Basic, entry level laptop

[CruzeR911]

Can someone recommend a bang for the buck laptop for editing photos and videos?


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[Jun aka Pekto]

Can someone recommend a bang for the buck laptop for editing photos and videos?

I would guess something like this (or the Lenovo equivalent). My eldest daughter needs a new laptop that can do decent in Photoshop and other graphics.

ASUS Laptop VivoBook X556UQ-NB71 Intel Core i7 65U (2.5 GHz) 8 GB Memory 512 GB SSD NVIDIA GeForce 94MX 15.6" Windows 1 Home 64-Bit - Newegg.com

i7 6500U (Skylake)
8 GB RAM
512 GB SSD
GeForce 940MX - as capable as the GTX 660m in my 2012 ASUS RoG -- also good for CUDA-enabled apps
Full HD
DVD Writer

or if I want to save some money, I'd go for the i5 equivalent with a 1 TB SATA HDD. But, she's paying for it. So, she can go higher if she wants.

[CruzeR911]

I would guess something like this (or the Lenovo equivalent). My eldest daughter needs a new laptop that can do decent in Photoshop and other graphics.

ASUS Laptop VivoBook X556UQ-NB71 Intel Core i7 65U (2.5 GHz) 8 GB Memory 512 GB SSD NVIDIA GeForce 94MX 15.6" Windows 1 Home 64-Bit - Newegg.com

i7 6500U (Skylake)
8 GB RAM
512 GB SSD
GeForce 940MX - as capable as the GTX 660m in my 2012 ASUS RoG -- also good for CUDA-enabled apps
Full HD
DVD Writer

or if I want to save some money, I'd go for the i5 equivalent with a 1 TB SATA HDD. But, she's paying for it. So, she can go higher if she wants.

Thanks! Will look it up..hopefully it's available here..


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[badkuk]

^ ~42k at PC Express for the core i7, 4GB, 1TB version

[Jun aka Pekto]

Thanks! Will look it up..hopefully it's available here..

It's US$729 here plus $3 shipping. For an i7 with a 512 GB SSD, 8 GB RAM, and GeForce 940MX, it's got pretty good bang for the buck.

I'm not sure how much of a mark up there is if you can find it over there.

I'm sure there are cheaper versions. But then, you'll be delving into HP, Toshiba, Acer, and Dell territory.

Apart from Apple, I made it a point to consider ASUS and Lenovo only for mainstream laptops. In the case of my wife, she goes for the top with her Sager. She's had nothing but Sager laptops since 2002.

[CruzeR911]

Pricey and lower speed than the other.. Hobbies getting expensive [emoji17]


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[badkuk]

Officially i don't think we have Sager here.

* CruzeR911 : Not sure what type of work you will be doing, but generally more RAM = better

[CruzeR911]

I'm doing some photo and video editing more as a hobby

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[Jun aka Pekto]

Thanks! Will look it up..hopefully it's available here..

I got it for sale at newegg.com for $689 with free shipping. The sale is about to end though. It's now up to $699 with $2.99 shipping within the US. That means it won't be long before it's back to its regular price ($799). I looked at Amazon and the same exact model is listed at $850.

Amazon.com : ASUS Laptop VivoBook X556UQ-NB71 Intel Core i7 65U (2.5 GHz) 8 GB Memory 512 GB SSD NVIDIA GeForce 94MX 15.6'' Windows 1 Home 64-Bit : Computers & Accessories

ASUS Laptop VivoBook X556UQ-NB71 Intel Core i7 65U (2.5 GHz) 8 GB Memory 512 GB SSD NVIDIA GeForce 94MX 15.6" Windows 1 Home 64-Bit - Newegg.com

Oh. No tax.

[Jun aka Pekto]

As for a more realistic entry level laptop..... I still need to buy a laptop for my youngest kid because it's a requirement in her (3rd grade) school by next January.

Here is what I have in mind......

