Basic Laptop for Video Editing

[Quincy Vagell]

I'm looking for a laptop that's fast enough to handle editing and rendering videos in 4K resolution. I don't need anything with any other bells or whistles. I will literally just use the laptop for editing videos and probably some pictures as well.

The only other requirement I need is for it to be reasonably priced, hopefully under $1,000. A MacBook Pro, for example, is off the table. I can't justify spending a large sum of money for something that I'm not going to use that much. (see bottom of post) This is why I waited so long to update my camera, but I ultimately determined that I did need to dish out a lot of money for a long-term investment.

• Is this realistic, or do I need to dish out more money?
• What might you recommend in that price range?

I also want something new, I'd rather not buy used or refurbished.

General laptop discussion is encouraged, so this isn't just about my personal experience, for anyone who may be looking at a higher-end laptop for chase video editing and anything along those lines.

Honestly, I rarely use my laptop unless I'm editing photos/videos or working on my website. That means that most days outside of the spring I rarely use it. For that reason, I've kept an aging laptop that's not very fast for anything beyond basic functions. It does all of the simple tasks just fine, but editing/saving videos, even at 1080p, feels sluggish and clunky.

I don't need something that's going to get heavy use, like frequent gaming or watching movies/Netflix on a regular basis.

Thanks in advance for some honest opinions and feedback, as I really haven't looked much into the laptop market in years and wanted some input before I contemplated purchasing something new.

 

[fyrfyter]

Your budget isn’t close to what is realistic. You’re mandating a discrete GPU with the power to render such video. Looking at 1 article suggests at a minimum, expect to spend ~$1300.

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/best-laptops-for-video-editing

Dollar for Dollar, editing video on a laptop is asking for spending more money than necessary. If you did it as a desktop computer, you’d be better off and could probably land close to your budget.

 

[Quincy Vagell]

Dollar for Dollar, editing video on a laptop is asking for spending more money than necessary. If you did it as a desktop computer, you’d be better off and could probably land close to your budget.

This is what I was afraid of. A desktop would be an option, if I wasn’t planning on using it for chase footage editing, which will largely need to be done remotely.

 

[fyrfyter]

This is what I was afraid of. A desktop would be an option, if I wasn’t planning on using it for chase footage editing, which will largely need to be done remotely.

Unfortunately, you’re looking at something darn near a gaming laptop get the power you need for such a task.

If you keep the video at 1080p, most mainstream devices can handle that. I can edit 1080P on an iPad without issue. 4K really ups the ante however, increasing the resolution x4.

 

[fyrfyter]

I think I may have found a suggestion for you, based upon something surprising. No, I cannot explain this, other than apparently Apple’s custom silicon is awesome.

See these links for more information.

https://wccftech.com/ipad-pro-video-editing-performance-3x-faster/

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2018/11/21/editing-video-ipad-pro-jonathan-morrison/

https://www.macstories.net/linked/j...diting-video-on-the-ipad-pro-with-lumafusion/

If you are chasing, maybe there’s some help here in condensing down devices and getting you where you need to be? 11” iPad Pro with 256GB of space and Apple Pencil 2, would put your price at $1078, something much closer to your original budget.

I guess I didn’t realize LumaFusion has improved that much. I use it casually and for editing some 1080p video as needed, but never considered it for 4K.

 

[Bill Meier]

With respect I'd like to disagree. I occasionally use an aging ASUS i3 180GHz laptop with 4GB ram to edit my Sony AX53 4K files while traveling. Magix (Sony) Vegas Pro using app generated proxy files. These original files are usually over 1GB in length. Just simple fade transitions, color correction and titles. What can take time is the rendering to a 4K file for uploading.

 

[fyrfyter]

What is the rendering time per minute for 4K video on that machine?

If you want to be technical about it, perhaps. But rendering is just another part of video editing in my mind. It’s time that still has to be accounted for before the video is done and ready for viewing or upload.

 

[Bill Meier]

What is the rendering time per minute for 4K video on that machine?

If you want to be technical about it, perhaps. But rendering is just another part of video editing in my mind. It’s time that still has to be accounted for before the video is done and ready for viewing or upload.

I agree. It's slow. About 90 minutes to render a 4K, 3 minute video. But use a newer Intel Core i5 laptop with 8GB RAM and an 128GB SSD, which can be had for under $1,000, and I'm sure that time could be cut down considerably.

Just trying to show that it's possible. Not necessarily fast.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I have a HP Pavilion laptop that I bought in 2017 from Micro Center for $800. It has been able to handle everything I do at home (4K editing, photoshop, GRLevel3, Threatnet, StreetAtlas all running at the same time).

 

[Michael Gavan]

Lenovo P51, with a XEON E3-1505 processer. 16GB ram and a Quadro M2200 GPU. And, totally my opinion, just barely cuts it for me on 4k (Scrubbing, rendering). I could make it work a lot better with workflow changes that I just don't have time for. Even in your best case scenario like this, a laptop is barely up to the task. It honestly comes down to your level of patience. I don't have any. If you just want to cut, clip and render, a laptop like Dan's above will be just fine for the task. As soon as you start color grading, keying, motion transforms, transitions, stabilization, time lapses... forget it! everything on the market is too slow! . See if something along that spectrum will be up for the task for what you want to do.

 

[Mark Blue]

My entire family (myself, wife, and 80 year old mom) all have MSI gaming laptops. My mom’s was the most inexpensive at $1099.00. Mine was $1599.00 back in 2015 (GS60 Ghost Pro) and my wife actually has a 4K capable screen that was $1699.00 when I gave it to her during Christmas 2016. I’ve since upgraded mine because I love to tinker by maxing out the memory to 32 GB with two G Skill modules. My boot drive was originally a PCIe Gen 3x4 NVMe 128 GB, which was small so I upgraded it to a Samsung 950 Pro 512 GB. At the same time I swapped out the OEM 1 TB disk drive with another Samsung 850 Evo SSD of the same size.

I looked online and found a few that fit your budget at Micro Center https://www.microcenter.com/search/...8+4294818187+594+593+4294818741&myStore=false and at XOTICPC.com https://www.xoticpc.com/custom-gami...series.html#!/p=clear&size=14&manufacturer=19 and the close out models at XOTICPC https://www.xoticpc.com/custom-gami...se-out.html#!/p=clear&size=14&manufacturer=19.

If you could wrangle together another $300 you’d open a whole world of opportunities for a better configuration. If you like to upgrade parts as much as I do, you could get a setup similar to mine, then over the next year change out the most critical parts which would be the SSDs. You’d have a Core I7 CPU, dedicated graphics, and output connectors that would be ideal. A lot of these MSI models come with mDP, HDMI 2.0, and Thunderbolt 3. There are plenty of places to shop too, such as Amazon and NewEgg. Sorry to be so single minded, but my family is very happy with our laptops. One last point to make is if you buy from XOTICPC they have their own custom image of Windows 10, so the bloatware is toast and it’s really very well thought out. Good luck Quincy and let me know if I can provide further assistance!