Best laptops for video editing | Articles | Computer technology

Lap­tops with the high per­for­mance you need for video edit­ing can’t be cheap. Pho­to: tomsguide.com

Recent­ly, video edit­ing skills are pos­sessed not only by pro­fes­sion­als, but also by blog­gers, tik­tok­ers, and sto­ry­mak­ers. Edit­ing footage requires a lap­top with a pow­er­ful proces­sor, plen­ty of RAM, and a good qual­i­ty, high-res­o­lu­tion screen. We have col­lect­ed sev­er­al mod­els that are per­fect for this pur­pose. Read on to find out which lap­tops made it to our top.

How was it evaluated

When com­pil­ing the top best lap­tops for video work, we eval­u­at­ed the fol­low­ing para­me­ters:

— screen — the high­er the res­o­lu­tion, the clear­er the image (min­i­mum Full HD — 1920 x 1080 pix­els); the larg­er the screen diag­o­nal, the more com­fort­able and eas­i­er the instal­la­tion process (at least 15 inch­es); the mod­el with the largest diag­o­nal and screen res­o­lu­tion will receive the max­i­mum score;

— proces­sor — the high­er in the rat­ing, the high­er the score;

– video card — the high­er the GPU class, the faster the edit­ing process; it is bet­ter to choose the GTX / RTX series from NVIDIA or RX from AMD; the high­er the video card in the rat­ing, the high­er the score;

— the amount of RAM — affects the per­for­mance when start­ing the soft­ware; the more, the high­er the score (min­i­mum 16 GB);

— the amount and type of inter­nal mem­o­ry — the larg­er the stor­age capac­i­ty, the more data can be stored (and the high­er the score, respec­tive­ly); it is bet­ter to choose a lap­top with a sol­id state dri­ve (SSD), its per­for­mance is high­er than oth­er types of hard dri­ves (such as HDD), it is bet­ter pro­tect­ed from shock to reduce the risk of dam­age dur­ing trans­porta­tion.

Also, if you plan to car­ry your lap­top around all day, pay atten­tion to its size and bat­tery.

We eval­u­at­ed each mod­el against oth­er lap­tops from the rat­ing for each of these char­ac­ter­is­tics. The max­i­mum score for each cri­te­ri­on is 5 points.

Top laptops for video editing

All prices are valid at the time of writ­ing.

Dell XPS 15 9510

Dell XPS 15 is avail­able in two ver­sions with dif­fer­ent screens. Pho­to: Lori Grunin, cnet.com

Pecu­liar­i­ties:

• 15.6″ FHD+ (1920 x 1200 pix­els), 100% sRGB col­or gamut, 178° wide view­ing angle, Dol­by Vision, Eye­safe and anti-glare;
• Intel Core i7 11800H proces­sor (65th in the rank­ing);
• video card NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti (95th place), the amount of ded­i­cat­ed video mem­o­ry is 4 GB;
• the amount of RAM 16 GB;
• inter­nal mem­o­ry 512 GB (SSD);
• bat­tery 7540 mAh (bat­tery time depends on the proces­sor and video card);
• full-size back­lit key­board, over­sized touch­pad (15 by 9 cm) with ges­ture sup­port;
• web­cam, stereo speak­ers, micro­phone, WiFi, Blue­tooth, full-size card read­er, fin­ger­print scan­ner;
• USB3.2 port, Thun­der­bolt 3 — 2 pcs., RJ45 (LAN), com­bined head­phone and micro­phone jack, HDMI;
• met­al case, dimen­sions — 344 x 230 x 18 mm, weight — 2.04 kg.

Dell XPS 15 costs from 193,980 rubles.

Pros:

• com­pact and light­weight;
• excel­lent screen;
• enough pow­er for work, and for mod­ern games.

Minus­es:

There is a more expen­sive ver­sion (from 236,380 rubles). It also has a 15.6‑inch touch­screen dis­play, but with a res­o­lu­tion of 4K Ultra HD + (3840 x 2400 pix­els), a col­or gamut of up to 100% Adobe RGB + 94% DCI-P3, light reflec­tion and pro­tec­tion from dirt. This option has more inter­nal mem­o­ry (1 TB, SSD). It is lighter (1.8 kg).

Macbook Pro 16 (2021)

The Mac­Book Pro 16 is a pow­er­ful lap­top with a stun­ning dis­play and tons of ports. Pho­to: techradar.com

Pecu­liar­i­ties:

• 16.2‑inch Liq­uid Reti­na XDR screen with a res­o­lu­tion of 3456 x 2234 pix­els;
• M1 Max proces­sor (59th place);
• Apple M1 Max graph­ics, 32 cores (32nd);
• RAM 64 GB;
• inter­nal mem­o­ry 8 TB (SSD);
• 100 Wh bat­tery (at max­i­mum load, the lap­top will work for 2–2.5 hours, while watch­ing Full HD video — for 20 hours);
• 6‑speaker sys­tem with Dol­by Atmos sup­port, card read­er, Wi-Fi 6, Blue­tooth 5.0, web­cam and 3‑directional micro­phone sys­tem;
• dimen­sions — 356 x 248 x 17 mm, weight — 2.17 kg.

