If you’re looking to start video editing on a laptop, you can easily get confused – there is just so much choice out there! Should you buy a Dell, HP or ASUS laptop? And do you need an AMD or Intel CPU? While we’re at it, is 16 gigs of RAM enough or do you need more?
I take a look at all these factors (and more) in this video, discussing the top 10 factors that are crucial when buying a content creation machine in 2024 and beyond. I also cover some common mistakes that people make, like buying a 2 core CPU or a system with ‘eMMC’ storage.
The ten factors I cover are:
- CPU: AMD or Intel?
- How Much RAM You Need
- Discrete Or Integrated Graphics Card
- Which Operating System To Go For
- Screen Size And Resolution
- Screen Type (Gloss Or Matt?)
- Color Data Support (HDR, Adobe RGB)
- Touchscreen Support
- Storage (Hard Drive Or SSD?)
- What Ports Are Available
If you prefer text over video, please read on for the guide/transcript version of this video.
Video Transcript And Guide
Hey everyone, there are millions of content creators out there – with many more joining the fold every day. While you CAN start out editing videos on your phone, you’ll eventually outgrow this and need something like a laptop to edit your videos. Unfortunately it’s easy to buy a dud here, and end up with a laptop that’s really, REALLY slow during video editing. So here’s 10 things you NEED to consider before buying a laptop for content creation.
CPU: AMD or Intel?
Firstly the CPU that you choose is crucial. I won’t get ultra-technical here, but the CPU is the “brains” of the laptop. It’s the thing that performs all the complex calculations to make your system work, and it’s very important to choose the right one here because video editing is quite demanding. There are two main producers of CPUs – AMD and Intel. I’m a BIG AMD fan, however AMD CPUs aren’t quite as good as Intel for video editing because Intel has QuickSync technology that works well with the most common video formats like MP4.
So I would personally recommend getting an Intel based laptop – especially if you’re on a budget. There are then a BUNCH of different types of Intel CPUs, just to make things more complicated, such as Intel Celeron, Pentium, i3, i5, i7 and i9. Ignore Celeron and Pentium all together. They’re just too slow for video editing, you’ll be wasting your money. So you then have a choice of Intel Core i3, i5, i7 or i9 and your budget will determine a lot here.
For example, an i7 will usually be faster than an i3 – but it will cost you more (of course). If you’re on a budget, you’ll probably ‘only’ be able to buy an i3 or i5 but don’t worry because they can be perfectly good for video editing.
The main thing to avoid is 2 core CPUs. This point will get a bit technical but bear with me because the cores basically mean how many units of processing the CPU can perform at the same time. So a 6 core CPU will be able to do more things simultaneously than a 2 core CPU, for example, meaning that a 6 core CPU will perform better for complex tasks like video editing. I would personally recommend getting at least a 4 core CPU. To find this, the laptop sale page should mention the CPU details – either in the title, or further down in the specs. If it doesn’t list the number of cores, Google the CPU make and the result on Intel.com will list the core count.
You want at least 4 cores here. The other thing to check here is the frequency. Some laptops like this Dell Inspiron contain a 4 core CPU – the 1035G1 – BUT it runs really slowly (the processor base frequency of 1 Gigahertz is low). This other Dell Inspiron contains a 1135G7 chip which also has 4 cores, but it runs a lot faster leading to some pretty solid performance gains. If you are able to spend an extra 10 minutes comparing the CPUs in your intended laptops, this WILL pay dividends.
But if you have any doubts or questions whatsoever, just drop me a comment on this video and I’ll get back to you with my thoughts.
How Much RAM You Need
The second factor to consider is how much RAM your system will need. For video editing, I would suggest 32 gigs. Simple, let’s move on. Kidding, ‘kinda. Nowadays, 16 gigs is almost considered the MINIMUM amount of RAM – even Microsoft says this for their “AI laptops” and pretty much all their laptops going forward will be “AI laptops”. So if 16 gigs is the new minimum, you’ll want MORE than this because video editing IS quite demanding on a PC.
If you’re editing “full HD” (1080p) video, 32 gigs will be fine. If you plan on handling 4K video, you might need 64 gigs – but I’ll cover video resolution in a minute because that’s a whole other topic.
