Laptop recommendations?
polycounter lvl 17
Hey polycount I trust you guys know All The Tech Stuff so could you spare some recommendations for a work laptop? Budget ideally is around $1000-1500.
I already have a solid desktop, I've just realized recently that being able to work on the go is really valuable for my current lifestyle.
Searching the last good laptop thread I saw was close to a year old but if I missed something more recent or you've seen discussion on another art forum I'd love a link instead and I'll do my own homework.
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More detailed expectations & plans for usage
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Okay so like all future purchases, it's a little bit hard to predict 100% how I'll actually use this, and I'm trying to hedge it a bit. I don't intend to work on it instead of my PC when I'm at home, but I expect to be away from my desktop for 1-2 weeks at a time sometimes and would like to not have to schedule that around my freelance commitments. The more self-sufficient the laptop is for completing work the better.
The major things I use my desktop for are:
My expectations are that I'll do a bit less art on the laptop than I do on my desktop, and I don't really intend to use it to play games. Screen size and keyboard quality are nice for programming and learning that I do for recreation and am very likely to devote time to on the laptop. My work runs the gamut from higher res 3d art that I'm getting back into to pixel art and quick prototyping for indie projects, both paid and personal projects.
In a perfect world it should be powerful enough to reduce the friction of me doing zbrush work on it and somewhat future-proof, but my priority on performance is solid speed and multitasking so that if I'm actually working on something I can juggle unity/photoshop/visual studio all at once without gigantic slowdown.
I would like as nice of a screen as possible for comfort and artwork reasons, but as long as I'm getting a solid IPS screen I'm willing to bend on this a bit if there's a much better device at a similar price point. Especially if I'm going for something higher end, I will probably only do very serious work with it hooked up to external monitors. HDMI out is necessary for my cintiq 13hd, and I'm likely upgrading that to a 22hd at some time in the next 1-2 years, very likely within the lifetime of this laptop.
Portability is a major plus but not a dealbreaker. I have a preference toward 15 inch or greater screens for the real estate, but this is something I'm probably going to bend on, since any serious work I'll at the very least have my cintiq (which is portable) as a second display and will likely be hooking it up to a monitor.
After some research and earthquake's suggestions below, at the moment I have a few laptops I'm really considering:
The 4k Acer Aspire v15 Nitro Black -- looks like one of the most powerful things I can get around this price point. The 16gb ram and solid state + storage are really big selling points to me. All reviews say that the 860m can't handle 4k games, which is totally fine, I only intend to use the higher resolutions for screen real estate in art programs. Dubious about the dim matte screen.
The high end Dell XPS 13 + 256gb SSDd A bit worried about the 8gb of ram and integrated video for this price, but really like everything else about it. I'm not sure the memory is actually a concern, I can only think of a few times I've needed over 8gb on my desktop and they were doing tasks that I'm unlikely to attempt on the laptop.
The new Razer Blade Pro, if I'm stretching my budget, has really appealing specs for the price point as a 'desktop replacement'. It seems small for its specs at ~7lb. It costs ~ 2300 with SDD + HDD, which is the same I'd have to pay for over 128gb of storage on the smaller razer blade.
The MBP is really nice but I'm tied to windows and the storage upgrades I'd need plus the ~100 for a windows license make it much less appealing to me.
Similarly, the lack of good customization on the xps 15 seems to push me into the $2000+ price range in order to get features that are really valuable to me (more memory, and especially an SSD) and I'd like to avoid having to crack it open and replace anything immediately.
I already have a solid desktop, I've just realized recently that being able to work on the go is really valuable for my current lifestyle.
- I do a lot of pixel/2d art so good display and colors are a high priority for me
- Needs HDMI port for cintiq
- Needs to be able to handle sculpting
- Full keyboard preferred
Searching the last good laptop thread I saw was close to a year old but if I missed something more recent or you've seen discussion on another art forum I'd love a link instead and I'll do my own homework.
============================================
More detailed expectations & plans for usage
============================================
Okay so like all future purchases, it's a little bit hard to predict 100% how I'll actually use this, and I'm trying to hedge it a bit. I don't intend to work on it instead of my PC when I'm at home, but I expect to be away from my desktop for 1-2 weeks at a time sometimes and would like to not have to schedule that around my freelance commitments. The more self-sufficient the laptop is for completing work the better.
The major things I use my desktop for are:
- 2d & 3d art freelance -- photoshop, unity, zbrush, quixel suite
- programming & game design
- games, internet/videos for entertainment
- studying through research and videos/classes on programming and art
My expectations are that I'll do a bit less art on the laptop than I do on my desktop, and I don't really intend to use it to play games. Screen size and keyboard quality are nice for programming and learning that I do for recreation and am very likely to devote time to on the laptop. My work runs the gamut from higher res 3d art that I'm getting back into to pixel art and quick prototyping for indie projects, both paid and personal projects.
