Another "Which Laptop Should I Buy" thread

[Elliot]

Hi Brian,

I'm in a temporary apartment with little room, so I need to edit on a laptop. I currently own a 2015 Asus ROG G751. It has a 512GB SSD and a 1TB 7200RPM drive; 16GB memory, and a 17" IPS display. It's powered by an Intel i7 4710HQ quad core and GeForce GTX980M graphics. I generally still like this machine, except two things: it's heavy at eight and a half pounds, and the battery is pretty much dead and not easily replaceable (though I can do it if I really wanted to).

I'm thinking of replacing it with something lighter. But I haven't found anything significantly better in the US$1500-2000 range.

Full disclosure: I work for AMD. I was trying to find an AMD-based laptop, but almost all of them use the mobile Ryzen which is half the performance of the desktop (according to PassMark). I don't need 8 hours of battery life. 3 hours would be fine. So I'll go with Intel if I must. I don't know if the Ryzen 2700U is significantly faster than what I have now.

My other question is this: if I'm going to stick with 1920x1080, would I be ok with a 15" screen if I've been using a 17" screen for the last 4 years? And does 4k really buy anything for photo editing?

I don't know if getting a laptop that's half the weight but otherwise the same performance, etc, is worth spending $1500. Looking for some Life Coaching.

Thanks!

--Elliot

 

 

[Brian]

4 hours ago, Elliot said:

I'm thinking of replacing it with something lighter. But I haven't found anything significantly better in the US$1500-2000 range.

Yep. If you want real horse power, it comes with weight, due to the extra cooling stuff the laptop has to do. What you could do is replace the 1TB 7200 RPM Drive with a SSD. That will help with battery life at this point and maybe shed a little weight, though hard drives aren't THAT heavy. Anyway, even though the Ryzen Desktop stuff has come a long way, Intel still is a better choice when it comes to the laptop market. It just is, and that hasn't changed much for a long time.

As for the screen, a 15 point whatever screen isn't that much of a dramatic change, what could throw you is the shape of the display of the smaller unit. If it's the same aspect ratio, like 16:9...you will adjust in a few days. If it's something drastically different, that could take longer. Your mileage may vary.

Anyway, if you want a laptop that is much lighter, and you aren't going to be editing photos on this thing, you might actually want to look at a 13" laptop. Such as the Lenovo ThinkPad X280. I have one for work and I will have to say, I'm impressed by it. It's very light and compact and the battery lasts a long time. Keyboard is decent as well. There is also a Dell XPS 13, which seems to get decent reviews. Honestly, I don't think you are going to find the same power as your 17" laptop in a 15" configuration. If you did, you might lose a few pounds, say around 6lbs or so, and that's still heavy.  If you are looking for 2-3lbs, you are looking at a smaller screen model. 

Remember, for Life Coaching stuff, Powerpoint Presentations, using Word and Excel, does not require THAT much horsepower. You'll want a SSD type of Drive, 250GB at a bare minimum and at least 8GB of RAM.

[Elliot]

Thanks for the response. This laptop would definitely be used for Photoshop CC. I'm aware of the heavy laptops. But on one extreme, the Macbook is pretty light for the power. I'd prefer to stay with Windows. (Plus the Macbook would be around $4000.)

I'm used to looking for the highest end processor. What is considered a "good enough" processor for CC? Do you have a specific Passmark number that you like to stay above?

What is the thinking of 4k screens? Will it make me a better post-process person?

I think you've convinced me that 15" will be sufficient. 16GB of memory, 1TB+ of SSD would round it out. I just need to know the processor an the screen resolution.

Thanks!

 

 

[Brian]

The funny thing with Photoshop, is that I believe that the latest version of PS CC is finally taking advantage of what makes a i7 cpu so fast. Up until this point, PS only had about a 5% - 7% performance boost when using a i7 CPU chip over a i5 chip. So CPU power is not as big as a deal as one might think. Heck, over on the Macintosh side, Photoshop runs better on a upgraded 27" iMac than on a iMac Pro that's $10,000 for the same reason. Photoshop doesn't utilitze the CPU as one would think. It's all about RAM, Free HD Capacity and Video Memory. Now, if you were editing video, that is a whole other ballgame...but I'm digressing here.

Honestly, it’s a laptop. It’s meant to conserve battery life so I guess get the best that you can afford. A i9...I’m not convinced that it will give you THAT much more of a difference in speed over a i7. What I’m more concerned with these days is the stupid small SSD drives that the manufacturers put in computers. 

I don’t know if the manufacturers had a really good deal or they have boatloads of small SSD drives that they are trying to get rid of. THE most important thing is to get a laptop or computer with at least a 500GB SSD Drive. Better yet, a 1TB...but good luck finding one in a laptop. Right now I keep seeing 128GB in these computers that link to and that’s microscopic by today’s standards. Not only do you lose capacity after partitioning and formatting then Windows being installed, you have to deal with the PS scratch Disk and Windows Swapfile. (PageFile.sys) Then you load images from a 24MP (or greater camera) and that drains resources. 

For all computers, to run PS CC (Current Version) well requires five things:

• i7 CPU
• A separate, non-integrated Video Card with its own dedicated video memory. 2-4GB is fine, 6-8GB VRAM is better. I realize this is a laptop so it’s going to be part of the motherboard but you still should get one that has dedicated video memory and not one that takes a chunk of the main RAM. 
• At least 16GB RAM with the ability to upgrade to 32GB. 
• Hard Drive Capacity for the main drive should be 1TB. 500GB is doable; however, you don’t want to use that for long term storage of files for a drive that’s 500GB or less. 128GB SSD main drive is out of the question for either a laptop or desktop. I do not care how fast it is, it will not do you one bit of good if it becomes full and that is very easy to do with just Windows, Photoshop and a few photo sessions. 
• A IPS based Display. This helps ensure that your colors and contrast is consistent from edge to edge. 4K on a 15” Display will make everything so TINY. So a screen that is normal HD (1920 x 1080) is fine.

As to which model of laptop that has all of my requirements, good luck finding one. Especially one that is six pounds or less AND have it around $1500. Personally, I hate laptops for photo-editing.  

[Elliot]

Thanks Brian. I hate using laptops for photo editing, too, but for the foreseeable future, this is all I have room for. I don't have a problem upgrading components, so I can replace the SSD with a 1TB. I did that on my current machine.

I generally only keep current photos on my laptop. I have a headless desktop that's connected to Backblaze where I store all my photos and documents.

You gave me some useful information. Thank you again.

[Brian]

One important note on BackBlaze, if you delete your photos on your local drive, BackBlaze also will delete them on their servers after a month or so. They won't inform you of deleting said files either. The reason I mention this, is that if someone thinks they can store photos on BackBlaze, since they have limited storage capacity on a 128GB drive, they are in for a rude awakening if something goes wrong. BackBlaze isn't meant for file storage, it's meant for disaster recovery.

[Elliot]

Do you have a specific recommendation for a proper online backup? Thanks.

[Brian]

I do not at this time. The issue is compression. A lot of Cloud Services will compress files in order to save space. I don’t blame them as image files and psd files can be quite huge. The issue is, I don’t want a cloud server messing with any image files. We have enough to deal with in dealing with compression in Social Media. 

I don’t think Google Drive compresses files. If they do it hasn’t been noticeable.