Mac­Book Pro 16 M1 (2021) costs from 353,990 rubles. There is a cheap­er ver­sion with an M1 Pro proces­sor (67th place in the rank­ing) — from 218,090 rubles.

Pros:

• pow­er­ful, suit­able for any task;
• bright screen with anti-reflec­tive coat­ing and wide col­or gamut;
• a wide range of ports (3 x Thun­der­bolt 4 with USB‑C con­nec­tor, HDMI, head­phone out­put com­bined with a micro­phone input).

Minus­es:

Acer ConceptD 3 CN316-73G-592V

The Acer Con­ceptD 3 dis­crete graph­ics card allows you to work effi­cient­ly with graph­ics and video. Pho­to: ultrabookreview.com

Pecu­liar­i­ties:

• 16-inch screen with a res­o­lu­tion of 1920 x 1200 pix­els with a mat­te fin­ish;
• Intel Core i5 11400H proces­sor (109th place);
• video card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (138th place);
• the amount of RAM 16 GB;
• inter­nal mem­o­ry 512 GB (SSD);
• 54 Wh bat­tery, max­i­mum bat­tery life up to 13 hours;
• web­cam, card read­er, stereo speak­ers, fin­ger­print read­er, Wi-Fi and Blue­tooth, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type A x 2, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type‑C ports, HDMI out­put, Mini Dis­play­Port out­put, microphone/headphone com­bo jack, Eth­er­net — RJ-45;
• dimen­sions — 358 x 249 x 20.99 mm, weight — 1.7 kg.

The cost of the Acer Con­ceptD 3 CN316-73G-592V lap­top is from 152,730 rubles. This mod­el is only avail­able in white.

Pros:

• a good screen that per­fect­ly dis­plays both graph­ics and text;
• light;
• works qui­et­ly;
• wide range of ports.

Minus­es:

• not the fastest graph­ics card.

Lenovo Legion 7

The per­for­mance of Leno­vo Legion 7 is enough for even the most demand­ing games. Pho­to: pocket-lint.com

Pecu­liar­i­ties:

• 16-inch screen with a res­o­lu­tion of 2560 x 1600 pix­els;
• AMD Ryzen 7 5800H proces­sor (61st place);
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (15th place);
• the amount of RAM 16 GB;
• inter­nal mem­o­ry 1 TB (SSD);
• bat­tery capac­i­ty 64 Wh, the max­i­mum bat­tery life is only 4–6 hours;
• cam­era, Wi-Fi, Blue­tooth 5.1, USB 3.2 Gen1 Type A x 3, USB 3.2 Gen1 Type‑C, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type A x 2, HDMI out­put, microphone/headphone com­bo jack, Eth­er­net — RJ-45;
• along the perime­ter of the struc­ture, a strip with RGB back­light­ing, ven­ti­la­tion grilles and a key­board are also high­light­ed in bright col­ors;
• dimen­sions — 360 x 260 x 23.5 mm, weight — 2.5 kg.

The Leno­vo Legion 7 lap­top costs from 233,190 rubles.

Pros:

• very pow­er­ful;
• bright dis­play;
• com­fort­able key­board;
• a wide range of ports and inter­faces.

Minus­es:

• heavy;
• weak auton­o­my;
• high price
• Noisy at max­i­mum load.

MSI Creator Z16

MSI Cre­ator Z16 is suit­able for con­tent cre­ation, com­plex cre­ative projects and even games. Pho­to: laptopmag.com

Pecu­liar­i­ties:

• 16-inch screen with a res­o­lu­tion of 2560 x 1600 pix­els;
• Intel Core i7 11800H (65th place);
• dis­crete graph­ics card Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 (47th place);
• the amount of RAM 32 GB;
• inter­nal mem­o­ry 2 TB (SSD);
• 90 Wh bat­tery, at max­i­mum load it will work for 1.5–2 hours, with web surf­ing, watch­ing videos — 8–9 hours;
• cam­era, card read­er, 4 stereo speak­ers, USB Type A, Type C ports with Thun­der­bolt 4 sup­port, head­phone jack; Blue­tooth 5.1 and WiFi.
• dimen­sions — 359 x 256 x 16 mm, weight — 2.2 kg.

The cost of MSI Cre­ator Z16 is from 224,180 rubles.

Pros:

• fan­tas­tic per­for­mance;
• bright dis­play;
• large amount of inter­nal stor­age.

Minus­es:

• no HDMI port;
• small touch­pad;
• high price.

Results

Lap­tops from our rat­ing received the fol­low­ing rat­ings:

The Mac­Book Pro 16 M1 (2021) is the best lap­top for video edit­ing.

The Acer Con­ceptD 3 is the most afford­able and light­est lap­top on our list.

Leno­vo Legion 7 will suit even gamers (they will def­i­nite­ly appre­ci­ate its bright back­light).

MSI Cre­ator Z16 is a ver­sa­tile lap­top for any task.

Dell XPS 15 is a 4K ultra­book.