Computer configuration

[jakher1927]

We are at that point were we need to replace our travel laptop and wanted to get some suggestions for the best configuration as we are using it primarily with  LR Classic.  Cost of course is a consideration but performance is very important as well.  Most of my work is done at home when we return using a powerful desktop.

[Conrad C]

Do you need the travel laptop to do heavy editing and bulk exporting/uploading, or do you just need it to store each day's images with a few edits and leave the heavy lifting until you get home to your powerful desktop computer?

How many megapixels do your cameras have?

Do you prefer PC, Mac, or either?

CPU: A quad-core current generation Intel Core i5 is a good starting point for basic travel cataloging, and is in many affordable laptops. If your cameras have lots of megapixels or you need to do heavy edits and bulk exports on the road, then you might want to upgrade to a 6- or 8-core i7 or i9. Avoid a dual-core CPU; it's better to have 4 or more because Lightroom Classic can use extra cores for some background tasks if you set it up that way.

RAM: 16GB or more. You could get away with 8GB for travel if you really need to save money, but Lightroom Classic runs better when it can use more than 12GB RAM.

Storage: SSD (flash storage), for speed, not a hard drive. There are two common types of SSD: SATA and NVMe. NVMe is several times faster than SATA, but if you want to keep costs down, SATA SSD is fine for photo editing and still much faster than a hard drive. If you want a Mac laptop you can only get very fast NVMe storage, but adding internal capacity is expensive. If you want to be able to keep all travel images on the laptop itself, be sure to account for how much storage you will need to store the typical number of frames you shoot on a trip. I find that I need to keep 50-200GB free on the laptop depending on the trip. Of  course, you could save money by lowering the amount of internal storage if you're willing to travel with an external drive to store images on, but that's one more thing to manage.

Graphics: Intel integrated graphics is OK for light travel cataloging, but if you need to edit high megapixel images on a larger laptop display, then you want discrete graphics with at least 2GB of VRAM.

My own Lightroom Classic laptop is at the lower end of those specs, and it's fine for what I do. (13" MacBook Pro) As would a PC laptop with similar specs.