Laptop Advice - Help Required!

[Matthew]

Hi all,

Im looking to replace my 8 year old Dell laptop (what a tank that thing is), with a new Dell laptop.

Mainly to be used for video editing, internet browsing and the odd basic game.

I like the following options, but can’t decide which would suit my needs better. More RAM, bigger SSD or bigger graphics card.

Help needed please!

Computers, Monitors & Technology Solutions | Dell UK

Dell provides technology solutions, services & support. Buy Laptops, Touch Screen PCs, Desktops, Servers, Storage, Monitors, Gaming & Accessories

www.dell.com

Dell Inspiron 15 Laptop | Dell UK

A light-weight, portable 15-inch laptop with easy-to-use innovation like ExpressCharge, lid-open sensors and more.

www.dell.com

Computers, Monitors & Technology Solutions | Dell UK

Dell provides technology solutions, services & support. Buy Laptops, Touch Screen PCs, Desktops, Servers, Storage, Monitors, Gaming & Accessories

www.dell.com

Dell Inspiron 15 Laptop | Dell UK

A light-weight, portable 15-inch laptop with easy-to-use innovation like ExpressCharge, lid-open sensors and more.

www.dell.com

 

[SharkyUK]

Does it have to be Dell?

To what extent are you video editing? 4K stuff? In their basic forms I personally feel that any of those laptops don't really cut it. For any sort of serious video editing you need more RAM and more storage space, and many video editing suites use the GPU for speeding up the video editing process so... It needs to be a discrete GPU.

I would want at least 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and a couple of TB or more extra storage for archives, finished projects, etc. The more you can spend on the GPU the better. If you are looking to stick with Dell then something like the XPS 15.

 

[Matthew]

Thanks for input mate. Sticking with Dell as I know I can trust it from experience to last. Before you commented I went for the bottom link.

My videos are only 1080 and the video software I’m using at the moment just about copes on my 8 year old laptop, so I’m sure this one will speed it up considerably.

 

[MarkCup]

The one you've gone for is pretty much the exact same spec as my HP although I recently dropped a 4TB SSD in it as was fed up of constantly having to run external drives.

I run PowerDirector and although it takes a while to render Shadow proxy files for 4K editing, once done it runs just fine.

Working with 1080 it absolutely flies.

 

[Gally]

Minimum 6gb of ram and a ssd, size is user dependent really. Then go from there. Avoid anything that doesn't have this!

Plenty of good ones out there. What's the budget? The XPS is a cracking laptop but not what you would call cheap.

@SharkyUK 16gb of ram not over kill?

 

[Gally]

Unless your doing massive 4k video depending on price difference will you notice the difference between 8gb and 16 of ram? The rest not more important for video?

 

[Ex-User (19928)]

Lol 6GB?

My PC with only Chrome open is currently using 6.5GB.

16 is minimum these days. Not like it’s even expensive compared to the other components.

 

[Ex-User (19928)]

And to the OP I would buy a Lenovo Thinkpad if I was buying a laptop these days. I’ve got a Dell Precision (about £2k new) that my previous employer let me keep and it feels really poorly put together in comparison.
Thinkpad is the one that starts at £500 but can be specified with more or less anything.

 

[Darren S]

MacBook Pro?

 

[Ay Ay Ron]

16gb minimum. I5 at a minimum too.
My 7 year old Dell has 8gb which I upgraded and it struggles with photoshop and lightroom when doing batch edits for photography. If I'm trying to make a time-lapse video I may as well leave it running overnight it's that bad.

 

[SharkyUK]

@SharkyUK 16gb of ram not over kill?

No mate, not these days - 16GB RAM is my min recommendation for all but the most basic user system these days. RAM is comparatively cheap.

My idea of video editing differs a lot to others, hence why I asked. I'm running a 20 core processor with 64GB RAM, a 2080 Ti GPU and hi-spec SSDs... and even that can struggle when dealing with multiple RAW 4K streams in real-time. I was just trying to gauge the level of editing needed.

Definitely 16GB RAM though. RAM is orders of magnitude faster than the fastest SSD.

 

[Gally]

Wow! Assumed the fact you can edit easy enough on an macbook air and macbook pro that you would sufficient.

 

[Ay Ay Ron]

MacBook Pro?

Twice the price, half the spec...

