Looking for a laptop for editing

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ThePrettyDamned

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243
Name
Paul
Edit My Images
Yes
Hello. I'm retiring my desktop (it's getting quite old, runs an i7 6700, 16gb ram, ssd and a gtx960). It's sluggish and struggles with lightroom and photoshop, and is generally suffering from being a bit old! I also get incompatibility warnings with lightroom since it was upgraded to include the ai stuff...

Mostly, I want a laptop - I don't want to have to retire to the other room to process holiday pics.

I am open to switching software to something else - I've had dxo photolab 6 recommended - but what laptop options for under £800 would work? Options at the moment look like base m1 macbook air (8gb ram seems low and no graphics card!) or a lenovo Yoga 7 Pro (i7-13700H, 16gb ram, 2.5k screen with 100 percent srgb and no graphics card). Is there another option out there?

I'm after something that'll smoothly process raw files and, very occasionally, do a bit of hdr or focus stacking (even if it's slow). Raw files are 24mp from a lumix S5 and 16mp from an olympus epl7.

I've heard that, increasingly, graphics cards matter, which is a massive shame (they seem to add massively to cost and size!). Is this true?

Not after pro-level work flow or video editing, at all - that'll cost too much - just a nice experience editing and exporting photos using wither lightroom and photoshop or something else. 100 percent srgb is a must, wider is better - but for printing I can always plug into my monitor and assess there. Appreciate any advice from hobbyist photogs on a budget out there!
 
MacBook Air is good - the graphics "card" is built into the M1 SoC - CPU, RAM, graphics and a few other bits are all on the same chip, which allows for better performance. It is a really efficient chip too, which makes a big difference in a laptop, as they can have smaller batteries/longer life. I use an M1 Air, albeit with 16GB, as my main machine and am impressed with the performance.
 
Craikeybaby said:
MacBook Air is good - the graphics "card" is built into the M1 SoC - CPU, RAM, graphics and a few other bits are all on the same chip, which allows for better performance. It is a really efficient chip too, which makes a big difference in a laptop, as they can have smaller batteries/longer life. I use an M1 Air, albeit with 16GB, as my main machine and am impressed with the performance.
Click to expand...

Nice. Hoxton have some used, but the 16gb ram models cost £100 more!

What software do you use? I currently have lightroom and photoshop but I've been advised to give photolab 6 a go for a lighter experience. Although it sounds like the ai tech in it is very slow unless you have a proper graphics card.

Intel cards have in-built graphics as well but I can get more "real" ram for less, compared to apple doing ram swapping (albeit a decent bit quicker than a windows machine would).
 
The Yoga would be a good alternative, although you may want to calibrate the screen. I have a flex 5 bought earlier this year. My previous laptop was a Dell XPS (which was equal or better than the MacBook I had before that) and that had better build quality, but the Lenovo is ok.

One advantage of the Lenovo is that if you want more storage then it's easy to change the SSD - mine has a 2TB drive now.
 
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Thanks both.

So to summarise:
- no need for dedicated graphics
- yoga with i7 13700h would be fine and can upgrade storage (I'm likely to use external ssds but that's a nice point)
- m1 macbook air is good, but 16gb ram preferable

I currently use the Adobe suite but I have heard dxo photolab 6 performs more smoothly for general editing, so I will trial that. I think I need to get my hands on both options and see what I prefer. I've never owned a mac before, but I'm comfy enough with OS from work.

I like lightroom but I've had trouble syncing my online and offline photos, there is a recurring bug I've had for nearly a year... So I think I may just get all the files onto a drive and create a new catalogue from scratch. But to be honest, I like the idea of getting out of the Adobe system. I don't feel like it gives enough value, it's quite expensive. I tried an older version of dxo and found it easier to get nice results than lightroom but it was clunky as heck for organising - photolab 6 looks more organised from videos I've seen.

The I found, for the same price of the lenovo Yoga 7 Pro, a yoga 7 Pro x - but it uses 12th gen i7 and has a dedicated graphics card and 100 percent p3 coverage. So... I wonder how the 12th gen i7 h processor holds up to 13th. Apparently 13th gen is pretty decent step up but having a dedicated graphics card may help accelerate a few things.
 
Suggest waiting for the black Friday deals if you decide to go with DXO as they release a new version around that time each year
 
ThePrettyDamned said:
Hello. I'm retiring my desktop (it's getting quite old, runs an i7 6700, 16gb ram, ssd and a gtx960). It's sluggish and struggles with lightroom and photoshop, and is generally suffering from being a bit old! I also get incompatibility warnings with lightroom since it was upgraded to include the ai stuff...

Mostly, I want a laptop - I don't want to have to retire to the other room to process holiday pics.

