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Participant
August 29, 2022
Question

Best laptop for adobe creative suite? Budget 800-1200

  • August 29, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 1672 views

Looking for a new laptop to run the programa, particularly premiere, ae, and ps. Budget is $800-1200. PC only. Thoughts welcome.

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    3 replies

    Peru Bob
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    September 1, 2022

    Does it have to be a laptop?

    Participant
    September 1, 2022

    Not really. Not planning to bring it to a lot if places. But I'd rather it not be stuck in one room of my house.

     

    Peru Bob
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    September 1, 2022
    John T Smith
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    September 1, 2022
    Legend
    August 30, 2022

    For the most part, you will not get a laptop that is suitable for much if any video editing whatsoever within that price range. You will need to double or triple that budget just to even meet minimum practical performance requirements for content creation apps.

     

    The typical laptop in that price range has too little included RAM to do much (only 8 GB total RAM), while having only a low-speed, lower-performance quad-core CPU with hyperthreading and either no discrete GPU at all (only integrated graphics) or a GPU that is so gimped that it doesn't even include a hardware decoder or encoder at all for H.264 or HEVC footage.

     

    And that is all because recently (within the past couple of years), hardware component prices have gone on a big rollercoaster ride. Right now, hardware is still somewhat more expensive than it was pre-COVID-19 pandemic.

    Participant
    September 1, 2022

    Thank you. I certainly did not do enough diligent research and some sources give too much credit to cheaper laptops. I'm still trying to find one on the less expensive end, so if I were to go for 1200 to 1800, is there anything that might work? I used to use a macbook pro, but it's old and broken. Was considering the new cheaper 13inch that runs 1300-1400, but it only has 8g of ram. Haven't dropped it out of mind yet, but learning more towards pc. I'm not gonna be doing 4k video anytime soon, but maybe some HD. It will be a lot of layer intensive photoshop that I will cut together to create animated scenes in premiere. Down the line, I may be doing some actual HD video editing.

    Warren Heaton
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    September 5, 2022

    With a revised budget or $1,200 to $1,800 you'll be able to find something that will handle 1080p well and maybe even 2160p; however, be sure to budget for storage media as well - be it increasing the internal storage options of the laptop or external storage.  As you progress through more and more projects, you'll want to consisder archival storage as well.