 

[Darren S]

Twice the price, half the spec...

Does what it should do really well though. The only stumbling block in the OP's original requirements is playing the occasional game. Macs are still way behind in native game support.

Depends on how much you'll be using it too. Utilising a new MacBook Pro makes the majority of laptops feel like you've got the aesthetics of a house-brick at your fingertips. Had PC-based laptops in various guises for well over twenty years - still got my archaic HP-Compaq one in the cupboard. But the MBP I had access to - despite its limitations, was leagues above the other laptops.

 

[SharkyUK]

Wow! Assumed the fact you can edit easy enough on an macbook air and macbook pro that you would sufficient.

To be fair mate I am probably talking towards the extreme end where there are multiple streams, effects, LUT corrections, HDR, and other crap going on at the same time. If you are stitching clips together with captions and simple effects (and time isn't costing you money!) specs can be more modest. Still recommend 16GB min though sir!

 

[MarkCup]

@SharkyUK what do you film/edit/output in 4K?

I did this for a while, a full day at Goodwood in 60fps...it did pummel my laptop a bit but it wasn't too tedious.

I've gone back on that now though...the fact that 85% of my YouTube views and watch time are on mobile phones or tablets to me says 4K is a little redundant. Also, no one's ever commented on the footage quality change when I've switched from 4K/60 to 1080/25 on back to back videos...so I don't think it's noticed by most people.

 

[Matthew]

Thanks for the comments guys. I bought one that night so any further recommendations are no use to me

I went for this one.

Dell Inspiron 15 Laptop | Dell UK

A light-weight, portable 15-inch laptop with easy-to-use innovation like ExpressCharge, lid-open sensors and more.

www.dell.com

Basis spec list:

I only use it for making my flying videos on Movavi and then onto YouTube in 1080. I think this will be more than sufficient for that.

 

[SharkyUK]

@SharkyUK what do you film/edit/output in 4K?

I did this for a while, a full day at Goodwood in 60fps...it did pummel my laptop a bit but it wasn't too tedious.

I've gone back on that now though...the fact that 85% of my YouTube views and watch time are on mobile phones or tablets to me says 4K is a little redundant. Also, no one's ever commented on the footage quality change when I've switched from 4K/60 to 1080/25 on back to back videos...so I don't think it's noticed by most people.

I can't say mate due to client confidentiality. I'm typically provided with raw footage and a brief, the target video resolution and a target bit-rate being between 90-110 mbps (4K UHD BluRay territory). I'm running an Adobe workflow which means I'm often switching between multiple-running Adobe applications - Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition. It's not uncommon to be handed an encrypted hard drive with terabytes of footage on it and for final video exports to take hours to process and render (for a few minutes of content). But I most certainly acknowledge this is a level or two above home-editing (no disrespect intended at all to those talented home content producers). I actually enjoy video editing work from time-to-time, but wouldn't want to do it full-time. It's a good job really as my main line of business is software development anyway; my video contract work usually occupies my weekends and evenings!

As for noticeable changes in content quality, I do tend to notice myself. I'm a bit anal with that stuff due to a lifetime working in software for computer graphics, visual imagery, effects and similar. My missus hates going to the cinema with me to watch the latest special effects-filled releases as I tend to focus on the technologies, and then end up asking her to fill me in on the story and plot afterwards!

 

[MarkCup]

I can't say mate due to client confidentiality. I'm typically provided with raw footage and a brief, the target video resolution and a target bit-rate being between 90-110 mbps (4K UHD BluRay territory). I'm running an Adobe workflow which means I'm often switching between multiple-running Adobe applications - Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition. It's not uncommon to be handed an encrypted hard drive with terabytes of footage on it and for final video exports to take hours to process and render (for a few minutes of content). But I most certainly acknowledge this is a level or two above home-editing (no disrespect intended at all to those talented home content producers). I actually enjoy video editing work from time-to-time, but wouldn't want to do it full-time. It's a good job really as my main line of business is software development anyway; my video contract work usually occupies my weekends and evenings!

As for noticeable changes in content quality, I do tend to notice myself. I'm a bit anal with that stuff due to a lifetime working in software for computer graphics, visual imagery, effects and similar. My missus hates going to the cinema with me to watch the latest special effects-filled releases as I tend to focus on the technologies, and then end up asking her to fill me in on the story and plot afterwards!