In a perfect world it should be powerful enough to reduce the friction of me doing zbrush work on it and somewhat future-proof, but my priority on performance is solid speed and multitasking so that if I'm actually working on something I can juggle unity/photoshop/visual studio all at once without gigantic slowdown.
I would like as nice of a screen as possible for comfort and artwork reasons, but as long as I'm getting a solid IPS screen I'm willing to bend on this a bit if there's a much better device at a similar price point. Especially if I'm going for something higher end, I will probably only do very serious work with it hooked up to external monitors. HDMI out is necessary for my cintiq 13hd, and I'm likely upgrading that to a 22hd at some time in the next 1-2 years, very likely within the lifetime of this laptop.
Portability is a major plus but not a dealbreaker. I have a preference toward 15 inch or greater screens for the real estate, but this is something I'm probably going to bend on, since any serious work I'll at the very least have my cintiq (which is portable) as a second display and will likely be hooking it up to a monitor.
After some research and earthquake's suggestions below, at the moment I have a few laptops I'm really considering:
The 4k Acer Aspire v15 Nitro Black -- looks like one of the most powerful things I can get around this price point. The 16gb ram and solid state + storage are really big selling points to me. All reviews say that the 860m can't handle 4k games, which is totally fine, I only intend to use the higher resolutions for screen real estate in art programs. Dubious about the dim matte screen.
The high end Dell XPS 13 + 256gb SSDd A bit worried about the 8gb of ram and integrated video for this price, but really like everything else about it. I'm not sure the memory is actually a concern, I can only think of a few times I've needed over 8gb on my desktop and they were doing tasks that I'm unlikely to attempt on the laptop.
The new Razer Blade Pro, if I'm stretching my budget, has really appealing specs for the price point as a 'desktop replacement'. It seems small for its specs at ~7lb. It costs ~ 2300 with SDD + HDD, which is the same I'd have to pay for over 128gb of storage on the smaller razer blade.
The MBP is really nice but I'm tied to windows and the storage upgrades I'd need plus the ~100 for a windows license make it much less appealing to me.
Similarly, the lack of good customization on the xps 15 seems to push me into the $2000+ price range in order to get features that are really valuable to me (more memory, and especially an SSD) and I'd like to avoid having to crack it open and replace anything immediately.
Replies
I'm a big fan of ultrabooks in the 13-14" or so range, which are usually 3.5 pounds or less. If you're not doing really high end 3d work, something like that might work for you. For primarily 2d work, you don't really need a dedicated GPU, the Intel GPU with a decent I5 or I7 will be enough. If sculpting in Zbrush, CPU and RAM will be the biggest bottleneck, Zbrush doesn't do much with the GPU.
If you want to run realtime renderers or high end game engines, you'll want to look for a dedicated GPU. Something like a 770M or better would be ideal. Its important to remember that M versions for Nvidia gpus are much slower than non-m counterparts, so while a GTX 750 is quite respectable, a 750M isn't that much better than the onboard Intel GPU. Getting a high end mobile GPU usually means large laptop with loud fans and/or poor heat management, and poor battery life (if you have to be tethered to an outlet/desk, how mobile are you really?).
Recommendations:
Macbook Pro 13" Retina, best IPS screen you can buy
Lenovo X1 Carbon 3rd gen (with upgraded IPS screen) 14"
Dell XPS 13" with either standard or upgraded screen (both are IPS)
Samsung Ativ 9 13.3", has a very nice super high res IPS screen
The Razer Blade is amazingly specced out for the size, but starts at about 2K. Quad core i7, very fast 970M gpu, IPS screen (standard HD or QHD)
When it comes to color accuracy, your best bet is finding an IPS panel. Many laptops (like that Alienware 17) have cheap TN panels with poor viewing angles and even worse color accuracy. IPS panels are great, but not all are created equally. The IPS panel in the Retina MBPs are about the best you can get for color accuracy, 99% sRGB iirc.
if 13" or so is too small, you can get ultrabooks in the 15" range without getting much heavier than 5 pounds. I don't have specific recommendations there though, maybe the MBP 15", but that will stretch your budget.
Lastly, I think its important to consider how much work you will actually do on a laptop. This varies from person to person, but honestly, I find the *idea* of doing work on a laptop is much more compelling than the reality. When I'm traveling, work is generally the last thing on my mind. But perhaps you spend a lot of your time on the go or move around very frequently, I dunno.
Size and weight is a bonus to me but not really a priority, my main goal is being able to work without having to bring or ship my desktop to me.
I definitely appreciate all the info eq, that's exactly the kind of stuff I came here for.
You raise a good point about the actual practicality of working on a laptop, too. That's what's kept me on a desktop up to this point, but I think at this moment in time I'll get a lot out of being able to keep on top of small amounts of work and pursue programming and art stuff which doesn't feel as much like 'work' as the normal art grind.