$330

Lenovo ThinkPad 11e 20ED001HUS 11.1" Notebook - AMD A series A4-6210 (1.8 GHz), 4GB RAM, 120GB SSD, AMD Radeon R3 - Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit

Lenovo ThinkPad 11e 2ED1HUS 11.1" Notebook - AMD A series A4-621 (1.8 GHz), 4GB RAM, 12GB SSD, AMD Radeon R3 - Windows 1 Pro 64-Bit-Newegg.com

[badkuk]

Black Friday laptop deals have been trickling out since last week...

[Jun aka Pekto]

As for a more realistic entry level laptop..... I still need to buy a laptop for my youngest kid because it's a requirement in her (3rd grade) school by next January.

Here is what I have in mind......

$330

Lenovo ThinkPad 11e 20ED001HUS 11.1" Notebook - AMD A series A4-6210 (1.8 GHz), 4GB RAM, 120GB SSD, AMD Radeon R3 - Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit

Lenovo ThinkPad 11e 2ED1HUS 11.1" Notebook - AMD A series A4-621 (1.8 GHz), 4GB RAM, 12GB SSD, AMD Radeon R3 - Windows 1 Pro 64-Bit-Newegg.com

Some changes to the specs of the Thinkpad 11e I ended up buying for the kid.....

Intel Celeron N3150 1.5 GHz (2.08 Ghz turbo) quadcore, no HT
8 GB DDR3 2133 RAM
128 GB SSD
Windows 10 Pro

Decently responsive and certainly faster to boot up and shutdown compared to my 2013 14" G46VW (i5 3230m, 8 GB RAM).

The 11.6" Thinkpad 11e makes the G46VW look big.

[Jun aka Pekto]

Looks like I'm the only one at home who doesn't have an SSD yet. I guess that's the upgrade I'll do (for my laptop) when the time comes.

[WallyWest]

Any ideas if a laptop with AMD A6-9220 processor and 4GB ram will be good enough for coding and Photoshop?

I could add more ram but I'm more concerned with the processor. Is it better than the usual Intel Celeron processors that come with laptops in the 15 to 18k price segment?

...

[LancerA174A]

Any ideas if a laptop with AMD A6-9220 processor and 4GB ram will be good enough for coding and Photoshop?

I could add more ram but I'm more concerned with the processor. Is it better than the usual Intel Celeron processors that come with laptops in the 15 to 18k price segment?

...

I remember back in college ang madalas na nirecommend samin get a laptop with an i5 or higher CPU, ang kinuha ko ay naka i5-2410m, medyo nag iinit lang pero ok pa naman for coding. Still runs ok today considering it was a 2011/2012 model pa.

But for Ps and multimedia editing I think ang hard requirement is a good dedicated GPU, I never do editing kaya di ko kinailangan. 🙂

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[tr1ck5h07]

Any ideas if a laptop with AMD A6-9220 processor and 4GB ram will be good enough for coding and Photoshop?

I could add more ram but I'm more concerned with the processor. Is it better than the usual Intel Celeron processors that come with laptops in the 15 to 18k price segment?

...

Try to stretch the budget for an i3 or i5 processor, at least 8gb ram, and an ssd. It will make coding and photoshop workflows so much smoother


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[jut703]

Any ideas if a laptop with AMD A6-9220 processor and 4GB ram will be good enough for coding and Photoshop?

I could add more ram but I'm more concerned with the processor. Is it better than the usual Intel Celeron processors that come with laptops in the 15 to 18k price segment?

...

What kind of Photoshop? If you won't be working on high-res, high DPI files, that kind of setup will work.

I do quite a lot of Lightroom work and then additional minor edits in PS and my 10 year-old Q6600 with 6GB RAM and SSD still works fine. I'm CPU-limited though when processing large RAW files.

Interestingly, even with my laptop (i5-4300U, 8GB, SSD), I'm still CPU-limited and I frequently encounter 100% CPU utilization and lag. This is for LR though. For PS I haven't had problems whether with my older desktop or my laptop.