Very interesting! Clearly a quality of footage and production way above what I or many other amateurs could ever get closer to.

I'd love to follow one of your projects through its entire workflows from initial raw footage to final output. So much to learn, always trying to absorb!

 

[SharkyUK]

Very interesting! Clearly a quality of footage and production way above what I or many other amateurs could ever get closer to.

I'd love to follow one of your projects through its entire workflows from initial raw footage to final output. So much to learn, always trying to absorb!

I wish I could share a project directly but, sadly, that's a no-no! The workflow probably isn't too different to what you do yourself in all fairness; the main difference probably being in the effort needed to meet the client's requirements. They may provide footage shot in summer, yet require a cool colour-grading. They may wish to have additional lighting effects added into the footage to produce more striking imagery, or captions and logos blending into the scene. It can sometimes be a painstaking process meeting those requirements - logos have to be displayed in specific ways, for certain periods of time, cannot be shown alongside this logo but can be shown alongside this one (as long as it is more prominent). It can be a lot of faffing around. Thankfully, most of the time, I'm also provided with a form of cue script and storyboard - especially useful if the video is to be synchronised with an audio track being provided elsewhere. You then have your 'marks' and a good idea of what is expected. On one occasion I was even loaned a professionally-calibrated monitor to ensure faithful colour reproduction in the final video edit!

I'm by no means a professional video editor and I still don't know how I ended up with this 'string to my bow' as it were. I would love to make more content for my own YouTube channel but find it hard to muster any enthusiasm. I would want to produce the content to the same levels as I would my clients and I don't have the time or desire to do that. I also don't 'specialise' in capturing footage - I just get given content and piece it together!

I'm ALWAYS learning mate. Always. There's so much to learn and I am humbled by the real and talented video editing professionals out there. I just talk my stuff up to appear good whereas those folks actually ARE good!

 

[AdDaMan]

Wow! Assumed the fact you can edit easy enough on an macbook air and macbook pro that you would sufficient.

No way you can edit 4k on a macbook air. I cant render anything from my 360 fusion on my Macbook Pro with integrated graphics. f**king annoying,

 

[Gally]

I wish I could share a project directly but, sadly, that's a no-no! The workflow probably isn't too different to what you do yourself in all fairness; the main difference probably being in the effort needed to meet the client's requirements. They may provide footage shot in summer, yet require a cool colour-grading. They may wish to have additional lighting effects added into the footage to produce more striking imagery, or captions and logos blending into the scene. It can sometimes be a painstaking process meeting those requirements - logos have to be displayed in specific ways, for certain periods of time, cannot be shown alongside this logo but can be shown alongside this one (as long as it is more prominent). It can be a lot of faffing around. Thankfully, most of the time, I'm also provided with a form of cue script and storyboard - especially useful if the video is to be synchronised with an audio track being provided elsewhere. You then have your 'marks' and a good idea of what is expected. On one occasion I was even loaned a professionally-calibrated monitor to ensure faithful colour reproduction in the final video edit!

I'm by no means a professional video editor and I still don't know how I ended up with this 'string to my bow' as it were. I would love to make more content for my own YouTube channel but find it hard to muster any enthusiasm. I would want to produce the content to the same levels as I would my clients and I don't have the time or desire to do that. I also don't 'specialise' in capturing footage - I just get given content and piece it together!

I'm ALWAYS learning mate. Always. There's so much to learn and I am humbled by the real and talented video editing professionals out there. I just talk my stuff up to appear good whereas those folks actually ARE good!

I was actually looking for a guy like you a while ago! Had loads of footage and I was just horrible at putting it together. Still am in fairness!

Decided just to edit it all on my phone in the end and made loads of basic videos. Was a crazy learning curve and as a guy that watches high end videos a lot, it was frustrating to see my limitations. Mainly time to learn and teach myself. Editing takes so so so so much time!

 

[Gally]

No way you can edit 4k on a macbook air. I cant render anything from my 360 fusion on my Macbook Pro with integrated graphics. f**king annoying,

This video was ages ago for what it's worth. I don't even like macbooks that much but their optimisation works. Famously the MacBook was a hotbox issue and throttled so much!