I am open to switching software to something else - I've had dxo photolab 6 recommended - but what laptop options for under £800 would work? Options at the moment look like base m1 macbook air (8gb ram seems low and no graphics card!) or a lenovo Yoga 7 Pro (i7-13700H, 16gb ram, 2.5k screen with 100 percent srgb and no graphics card). Is there another option out there?

I'm after something that'll smoothly process raw files and, very occasionally, do a bit of hdr or focus stacking (even if it's slow). Raw files are 24mp from a lumix S5 and 16mp from an olympus epl7.

I've heard that, increasingly, graphics cards matter, which is a massive shame (they seem to add massively to cost and size!). Is this true?

Not after pro-level work flow or video editing, at all - that'll cost too much - just a nice experience editing and exporting photos using wither lightroom and photoshop or something else. 100 percent srgb is a must, wider is better - but for printing I can always plug into my monitor and assess there. Appreciate any advice from hobbyist photogs on a budget out there!
Click to expand...
In response to the the points above here is a link to Adobe website on graphics cards usage and on the DXO website the recommended graphics card is Nvidia 2060 or better.
 
Mintchocs said:
In response to the the points above here is a link to Adobe website on graphics cards usage and on the DXO website the recommended graphics card is Nvidia 2060 or better.
Click to expand...

Fantastic! Thank you, that does help.

I've had a look at a few laptops today and I liked two - one was the yoga 7 Pro, with i7 13700h and 16gb ram. I really like the size, the screen and the feel of the keyboard.

However, for £100 less I found an asus vivobook s with i5 13500h gen (which would probably be nearly as good), 16gb ram and an Intel arc a350m graphics card.

I've heard these cards are pretty good for graphics work - but I've also heard there are terrible driver issues. Intel reckon they are partnered with Adobe but I've seen a few crash reports that indicate it may not be a good idea... Has anyone had experience with arc graphics? And would that work better than the i7 with integrated graphics?
 
IIRC some of the Vivobooks have an OLED screen that can suffer screen burn. You should check that's not an issue for the model you're interested in.
 
I use an Acer Predator Helios 300 PH317-56 17.3 inch Gaming Laptop with QuadHD screen - (12th gen Intel Core i7-12700H, 16GB, 1TB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070Ti, QHD 165Hz, Windows 11, Black). Mine easily drives/displays on 4k monitors with 4k HDMI output and more plug in ports besides!
It has 8gig RAM on the graphics card alone so is basically future proof and it speeds through Raw processing. It can can crack on with 4k video editing too the say, and I don't doubt, but I have not done that yet. It is in my opinion brilliant and fast and is all I need. (I am not a computer geek mind you lol!).
There is one here on sale . . . https://www.overclockers.co.uk/acer...MI8q2gt_PDgQMVVohQBh21LgqzEAQYASABEgKKkfD_BwE
Check it out, I'm glad I did.
 
Well, after checking out a few today I've ordered the lenovo.

I did not like the macbook air enough to pay up the money, and I see recent reports of arc graphics driver issues so I've gone for a hefty processor, nice screen and the nicest keyboard for my budget.

A few hundred quid more would get me a graphics card that works but for my needs I don't think it'll make heaps of difference most of the time. I may struggle with the fancy dxo noise reduction but I've managed without till now ;)
 
A great choice . . . nearly all computers are brill these days. I have no doubt you will enjoy it :)
 
Fixer said:
A great choice . . . nearly all computers are brill these days. I have no doubt you will enjoy it :)
Click to expand...
We'll see! I managed to get my alienware to last for... 8 years? Whenever the i7 6700 came out. It's only just getting frustrating in the last year or so, so if I can manage another 8 I'll be chuffed!
 
Replaced my XPS earlier this year - bought in 2014 - because the keyboard was playing up and the battery would only do an hour. It wasn't great at editing images, but was OK as a travel PC.
 
First impressions are very positive! Imported some 24mp raw files to lightroom classic and processed as normal, much quicker and smoother. Colours are good and seem to match the dell ultrasharp.

Only slow bit is the ai processing, as expected - but that was still a decent bit quicker than the old machine, and I don't use it loads. I may try processing some ccd sensor photos with the ai noise reduction and see how that goes...
 
Thought a minor update would be in order as I've done some proper editing now.

This thing is brilliant. Works absolutely great with lightroom. Not bothered with photoshop, rarely use it... I really should get dxo photolab.

Anyway, ai denoise claims it'll take 12-20 minutes depending on the image. In reality it takes about 2 minutes per raw image. Not bad - especially as I can now use my wonderful Sony a350 ccd sensor and get beautiful clean results! The butterfly is from that camera, with a modern profile applied in lightroom. The dog headshot portrait was high iso (relatively, iso 1250)and denoise made it incredibly clean
Not needed at all, but it's kind of amazing.
Stix!-1-3.jpgHolidays 2023-23.jpgStix!-1.jpg
 
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