Help Me! Which 4K Video Editing Laptop Should I Buy?

I have been weighing up purchasing a Windows workstation laptop for 4K video editing on the go, and I’ve narrowed my choices down to six laptops:

1. Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED
2. Asus Vivobook Pro 16X 32GB
3. Dell XPS 17 9720
4. Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 1
5. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10
6. HP ZBook Power G9

This video explains my current thought process for each choice, and also asks if there’s any good alternatives that I’d forgotten.

Video Transcript & Guide

Initial Thoughts

Hello, I’ve recently been considering whether to buy a workstation laptop for when I need to do some programming or light 4K video editing on the go – or simply, away from my upstairs study & PC which gets really toasty in summer!

However I have been struggling to make up my mind about the best laptop option – so this video explores my current thinking. The key specs I’m looking for are a 16 or 17 inch screen and at least 32 gigabytes of RAM – anything less would be insufficient for 4K video editing. Heck, even a 17 inch screen is kinda small for 4K video, but it’s at least sort of workable. I’m also looking for a Windows system, because while the Macbook Pro range is awesome… I’m a complete iOS noob.

When thinking of laptop brands, I immediately thought of Dell who I have always considered to be the go-to brand for high quality, customizable laptops. But their recent reviews have been quite poor, and many people on Reddit consider Dell to now be a sub-standard laptop company. So I went exploring beyond Dell, and I came up with a list of 6 laptops that I think might suit my requirements. These are:

The 6 Laptop Candidates

1. The Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED
2. The Asus Vivobook Pro 16X 32GB
3. The Dell XPS 17 (despite the recent reviews)
4. The Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 1
5. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 (not the latest gen 11)
6. And finally the HP ZBook Power G9

Now if you have any immediate thoughts on this list, please let me know down in the comments.

But other than that, I wanted to run through my thinking for each laptop.

Why Asus (& Zenbook vs Vivobook Pro)

Firstly, Asus. Many people (again, on Reddit) said that Asus and Lenovo are great laptop brands right now – albeit customer service seems to be lacking across the board. Asus offer a wide range of laptops, but only the laptops in their two “Pro” ranges offer the sort of performance I’m after. Unfortunately Vivobook Pro laptops aren’t stocked much in the UK, meaning the only available options are a bit underpowered (like an 8 core Ryzen with an RTX 3050 Ti, or a 10 core Intel with only 16GB of soldered RAM – so I can’t upgrade that).

I’ll keep an eye on the Vivobook availability, but luckily the Zenbook Pro looks pretty awesome – and it’s readily available in the UK.

I really love the styling of the Zenbook and the lift-out keyboard is pretty cool – and the fact that it’s used to then improve cooling is pretty awesome too. The previous gen Zenbook is sometimes on offer for under two grand, and it comes with a 14-core Intel CPU, an RTX 3060 and 32 gigs of RAM which is a nice deal – although it’s worth noting that the RAM is DDR4 here:

I don’t mind owning previous gen, but for such an expensive purchase, I’m not sure if I should insist on DDR5 here.

Dell XPS 17

Next up, there’s the Dell XPS 17. The 12th Gen Intel option works out cheaper and you can still get a pretty good build with a 4K touch screen, but it only has an RTX 3050 and it works out pricier than some of the other options. Since Dell doesn’t have the best reputation right now, I’d basically be paying a premium for… no real reason.

Lenovo ThinkPads

I am also considering one of the Lenovo ThinkPads, which have a pretty good reputation as workstation laptops. Plus my wife says that ThinkPads are like me: “boring but functional” (/s). Wait. In terms of the ThinkPad options, the P16 Gen 1 and X1 Carbon Gen 10 both seem pretty solid – and they’re in stock in the UK, which helps.

You can also customize them quite a lot which is good. My main concerns with ThinkPads are that they can be bulky and heavy, plus some people have said that the latest X1 gen 11 has some big fan noise issues.

HP ZBook Power G9

The final laptop I’ve considered is the HP ZBook Power G9, which has some pretty good specs including a 14 core Intel CPU, 32 gigs of RAM, a 4K touchscreen and a 3-year warranty as standard in the UK. It’s also decently light and has fairly good reviews, so the ZBook could be a really good option for me.

My Other 2 Options

So that sums up my general thoughts for a potential new laptop. My other two options are to either:

• Not buy a new laptop and make do with my current PC.
• Or buy a much cheaper Windows laptop and look at whether using remote desktop could work. In other words, I could just use a cheaper laptop as a ‘thin client’ access point to my main PC. I’ve got no idea if that’s a practical option though.

Wrapping Up

So I’m kind of not sure. Being able to edit 4K video on the move would be pretty nice, but I don’t know what the best option is for me – especially because it’s easy to think you’ll use certain features (like video editing when traveling) but you end up not needing them, and ultimately wasting money. If you have any comments on my slightly rambling thoughts, please do let me know.

Other than that, thanks for watching this video. Please like it and subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already. Thank you!