 

[Martin_172]

I wouldn't be buying direct from dell retail, keep your eye on the dell outlet, save yourself hundreds but you need to be quick when a machine pops up

 

[SharkyUK]

I was actually looking for a guy like you a while ago! Had loads of footage and I was just horrible at putting it together. Still am in fairness!

Decided just to edit it all on my phone in the end and made loads of basic videos. Was a crazy learning curve and as a guy that watches high end videos a lot, it was frustrating to see my limitations. Mainly time to learn and teach myself. Editing takes so so so so much time!

You're not wrong, mate - time, time and more time! There's just so much to take in that it's hard to do unless you are fully invested in it 100% as a professional creative. As said, I don't class myself anywhere near that level as my own video editing skills (arguable!) were borne out of a hobby. My business and equipment is primarily aimed towards software development and graphics / visualisation rather than than video-editing suite. I've turned down work because I don't have the skills, time and/or equipment. I'm always a bit twattish when it comes to being asked to spec a system for video editing; I know how much time it can take to create/edit content and to be hampered further by inadequate hardware can be painful.

 

[sn00p]

No mate, not these days - 16GB RAM is my min recommendation for all but the most basic user system these days. RAM is comparatively cheap.

My idea of video editing differs a lot to others, hence why I asked. I'm running a 20 core processor with 64GB RAM, a 2080 Ti GPU and hi-spec SSDs... and even that can struggle when dealing with multiple RAW 4K streams in real-time. I was just trying to gauge the level of editing needed.

Definitely 16GB RAM though. RAM is orders of magnitude faster than the fastest SSD.

Never ask a software dev to spec something!

My home server, which probably gets most use as a media server (Runs Emby) has 64GiB of RAM, and 90 TiB of drives in it, 8 cores, dual 10GbE and a 6GB 1060 geforce something.....and runs......headless! The graphics card is in it (running modified drivers) to provide video transcodes to friends/family who have accounts on my emby. To be fair though, it also runs a few VM's (and a shed load of docker containers), my Windows development environment, my Linux dev env etc + team city build agents.

My main computer that I use, is a 2016 MBP, I've been a Mac user since 95 (before they were trendy!) and tbh, the hardware+software goes on for ages, I've more than had my moneys worth out of them over the years, I also have a another Mac on the network which acts as my teamcity build agent for mac builds.

Somehow I managed to talk the wife into allowing me to have a rack in the bedroom (it's only 8U), but it contains my 10GbE switches and NVR and a few other bits and pieces.

When I built the server I really appreciated being a "mac fan boi", I forgot how much I dislike building PC's having not done it for 15 odd years!

 

[SharkyUK]

Never ask a software dev to spec something!

...if you want a job doing properly...

 

[Gally]

Never ask a software dev to spec something!

My home server, which probably gets most use as a media server (Runs Emby) has 64GiB of RAM, and 90 TiB of drives in it, 8 cores, dual 10GbE and a 6GB 1060 geforce something.....and runs......headless! The graphics card is in it (running modified drivers) to provide video transcodes to friends/family who have accounts on my emby. To be fair though, it also runs a few VM's (and a shed load of docker containers), my Windows development environment, my Linux dev env etc + team city build agents.

My main computer that I use, is a 2016 MBP, I've been a Mac user since 95 (before they were trendy!) and tbh, the hardware+software goes on for ages, I've more than had my moneys worth out of them over the years, I also have a another Mac on the network which acts as my teamcity build agent for mac builds.

Somehow I managed to talk the wife into allowing me to have a rack in the bedroom (it's only 8U), but it contains my 10GbE switches and NVR and a few other bits and pieces.

When I built the server I really appreciated being a "mac fan boi", I forgot how much I dislike building PC's having not done it for 15 odd years!

Your house alone runs more power than my street.

 

[jp_lcr]

Hi folks, sorry to hijack thread but wondered if I could get your views on this deal please?

Like @Matthew I bought a high spec laptop and its lasted me 9 years but struggling now so need something new.

I saw this deal to use blue light card, any views on the spec for the money please? It'll be used for some basic gaming things like SIMS, browsing, office stuff, college work etc. It worked out well buying a decent spec for a bit extra last time in terms of years it coped with.

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/le...300h-gtx1650-16gb-ram-blue-light-card-3454643

Thanks

 

[Matthew]

To my u trained eye that looks a good spec which I might have considered to be honest.