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Stellar_problem4865
Participant
June 5, 2025
Question

Need help choosing between these two laptops for my son

  • June 5, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 297 views

Hi, 

 

I was wondering if someone could help me out. My son wants a laptop for using photoshop and I have to choose between these two computers, 

 

Acer
Swift 3 Laptop - 14in FHD IPS, AMD Ryzen 5 5500U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD - Silver

 

Acer
Aspire 3 A315-59 - 15.6in - Intel Core i5 - 16GB RAM - 512GB SSD

 

I get that there may be way better laptops out there, but it is more than likely going to be between these two. If anyone who understands computer specs could let me know which one of these would be better, that would be a ton of help. 

 

Thanks in advance 

2 replies

Bojan Živković11378569
Community Expert
Bojan Živković11378569Community Expert
Community Expert
June 6, 2025

I am with @ExUSA you need a laptop with a dedicated graphics card if you can afford it. Although it may work as it is for now, looking ahead, you will likely encounter issues. The main thing to remember is that the same components, like the Ryzen 5 5500, are not the same for laptops and desktop machines; the same rule applies to processors. Desktop versions are better because of laptop cooling systems limitations.

    Trevor.Dennis
    Community Expert
    Trevor.DennisCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 7, 2025

    Bojan, I have been surprised at how crisp my MacBook Pro M2 with 1TB and 16GB is with Adobe apps.  It is not as fast as my expensive desktop workstation regards heavy lifting, but it moves pixels around the screen MUCH faster.  I should qualify this by saying that I have not done a lot of Photoshop with it, but it ran a workshop no problem.  That 16GB is Unified memory with a Mac, which I believe means it shares it beween system and graphics.  I hate to say it, as I have taken the mick out of Macs forever, but they work pretty damn well.   

     

    In that test we do with a 5K pixel brush with 1% spacing, and time it corner to corner on a 30K pixel square 8bit canvas, Jane's new(ish) Mac desktop totally smokes, my workstation, by quite a margin.

      E
      ExUSA
      Legend
      June 5, 2025

      16GB is minimal nowadays, 24 or 32GB is a better choice. And video card is EXTREMELY important. An integrated video card is a poor choice, you want a current, discrete AMD Radeon or Nvidia graphics card. On the Windows side, Nvidia has generally been preferred but AMD has new cards out that look to be good value as well.

      You can also look at Apple portables, the current Mac platform has excellent hardware performance and battery life.

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