Best Laptop for Photo Processing

[Herkybird]

My current laptop is in the process of shuffling off this mortal coil and off to silicone heaven.
It crashed 4 times yesterday tring to stich a panorma together and seems to take an age to do anything in Lightroom.
It's 5-6 years old now so is probably needing replaced anyway.

I've done a few searches online and all the recommendations seem to be top spec iMac's, ASUS gaming machines or an HP all at over £1,200.
I'm sure i don't need to spend that much to process some pics in lightroom and maybe give Photoshop a try out at some point.

So the question is what would be a decent laptop for for my photo processing needs?

Cheers

[FunkyNige]

The three things you need to look for are:
1) Relatively fast hard drive to get Photoshop up and running, read the images, store them in the temporary area, etc.
2) Fair bit of RAM as photoshop uses this before writing to the hard drive when processing
3) Decent screen - no point spending ages getting the brightness right only to find it's dark because it's tilted too far away from you!

First two are fairly easy (bigger numbers are better) the third can be a pain on a laptop. If you must have a laptop then something like this
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/la...
would do the job (wait for other recommendations first though, that was 30 seconds on the PC World website!), but a 'real' PC with a decent monitor attached would be better.

[V8A*ndy]

Herkybird said:

My current laptop is in the process of shuffling off this mortal coil and off to silicone heaven.
It crashed 4 times yesterday tring to stich a panorma together and seems to take an age to do anything in Lightroom.


Cheers

It might just be overheating due to being clogged up with dust inside. Heat throttles the processor back slowing it down and too much heat crashes the computer. Open it up and give it a good blast with air.

I'm using a 4 year old i7 2820 Dell with 6mb ram. I recently fitted a Samsung pro SSD and it flies in lightroom.

Would it be worthwhile maybe you picking one up used say an xps 17 l702x

I can upgrade to 32mb of ram in this particular machine and the 17" HD display is very good.

I even run simple edits in video full HD no issues.

[Herkybird]

I don't think it's dust, it was never a great machine in the first place and it's running as fast as it can. I think it's about to become a laptop for homework for the kids.
I'd prefer a laptop as I take it with me when I go away and use it for work so portability is needed.
I have had a quick look on a few computer shop sites but I was just wondering what everyone else uses.
Having just splashed £750 on a new lens I don't think the wifey would let me spend over a grand on a laptop as well.

[V8A*ndy]

That one posted by funkynige is more than good enough IMO plus you can nip down to PC world and have a look at the screen quality before you buy. Made that mistake with the wifes Lenovo.

An xps 17 is certainly more luggable than portable.

Though there is one on the bay right now for £195 bargin.

[K12beano]

Well I'm using a five year old Mac Book Pro and today it stitched 11 D800-sized NEFs together into a Lightroom panorama.

It's a 2.2GHz i7 and 8Gb RAM with a SSD, but it's good as gold on latest LR (providing you leave a bit of breathing space on the storage (tend to use external drives a fair bit for extending storage, but today's work was on the internal)

So if a five year ld can cope, it shouldn't need to be the very toppest spec!

[Andy M]

Any MacBook Pro with a SSD HD.

I upgrade every 3 years or so. My current i7 is 2 years old and easily manages the 42mp files from the A7r2.

[steveatesh]

Can't make a specific laptop recommendation OP but iI concur with the post above about the importance of the screen.

I have a Meidion i7 laptop with a hybrid drive, dedicated graphics and 8Mb RAM. It has a 17" screen which is HD resolution. It is quick when processing Imagues in LR6.


However, my main photography computer is an iMac retina. Now I'm not saying you can compare a 27" screen with a 17" screen but the very high resolution makes all the difference in the world when working on photos. Clarity of detail, far less zooming in etc make the workflow so much easier and quicker.

If you can get a Very High Def screen, or a retina if you can go to One of the Mac laptops.

[RobDickinson]

Just picked up a Dell XPS 15. 4k screen, 16gb ram, good i7 cpu (tho power hungry). Had a 1tb HDD also added a boot SSD at 500gig. Bit of a monster piece of kit I could probably have done with something lower spec but what the hell

Apple are ok if you want OSX, if your going to run windows it really needs a touchscreen

[RobDickinson]

I needed something for this month for workshops in post processing etc.. otherwise would have waited see what the surface pro 4 brought etc

[Digitalize]

You'll need to spend a fair bit of money to get a laptop with a colour correct screen, far more important than power. I used a MacBook Air (1.7Ghz i7 Dual, 4Gb RAM, SSD) during my first year of a photography degree.

However, my advice would be to get a MacBook Air 13" and an external monitor. Or a 13" rMBP.

And enjoy the 4+ years of use you'll get out of it.

[Herkybird]

Thanks for all the replies.
I ordered a new ACER (used them for years with no issues) Aspire V15
15.6'' HD screen with iris graphics 6100, 16GB DDR3 memory, I7 processor and 1 Tb hard drive.

That should work for me for a while.

[JPLandolt]

Any MacBook Pro with a SSD HD.