Discrete Or Integrated Graphics?
The third thing to consider is whether you’ll need a separate (or “discrete”) GPU – graphics card – in your laptop, or whether you can rely on your CPU’s integrated graphics. This point can seem a bit confusing at first, but more powerful systems will have a separate graphics card because these can help take some of the workload from your CPU, boosting overall speeds and performance.
This is especially true when playing video games (of course), BUT if you’re only doing light video editing work – like cutting various clips together, and maybe adding some transitions and background music, you won’t really NEED a discrete graphics card. I have a mid-range GPU in my computer and it barely gets used when video editing. It only really kicks in when I render the final video, and even then it only has 10-15% usage.
The exception here though is that if you want to do lots of visual effects, you WILL need a separate graphics card. What I mean here is that if you want to use Davinci Fusion or Adobe After Effects to add fancy visual effects like blowing something up, or adding snow to a clip, then you will need a separate graphics card (I hope you liked the sound effects then!).
So deciding whether to buy a laptop with a discrete GPU or not basically boils down to what sort of video editing you’re planning to do. I should quickly point out that a “separate graphics card” will STILL live inside your laptop. It’s not some external device that you hook up with a USB. This CAN make it hard to know whether a laptop has discrete graphics or not, but in general if the laptop says “Intel Graphics”, “UHD Graphics” or “AMD Graphics”, that refers to the integrated graphics from your CPU. But if a laptop specifically mentions a graphics card, for example it says NVIDIA RTX or whatever, then that means it has a separate GPU:
Which Operating System
Next up, consider the OS – operating system. There’s three main types of OS – Linux, iOS (from Apple) and Windows (from Microsoft). While Linux can be great, video editing on Linux is quite niche and so the main choice is probably between iOS and Windows. To be honest, most of the stuff I’ve discussed so far is Windows focussed because you can’t really get Intel CPUs in MacBooks anymore. If your phone is from Apple and you love the Apple ecosystem, then it can make sense to buy a MacBook Air (or MacBook pro if you have the budget) because they ARE pretty great at video editing – the new M2 and M3 chips are REALLY awesome.
So if you like Apple, go down that route. However if you prefer Windows, should you go with Windows 10 or 11? Well I cover this topic in detail in another video, but Windows 11 IS now quite stable – and I really like it. It certainly won’t slow you down when video editing or anything like that. To be honest, most users don’t notice that much difference between Windows 10 and 11 so I wouldn’t worry too much here.
Screen Size And Resolution
My next few points are all about the screen itself – how big it is, whether it’s glossy or has anti-glare, and some other really useful features for video editing.
Firstly though I wanted to discuss the resolution of the monitor. This kind of ties into the screen size, but it mainly refers to how many individual pixels can be displayed on the screen. Y’know how TVs are advertised as full HD or 4K? Well it’s the same with laptops. Many budget laptops will be “full HD”, meaning 1080p. This is fine if you plan to work with 1080p video shot on your phone or a budget camera, but if you record in 4K, you might need a higher resolution laptop screen.
That’s because otherwise you won’t be able to make out the full detail from your recordings. I mean, it WILL work – but it’ll be a bit harder to edit everything, and also you won’t be watching the final result (the final video output) in the same resolution as your viewers will be – which isn’t ideal. I actually used to edit 4K videos shot on my phone on an old full HD monitor (not this one) and I THOUGHT the final result was really good, until I upgraded to a 4K monitor. I then realized that “4k” video from my phone was… ‘kinda lousy. It looked quite low quality actually. I ended up buying a proper Sony camera as a result, although that’s a story for another day.
Anywhoo, my point is that when looking to buy a laptop, you should also consider the screen resolution – and screen size. You ideally want your laptop’s screen resolution to be the same as the video resolution that you’re editing and shooting. When it comes to screen size, the bigger the better. A 13″ or smaller screen can be quite difficult to edit on, because video editing requires lots of different panels for media clips, effects, the final output and more:
When the screen is too small, you’ll struggle to fit everything onto it. 15 to 17″ laptops are usually ideal so you can manage everything on-screen easier, plus the laptops themselves aren’t too heavy.
Screen Type (Gloss Or Matt?)
