COMPUTER

Report · Jan 11, 2020

Dear community,

I'm so confused about purchasing laptop for video and photo editing, I wanna work with after effect a lot, so which is the right configuration that I have to look for ? and please to recommend me some laptop that are good with after effect.

Thank you

Report · Jan 11, 2020

No laptop is good for AE, because every mobile CPU is limited in comparison to a desktop.

For a good working AE machine, you need a very fast CPU (4GHz at least) and a lot of RAM (starting at 32GB as minimum for serious daily AE work). It's also good pratice to have footage and cache on seperate drives.

Idealy, you need a laptop with at least 2 SSD drives, a CPU which performs at 4GHz as base rate and still have room for boost, 32 GB RAM and the option to upgrade and a medicore GPU like GTX1060 or higher.

The closest you can get to this is with a Macbook Pro. But from the price of one, you can get a high end workstation.

If you want to work good with AE, forget about a laptop. If you need to be mobile, forget about the "good".

Here are some real-work hardware testing with AE for further reading:

https://www.pugetsystems.com/all_articles.php?filter[]=After%20Effects

*Martin

Report · Jan 12, 2020

"It depends" : )

I would certainly agree that a laptop isn't ideal. Video is very demanding on any system, and a laptop is a serious compromise on system performance simply because you're trying to squeeze everything into a box small enough to carry : )

But it does depend... If you're wanting to knock out the occasional 5 second video loop for Instagram - a laptop will be fine. Aiming to make a 30 minute HD documentary... forget it.

Windows options might include: Dell XPS 15, Razor Blade 15 etc. As Martin says - 16 GB ram min, 32 ideal. Dell do offer an i9 in their XPS range, but I'd avoid that because it will severely thermally throttle in a thin and light laptop. One decent SSD (M.2 NvME) will be fine in terms of performance.