Need a low cost laptop for Premiere Pro CC2019

[solomedia]

I am needing to buy a cheap laptop (something that if it gets damaged I won't cry) to carry with me out in the field. I will use it to do editing in areas that is not a controlled enviorment. Hence CHEAP... ButI want something that will work for editing and rendering in CC2019. What is you take on this computer......ASUS VivoBook AMD A12-9720P Quad-Core upto 3.6GHz, 32GB RAM ???

[RjL190365]

If anything, that laptop will actually perform WORSE than a dual-core Intel i3 CPU-based laptop due to the deficiencies of the Bulldozer-derived CPU architecture used on several generations of AMD CPUs, including that A12, prior to Ryzen. That A12 behaves in Premiere Pro as if it were merely a 2-core/4-thread CPU that has all of the drawbacks of Bulldozer, including its poor implementation of the SSE 4.x CPU instruction set that Adobe makes heavy use of. And to top that off, AMD CPUs cannot utilize hardware H.264 or H.265 decoding or encoding that Adobe's software makes good use of in certain Intel CPUs.

[solomedia]

Thank you for the reply. I have to ask, do you have a sugguestion for a lower end laptop that would be OK-ish ..... I know I could spend alot to get alot, but thats not what I am looking to do. Any sugestions for a PC based laptop? Thank you for you time and help

[John T Smith]

Go to the Hardware forum and scroll through a few pages and read other laptop discussions

https://community.adobe.com/t5/video-hardware/bd-p/video-hardware?page=1&sort=latest_replies&filter=...

[Peru Bob]

Moved to the Video Hardware forum.

[salvo34]

it's a gamble and you just have to do the research for required specs (software requirements) and computer specs. AND ( not usually addressed ), what you want to do with it specifically.

I got a laptop for locations to load stuff into timeline(s) using CS6 and Resolve. The main concern for me was to be able to xfer data from camera ( ssd ) to other external SSD, to free up the camera space.

Also I wanted to be able to to a 'check the gate' type thing... where you just put a clip into laptop to see if you got the shot without dust or hairs on the chip.

I got a 'gaming computer' by HP ( Omen ) and a usb mouse, and it does the job for me. But it is definetely NOT an editing computer and the 17" screen is NOT good enough to edit for real.

So, I would cry if I went to some uncontrolled environment, like the monkey park in Kenya, and one of the monkeys threw my laptop off a cliff cause it didn't smell like a banana.

But other than that I don't really need the laptop to do a whole lot of editing on a serious level. It just lets me see what I got, xfer stuff, and get back home to the real desktop editing stuff.

🙂

[solomedia]

How about this one? ..............HP 15.6"| 10th Gen Intel Quad-Core i7-1065G7 | 32GB RAM 128GB SSD 

[RjL190365]

For that price that's about the best that you can do right now. Just make sure that you'll be able to attach an external USB 3.1 SSD whenever you need one (it should have come with a smallish-capacity internal SSD and not a slow 5400 RPM HDD). And that's assuming that you'd be willing to put up with a relative weakling of a GPU (in this case, in the form of the integrated Intel UHD Graphics of some sort).

[salvo34]

You're kinda screwed with the timing of this issue. First off nobody uses the hardware forum anymore, which is where your post got moved to. Years ago it was extremely active with lots of experts. And it was all desktop platform discussions cause no laptops had the power to edit nothin but kid junk ( m.s. movie maker ? ). Also, there were fewer codecs and wrappers and source file variants ( like now there is S log, raw of many flavors, 4k, 8k, VR etc. ).

Back then the only drives you could use were called  black 7200rpm HD with fast seek times, and limited amount of ram available ( sticks, not SSD and not the new stuff ).  If I had to do what you are trying to do I would have a super hard time ( without my experience ) finding the best option. Even WITH my experience I had to research for a month to replace the last laptop I had with this HP one... which as I said cannot be used to edit anything remotely seriously.

But it has a built in SD card reader, 1T fast drive (HD spinning) for work folders, the SSD for OS and programs, and several usb ports etc. It's good enough to plug in two external SSD's to xfer stuff in the field or home. The 17" monitor is small and looking at the source and program monitors with other panels open is limiting. AND the color of monitor is just moderately close to sRGB ( can't hook up a reference monitor to this without jumping through hoops ... meaning HDMI to SDI converter etc.

There are laptops now that people can bring to the set (stage or location) with real expensive add-ons to get something fairly reliable to look at but it is very unlikley you and I will ever do that sort of thing.

It couldn't hurt to make a few phone calls to vendors. See if someone has the time to talk to you about options.  And then after getting the suggestions just go over the notes you made on the internet and check pricing and specs for yourself.

Sorry, but it's not easy and is even harder now than it used to be.

good luck !