Laptop specs for lightroom classic

[Craig36805454xghy]

Hi all. I am planning on buying a new laptop purely for lightroom classic but i dont want to spend a fortune. I have found a refurbished macbook pro on Amazon for about £600. It has a 2.6 ghz intel core i7, 16gb ram and 512gb ssd. Would this run lightroom classic? If not, can you recommend another laptop which would? 

Many thanks,

Craig

[dj_paige]

I am planning on buying a new laptop purely for lightroom classic but i dont want to spend a fortune.

A tough restriction to meet. For best performance you do need to spend more than the "average" laptop, in order to get "above average" hardware.

Yes that laptop would run LrC, but the real question is: would it run LrC fast, or okay, or slow? Can you tell us what graphics processor is in that computer? Can you tell us the exact CPU make and model?

Also I think you will quickly run out of space on the 512GB SSD, and you will need an external drive for your photos.

[Craig36805454xghy]

Thank you for the swift response. Unfortunately it just describes the cpu as AMD core i7 2.6ghz

[Craig36805454xghy]

The graphics are described as ‎Intel UHD Graphics 630

[dj_paige]

I asked for the exact CPU make and model. You would be advised to find out this information. If they don't provide it, walk away.

That GPU is now nearly 7 years old and is likely going to be extremely slow on any new version of LrC, which has been optimized for much more powerful GPUs. It is unlikely that you will be able to use the new AI features in LrC 13.2, or if you can use those features they will be painfully slow.

If it was my money, I would not purchase this laptop for Lightroom Classic.

[Craig36805454xghy]

Thank you for the advice. I will keep looking for an alternative 

[Conrad_C]

I don't think that model is a good idea. Although it should run Lightroom Classic (I have an old laptop similar to that), Lightroom Classic is moving beyond the capabilities of the old Intel-based Mac laptops. It has enough memory and storage, it's just the CPU and GPU are very old and inefficient. Lightroom Classic is now taking advantage of the more powerful graphics hardware and additional, more efficient CPU cores in the Apple Silicon-based Mac laptops that started shipping 4 years ago.

As one example, a Mac or PC with Intel UHD Graphics 630 is not powerful enough to run some newer AI features in Lightroom Classic, and it is too weak to take full advantage of graphics acceleration. If graphics acceleration is unavailable, that will put an additional strain on the old CPU.

For around £600 you should instead look for a used or refurbished M1 MacBook Air or better, aiming for 16GB of memory and 512GB storage. Apple was selling the M1 Air as new until only a few weeks ago because even after four years, it has been a viable budget laptop for raw photo editing. In the USA, some stores still sell the M1 Air new today for $650-750. Any Apple Silicon-based laptop (M1, M2, M3), even the earliest one from 2021, can run the latest Lightroom Classic features, especially if they have 16GB or more of unified memory.