But for Ps and multimedia editing I think ang hard requirement is a good dedicated GPU, I never do editing kaya di ko kinailangan. [emoji846]

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In my experience, PS doesn't need a GPU. I've tried it with and without a fast GPU and the bottleneck is still CPU and RAM. I also tried CUDA encoding for videos and CPU-encoding is still faster.




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[WallyWest]

What kind of Photoshop? If you won't be working on high-res, high DPI files, that kind of setup will work.

I do quite a lot of Lightroom work and then additional minor edits in PS and my 10 year-old Q6600 with 6GB RAM and SSD still works fine. I'm CPU-limited though when processing large RAW files.

Interestingly, even with my laptop (i5-4300U, 8GB, SSD), I'm still CPU-limited and I frequently encounter 100% CPU utilization and lag. This is for LR though. For PS I haven't had problems whether with my older desktop or my laptop.




In my experience, PS doesn't need a GPU. I've tried it with and without a fast GPU and the bottleneck is still CPU and RAM. I also tried CUDA encoding for videos and CPU-encoding is still faster.




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Thanks for the insight.

It's for my college kid, actually.

She only does graphic arts - backgrounds for presentations, posters/tarps, t-shirts, etc. No photo post-processing AFAIK.

I'm sure it can handle coding but I want something usable for Ps as well so she doesn't have to keep transferring her files to and from the cloud.

I'd consider something with an i5 at least but alas... budget constraints.

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[red_one]

Thanks for the insight.

It's for my college kid, actually.

She only does graphic arts - backgrounds for presentations, posters/tarps, t-shirts, etc. No photo post-processing AFAIK.

I'm sure it can handle coding but I want something usable for Ps as well so she doesn't have to keep transferring her files to and from the cloud.

I'd consider something with an i5 at least but alas... budget constraints.

...

There is always the 2nd hand market. You can get Core i5 laptop on a budget. Go to TipidPC.com.

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[Verbl Kint]

Any ideas if a laptop with AMD A6-9220 processor and 4GB ram will be good enough for coding and Photoshop?

I could add more ram but I'm more concerned with the processor. Is it better than the usual Intel Celeron processors that come with laptops in the 15 to 18k price segment?

...

For 18k, I would recommend the following (all listings from PCHub):



Acer Aspire (A315-51 35LM) 15.6
Intel® Core™ i3 Processor 6006U 'Skylake'
(15W, 2-Core, 64-bit, 2.0Ghz, 3Mb L3)
Endless OS (you'll need to get Windows separately)
15.6" LED Backlight HD Gloss (1366x768)
4gb DDR3L 1600Mhz Memory
1tb sata Hard Disk Drive
Intel® HD Graphics

Asus VivoBook Max (X441NC) 14
Intel® Pentium™ Processor N4200 'Apollo Lake'
(6W, 4-Core, 64-bit, 1.1-2.5Ghz, 2Mb L2)
Genuine Windows 10 Home SL
14" LED Backlight HD Gloss (1366x768)
4gb DDR3L 1600Mhz Memory
500gb sata Hard Disk Drive
nVidia® GF 810 E.Grpx,
(1gb /64-bit, Core/Mem: 775/1800Mhz)

Dell (Inspiron 3462) 14"
Intel® Pentium™ Processor N4200 'Apollo Lake'
(6W, 4-Core, 64-bit, 1.1-2.5Ghz, 2Mb L2)
Genuine Windows 10 Home SL
14" LED Backlight HD Gloss (1366x768)
4gb DDR3L 1600Mhz Memory
500gb sata Hard Disk Drive
Intel® HD Graphics
(16 Pipelines, GPU: 200-700Mhz)
SuperMulti DVDRW drive


For the ones above, I am leaning towards the Acer just because you can't upgrade your cache size and 3Mb L3 is loads better than the 2Mb L2 from the other choices. You can have the same or higher GHz rating on different processors but a bigger cache will still give a significant performance boost which may not necessarily be offset by adding RAM. The bigger monitor, meanwhile, will be useful for Photoshop.

If you want to try out really powerful and still good second hand units (for your budget, there are good choices), you might want to check out Classmetz - Home | Facebook