Best laptop for After Effects?

[Stellar_Unicorn16B6]

I'm planning on buying a laptop for work with Photoshop, After Effects (and possibly Premiere).  I'd like to keep the budget around $1500.  I've looked at some of the gaming laptops, but are they overkill?  is there a slim, professional laptop with the horsepower to do what I want to do at this price point?

Preferences:

16+ GB ram

Core i7

Nvidia 1060 graphics (or close to it)

HDD+SSD

[Peru Bob]

You want at least 32 GB RAM for After Effects.

What type of media will you be editing and what effects will you use?

[Stellar_Unicorn16B6]

I doubt I'll be working with any video larger than HD.  I'm primarily an animator, so I'll be animating with elements and artwork more than video.  As far as effects, I don't have any third party add-ons (Trapcode, etc).  I'll be using the effects native to after effects.

[Bill Gehrke]

Here is my suggestion.  This is a custom configuration from Xotic,  I suggest you explore to get the GTX 1060 based system  but I have limited time right now.  It is all SSD package, use the Samsung 850 for your OS/Applications and the Samsung 960 for all the project files. I really would like to have one of these myself.

It is priced at:

Updated price: $1,584.00

3% Cash Discount: -$47.52 *Restrictions May Apply to Cash Discounted Price

  Subtotal: $1,536.48

XOTIC PC Saved Configuration 43840

Sager NP6852 (Clevo N850HK1)   

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Display

1 x 15.6” FHD 16:9 LED Backlit Wide screen (1920x1080) Super Clear Matte Type IPS Screen $0.00  

Operating System

1 x Windows® 10 Home 64-Bit Edition Preinstalled (Clean Install | Drivers Only | No Bloatware) $70.00  

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Processor

1 x 7th Generation Intel® Kaby Lake™ i7-7700HQ (2.8GHz - 3.8GHz, 6MB Intel® Smart Cache) $0.00  

Graphics Video Card

1 x NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti (4GB) GDDR5 (Pascal) DX12 $0.00  

Ram

1 x 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 2400MHz Dual Channel Memory $230.00  

M.2 Slot 1

1 x 500GB Samsung 960 Evo NVMe M.2 SSD $320.00  

2.5" Bay 1

1 x 250GB Samsung 850 EVO Series SSD - Bay 1 $85.00  

Wireless Networking / Bluetooth

1 x Intel® Dual Band AC 3168 Wifi 802.11 + Bluetooth Module [M.2 Chip] - Default $0.00  

[Warren Heaton]

When working in Premiere Pro, do you know what video settings you'll be using?  You'll want to be sure that the laptop that you choose supports the bandwidth requirements of the video that you'll be cutting.  If going the USB-C/USB3 route to save on the cost of the laptop, PR's proxy workflow should work for you; however, I consider Thunderbolt a must have.

-Warren

[Stellar_Unicorn16B6]

I'm not all that experienced with editing, I'd just like some ability to do it in case I want to monkey around with it.  I'm an animator, not an editor, so it's not vital.  I agree, I do want Thunderbolt.

[Bill Gehrke]

Finding a recent laptop with Thunderbolt will be a major problem

[Warren Heaton]

B&H Photo Video carries 121 laptops with Thunderbolt 3:

B&H Photo Video

They still carry one model with Thunderbolt 2 and another with Thunderbolt 1. 

They also have a pretty good used selection.

[Talal5C36]

Hi thalgar, for your budget the Acer Predator Helios 300 would be a good fit. I have a Dell running a 3rd generation i7 CPU (from 2013), and it runs After Effects and Premiere CC2018 just fine. As long as you don't go bonkers with 3D, and keep the 4K editing to proxies, then any non-Apple laptop with a decent quad-core i5/i7 CPU and at least 16GB of RAM will do. Ideally, it would have 2 internal drives (one for boot, one for cache/file storage), which most gaming laptops allow for. so in this case the Helios 300 will give you the best bang-for-the-buck, but they do sacrifice screen quality for the price. Just check out gaming laptops on various sites, and look at some reviews here for build quality and after-purchase support.