Best 4k Laptop for game design and Photography?

Easton · Mar 2018

I am thinking about buying a 4k laptop for game design so I can do some of what I do from home on the 80lb desktop at school and on the go, but I am not sure which one would be best to get. Mostly it is going to be used when I am not home, at school, and for when I go to a place and take photos, it sucks having to come back to the house and review everything.

I want to stick with 4k because I am spoiled and 4k textures and pictures look stunning on them, this limits it down to about 3-5 laptops on the market now that have the power to handle the workloads. I was looking at these three:

https://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/ideapad-700-series/Ideapad-720S-15/p/81CR0005US

http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/cty/pdp/spd/xps-15-9560-laptop?~ck=mn

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/spectrex360/overview.html?jumpid=in_r11260_us/en/psg/premiumfamily/spectre-x360-tab-learn-more-top#photo-editing

I am a hardware junkie and price to performance is my main concern with everything, so far the Lenovo looks like it packs the biggest punch for way less money than Dell and others, it has a 1050Ti GPU and 1TB of SSD, the Dell has half the storage and a 1050 GPU.

The Spectre x360 I have no clue about yet as it is not out yet, but from what I have read it has a Vega GPU in it that is said to beat the 1060 or come very close to it. I couldn't really find anything on it other than it will have the Intel CPU and AMD GPU combo in it, not sure how much it will cost but it may be worth waiting for.

I think a pen would be nice but I have never used one before. Price, would prefer closer to $1500 but if there is something better it makes sense to spend a bit more.

Any thought, advice, opinions?

Edit: Haha, just read the new HP laptop comes out tomorrow for $1300. If it really is more powerful than the 1050ti then that may be the best option, 15 inch 4k screen and a pen.

PolyHertz · Mar 2018

The reason there aren't many 4K laptops is because at 15 inch the DPI is insane, and can be extremely uncomfortable to work with if any of your apps lack user scalability options for their UI. The vast majority of desktop 4K displays are quite large for this reason as well.

Also, for 3D work, you really shouldn't be going for anything less then a Geforce 1060 6GB atp (especially in a laptop where upgrade options are limited).

Axi5 · Mar 2018

Unless you're going to be hooking up to a 4k tv with the duplicate screens setting I would recommend not getting 4k. I use one to train people at work for this reason but its incredibly hard to use at native resolution.

It is as PolyHertz says an insane amount of DPI for something so small. I saw a 4K 32" screen the other day and still thought its DPI was too high.

Easton · Mar 2018

All laptops are going to be 4k I'm the next year or two, I would rather get a 4k one to stay ahead of the curve, also I have 2 4k 32inch monitors, everything runs fine and is scaled. I was looking at some 1080p monitors a couple weeks ago at Best Buy and next to the 4k Lenovo they looked really fuzzy and bad to me, the lower resolution causes eyestrain for me too.

I really would prefer to stay away from Nvidia, but that is hard to do with laptops. I know I need 4gb of VRAM or more, on my desktop I have an AMD Fury with 4gb.

I think I'm already sold on the new HP Spectre x360 with the Vega graphics, it has 4gb of VRAM which I think is good enough. Problem is gaming laptops are way too expensive for no reason, the same laptop except with a 1070 is 2x the price...

https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/07/intel-amd-rx-vega-m/

If I have to I presume later I could get an external GPU if need be.

I would do most of my heavy lifing on the desktop and texturing on the laptop.

PolyHertz · Mar 2018

Easton said:

All laptops are going to be 4k I'm the next year or two, I would rather get a 4k one to stay ahead of the curve, also I have 2 4k 32inch monitors, everything runs fine and is scaled. I was looking at some 1080p monitors a couple weeks ago at Best Buy and next to the 4k Lenovo they looked really fuzzy and bad to me, the lower resolution causes eyestrain for me too.

Yes, at 32 inchs 4K will look great, but at 15 inch it'll cause eye strain. The size of the screen dictates what resolution makes the most sense to run it at, with the higher the resolution the larger you want it and vise versa. The eye strain you mentioned when looking at a 1080p set was likely due to it being too big for that resolution to provide a clear image.

And to say all laptops will be 4k in 2 years is just nonsense. The most common screen resolution currently is 1080p, and do you know what the second most popular is? 1366 x 768. Look at the Steam hardware survey (probably the most complete and up to date hardware survey that exists), less then 0.5% of users have a 4K screen.

About video cards; afaik AMD still uses cut-down versions of their GPUs on laptops, while Nvidia managed to crunch their desktop cards into laptops.

Easton · Mar 2018

Maybe so, I haven't put too much thought into it and am used to bigger screens. All I know is higher resolution looks more crisp from looking at the two side by side.

This is just my assumption, but at the current rate of technology and seeing how a couple of years ago 4k monitors basically didn't exist, much less laptops, and seeing how 1080p from 720p or 1080p to 4k worked out, we aren't far away from 1080p becoming the 480p of 15 years ago. More and more laptops are coming out with 4k screens and the power is there to run them... I'm looking for a laptop that won't be outdated by the time I buy it or a year from now after buying it.

Yeah, but after reading a lot about those GPUs they use a LOT of power, gaming laptops no matter where I look have 3-4 hours battery life Max.

http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/alienware-17/spd/alienware-17-laptop/dkcwkblg0733/configurations?selectionState=eyJGUHJpY2UiOjI2NDkuOTksIk9DIjoiZGtjd2tibGcwNzMzIiwiUXR5IjoxLCJNb2RzIjpbeyJJZCI6MTQ2LCJPcHRzIjpbeyJJZCI6IjdSVlZSUiIsIlByaWNlIjoyNTAuMH1dfSx7IklkIjo3NjAsIk9wdHMiOlt7IklkIjoiS1VIRCIsIlByaWNlIjo0MDAuMH1dfSx7IklkIjo4LCJPcHRzIjpbeyJJZCI6IjUxMjFUQiIsIlByaWNlIjo0MDAuMH1dfSx7IklkIjoyMCwiT3B0cyI6W3siSWQiOiIyNDBXUEMifV19XX0%3D

That laptop costs $1,000 and has a 6gb 1060, but the HP one that I was looking at has all the same specs except the new Intel AMD Vega combo which they claim is just as powerful. I would like to have 2gb of extra VRAM but to sacrifice 10 hours of battery life, a tablet mode, and a 1tb SSD and pen I'm not sure if it would be worth it. I'm thinking my best option is to upgrade my desktop GPU to a 16gb Vega and Ryzen Threadripper and get a laptop that can handle some basic things like modeling and textures. Some of these laptops now are actually just as powerful as my desktop that I built 2 years ago and for half the price.

Most of my limitations will end up being 4gb of VRAM, but to pay $1000 more for 2gb more I'm not sure if that's worth it...

Easton · Mar 2018

I'm thinking ill just transfer files over to the desktop, although it would be nice to do all of the same stuff on a laptop I'm not willing to spend that much more, because for the offset price I could just rebuild my desktop.

CreativeSheep · Mar 2018

Your laptop will always cost more with nVidia chip but it can be worth it long term.

Easton · Mar 2018

I came across this laptop and may consider getting it instead:

https://www.aorus.com/product-detail.php?p=545&t=35&t2=69&t3=70

I think if I'm going to get a laptop I might as well spend an extra $1000 for something that is definitely going to power through everything I throw at it, and it is upgradable. It would suck to get a laptop then realize you don't have enough ram one day.

Best 4k Laptop for game design and Photography?

Replies