Also it would be good to know more details about the type of work your plan to do. You talk about this a little bit but I think you should expand on it further, that should make it easier to give specific recommendations.
It's a great PC replacement (at least for me)
I am not sure about screen in this laptop, it's probably not the best but it's more than enough for me
some tech info:
i7 4710MQ
GTX 970M
120 SSD + 1TB HDD
bla bla bla rest is not important
it costs around $1400-1500
you can change a few things like better graphic card, more or less hdd, better CPU etc
here are few places where you can buy it:
http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8268s-clevo-p150sma-eta-march-p-6987.html?wconfigure=yes
http://www.sagernotebook.com/customize.php?productid=357
I dont know if these resellers are good or not because I bought my laptop in Poland
anyway I think it's a good alternative to popular "gaming" laptops.
Just to play devil's advocate here, I've been using an Alienware laptop for the last year and I've actually been pretty disappointed with it. It's noisy, kinda slow considering it's specs and I've had a lot of issues with the integrated graphics on it. Essentially you can choose which programs use the integrated vs the more powerful nvidia card but some programs are hard coded to use the integrated graphics - including flash player.. 1080p youtube videos can get pretty choppy which isn't really ideal for a £1300 laptop.
I'm not sure if all laptop GPUs have these kinds of issues but I haven't been too impressed with Alienware.
I am only one guy (small sample size), but I had no end of problems with the Sager/Clevo laptop I purchased. It had awful battery life (2 hours), ran very hot and the fan was absolutely terrible, super loud and would kick on and off at full blast for seemingly no reason. The build quality was also quite poor and the hinge broke within a year, also, the screen developed defects, after the 2nd replacement (third screen) I realized there there was no hope for it and sold it off/bought my 13" MBP which I love.
So be cautious with those Sager/Clevo machines, they usually seem a bit too good to be true, and if your experience is anything like mine, they are. You get what you pay for really.
Oh one last thing, if you intend to use the laptop on a plane in economy, 13" is about perfect, 15" is stretching it, and 17" is really starting to take up the next person's space, if you can even open it at all.
Anyway I believe it can be the same story with any other laptop... just bad luck, maybe it is less likely with MBP
But again I only owned the one Sager model, so I haven't used enough to make any substantiated claims, take it with a grain of salt.
We head out of town very regularly and my wife got me one of these a few months ago. It's a very nice working experience. I was surprised to find that I am about to it in a recliner regularly (with a piece of wood working as a lapdesk to keep the fans clear). The one with the IPS screen is quite good, though the res is such that you want to know the programs you're using well enough to not have to read the interface often. The 970 series is warm, but not shocking. If you're doing 3d work the heat coming from an 8 series card could be intimidating.
(Used to have a 17" laptop and that thing was a brick to carry XO )
Torch the yoga 3's build looks awesome, but I guess according to reviews it's louder and performs worse than the yoga 2 or other competitors, apparently due to being an early adopter of the intel core m chip.
I'm really actually super tempted by a 15inch sager right now, the Sager NP8651/Clevo P650SE
It's a 5.5lb geforce 970 machine, supposedly much improved build quality over their older machines, can get it configured with 16gb of ram, good ssd/hd setup, and a solid ips fhd screen for like 1.5k. Did find one other review that talked about getting a bricked machine and bad customer service though so I have a lot of trepidation.
This is the same price point I would be looking at for a nice name brand machine with onboard gfx and less memory, and even though I doubt I'll use it for much hardcore 3d work, the confidence that I can run modern unity projects or quixel/ps/max all at once if necessary seems maybe worth the risk.
i'd stick with integrated GPU only. they are pretty capable nowadays, don't drain the battery and don't heat up in my experience. never underestimate the suckiness of working on a laptop on full fan blast, that stuff cuts through headphones even.
Hey Thomas -- have you found there's anything work related you can't run on integrated graphics? I'm fine with less performance or less ability to multitask but I don't want to spend over a thousand dollars on a device I can't complete certain kinds of work on.
I haven't used anything with integrated gpu in like 5+ years so I don't really know the state of things.
for running a 3d content package such as max or maya and zbrush it'll be mighty fine unless you work with a lot of textures or in 4k+.
check out notebook review sites for comparisons between current integrated and dedicated GPU's. last time i looked they weren't all that far behind. also note that the dedicated GPU's in a laptop won't hold a candle to their desktop equivalent.
even if the performance is theoretically better than integrated, throttling might occur when the machine heats up. that's a common complaint e.g. on the macbook with dedicated when running games - leads to stuttering.
I'm guessing you'll probably want to move around with it (i pretty much use mine as a desktop replacement) so maybe the 15" XPS is a good option.
Hope it helps