My sixth point covers the screen type itself. You know when you paint your home, you can get “shiny” paint (which is gloss) or “flat” paint which is matt (and you often use that on your walls)? Well the same is true of laptop screens as well. Some laptops come with a slightly shiny, “glossy” screen. These can cause lots of glare to appear on the screen, especially if you have windows or lights nearby. Which… most people do, of course. It’s worth pointing out though that expensive laptops and monitors can have higher quality gloss screens which naturally prevent glare, but cheaper laptops with glossy screens will usually skimp out and you’ll end up in a glare nightmare:
That’s why many people prefer more matt screens on laptops, because they are usually better at preventing glare. Some laptops even market their screens as being anti-glare. These are usually matt screens that include certain techniques (in the underlying screens) which reduce glare. I tend to prefer these for video editing because you need to focus a LOT on the screen, and glare can be a pain and really slow you down.
Color Data Support (HDR, Adobe RGB)
Next up is a bit more of a specialist point, but some “proper” cameras can record with more color data than normal, such as HDR or in 10 bit color:
I won’t dive into these points too much in this video, BUT if you’re planning on working with video that has “extra” color data to normal, you’ll probably want a laptop screen that allows you to work effectively with these. Unfortunately not that many laptops support these extra color spaces, especially on the budget end, although some ASUS ProArt laptops offer some pretty nice support, and laptops like Dell Precision support sRGB color too. If you’re mainly shooting your video on a mobile phone or a simple vlogging camera, you probably don’t need to worry about this point too much.
But if you KNOW that you’ll be shooting HDR footage, for example, you’ll then NEED to buy a HDR-enabled laptop otherwise it’ll make editing much less accurate for you.
Touchscreen Support
My eighth point is my final screen related point, and it’s whether you want a touchscreen or not. Basically an increasing number of laptops have touch-enabled screens and Microsoft completely redesigned the look and feel of Windows 10 to make it touch-friendly [in Windows 11], so technology is ‘kinda moving in this direction. Some laptops like the Asus Zenbook Pro Duo actually have two touchscreens, and programs like Premiere Pro will display extra panels in the second screen, speeding up video editing by giving you more control and visibility of everything.
Storage (Hard Drive Or SSD?)
The ninth factor to consider when choosing a laptop is the storage within your laptop. There are different types of storage – traditional hard drives (which are SLOW), “faster” – but budget – storage known as eMMC and finally, SSDs. You’ll want an SSD. Anything else is too slow for video editing. You’ll then want to consider the capacity of the storage.
Video files can take up a LOT of space, and so something like 250gigs of storage wouldn’t be enough in my opinion. 500+ gigs of storage might be sufficient, but many people prefer having 1 terabyte drives (at least) when video editing. Just make sure it’s all on a proper SSD. Some laptops do weird things like mix eMMC and SSD storage, and advertise 500 gigs of storage (for example) but much of this is actually eMMC storage – which isn’t ideal.
Ports
The tenth factor that’s important to consider when video editing is what ports the laptop has. Some laptops nowadays only have 2 USB ports for example, and sometimes one of these is for charging too. That means that you THEN only have a single USB port available, which is often taken up by your mouse. As a result, if you rely on external storage too, you might be stuck. After all, you’ll need to unplug your mouse’s USB every time you transfer files from a USB stick – which will get REALLY annoying REALLY quickly.
Some laptops actually have built-in SD card readers and these can be VERY useful when video editing, especially if the video you record goes straight to an SD card on your phone or your camera. Just pop out the SD card, stick it in your laptop, and move the video files across – noice. Equally if you ever plan on hooking your laptop up to a separate monitor (like this), you’ll probably want a laptop with a HDMI (or DisplayPort) connection. Many people forget about the ports when buying a laptop, but this can actually be a crucial factor – and determine whether you’re happy with your laptop or not.
Which Laptops I Recommend
So what laptop do I recommend? Well, prices jump around a lot and new laptops are released all the time – but as of April 2024, THIS is a pretty great laptop at the $500 (or so) price point. It contains a pretty good CPU, SSD and healthy amount of RAM. I know a content creator who uses this exact laptop to produce long travel videos in Davinci Resolve, and it works really well for them. THIS can then work well for $1000 budgets.
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