
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Thanks! I was suggested also a Surface Book 3. I’ll use all your suggestions as a shortlists and will ask her to try them. I think the XPS looks nice but not sure how powerful it.
 
gigatoaster said:
Hello there

My friend is looking for a new laptop. It will be basic usage and a lot of video editing in 4K. She doesn't know Mac and requested a PC but I know nothing about PCs.

Should I push her to switch to Mac or are there good, decent alternatives for PCs?

What models, brands and specs would you recommend?
Click to expand...

Well if you wants to edit 4K on a PC, getting a gaming laptop PC would be her best bet. For 4K video, she would need to make sure the internal graphics card must have 4Gb of video ram. Pretty much all newer PC laptops would have one. 16Gb of RAM is a good start. All gaming laptops come with M.2 blade internal SSD drive which are really fast. I don't recommend editing on the internal ssd drive, so provision some cash for an external USB 3 SSD drive. Samsung T3/T5/T7 are good choices. Whether it's an i5 or i7 depends upon the footage being used. If she's working with 10bit RAW 4k, then get an i7 because the CPU is used for decoding/encoding h.264/h.265.hevc footages. If she's using the PC to edit iPhone/Android 4K stuff, then an i5 9th or 10th gen CPU is adequate. I use an i5 9th Gen desktop with the Nvidia GTX 1650 myself to edit 4k with no issues whatsoever from my Lumix 4/3 20MP camera. The best price performance mobile CPU right now is the GTX-1660Ti or the RTX-2060 both come with 6Gb of video ram which is more than enough for 4K editing.

Now, the reason why you may want to push a mac to her is with Davinci Resolve. With the free version, the PC version does not provide hardware acceleration for final rendering. You need Resolve Studio for that. With the free Mac version, hardware acceleration is available for final rendering and it also supports for the Apple T2 chip for really fast h.265/hevc encoding. Faster than the fastest PC CPU. So there's a plus there for video content creation. I use Davinci Resolve myself as it is quite powerful and supports multi-GPUs.

Now comes to choosing which laptop to get. I would say either the MSI, Asus ROG Strix, Dell XPS and Lenovo. These are designed with better thermal cooling than other cheaper solutions. Better thermal cooling is important since video editing is like playing games. Too much heat on the GPU will lessen its lifespan.
 
There are tons of options from Apple. Both the 13 inch MacBook Pro and the 27 inch iMac offer options for a 10th gen intel chip. The former includes the chip on their $1,799 model. The latter offers the chip on all version as well as graphics card options and user upgradeable memory. The Mac Mini is the cheapest Mac starting at $799. The 13 inch MacBook Pro and Mac Mini are ideal candidates for external GPUs. The ram can also be upgraded on the Mac Mini though requiring partial disassembly. All Macs can run Windows using either Boot Camp or virtualization such as but not limited to parallels. If she is determined to get Windows she may be better served building it herself or a good prebuilt such as the ones here https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Categories/Products/Systems/c/Cor_Systems?q=:price-asc&pageSize=36
One of them is on sale for $999 from $1,799
 
I should point out that the reason I recommend building a desktop or getting a good desktop from Corsair if going Windows is because a component that dies on a Windows desktop is easier to replace than something that dies on a laptop. For example if the processor dies it can be replaced without replacing the entire system.
 
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