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It’s getting to be time for me to upgrade my laptop, and I’m hoping to find a deal in the Black Friday/Cyber Monday time period. I’m not super picky, other than it needs to be a Windows OS and I’d love a 2TB SSD. 4k would be cool, good processor, good screen for editing, etc. Touch screen preferred but not necessarily needed.
Any advice from the computer geeks out there? 🙂 Also what sites would you recommend watching for deals?
You can find deals and Black Friday sales at https://www.dealnews.com/c49/Computers/Laptops/ (scroll down to see the sale listings). If you find a good deal on a laptop with a nice processor and RAM you can always upgrade the SSD cheaply later. 🙂
If you’re using it for photo editing/graphics work, I’d say 16GB of RAM is an absolute minimum. You can’t go wrong with Intel “i” series processors (i5, i7, i9, etc). There are so many brands and models out there that I can’t give any specific recommendations on what might be on sale during Black Friday. 🙂 Feel free to ask if you have a particular model or 3 in mind.
If you’re buying new, you’ll get Windows 11, but be sure not to buy something with Windows 10, as it’s now End of Life and isn’t being updated any more.
I recently went through the work of researching laptops, not as my main editing station but as a backup and for on-the-road editing. I wanted something that would handle photo editing easily and some light video editing as well. What I discovered is you want almost exactly the same specifications that they put into “gaming” laptops.
batch processing: CPU important (you can compare CPU benchmarks – multi-core is what is important)
large programmes: RAM important (minimum 32GB when running Windows and Photoshop)
fast editing and rendering: graphics card important (minimum 2GB VRAM, ideally 4; GPU benchmarks can be useful also)
long days without power: battery size important
colour accuracy: screen quality important
easy transfer of photos: SD card reader important (a dongle works, but is inconvenient)
storing lots of files on the computer: hard drive space important
not a millionaire: price importantI personally would shy away from touch screen for a photo editing computer because of fingerprints.
For me, the hard drive space and battery size were less important, so I put less importance on those aspects. Being a rather analytical and detail-oriented person (which is why my posts and sentences tend to run longer than necessary) I made a long spreadsheet with about three dozen laptops that could be interesting with the links, the price, and all the different specs colour-coded to help me see which was best for my needs. My research is a few months old now and was done for Canada, so unfortunately the individual computer research I did won’t help you.
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Thanks, guys! This is very helpful. One computer that has been recommended to me is the Dell Precision 5540, so that’s one option. Just trying to figure out how to nail down other options to choose from as well, or if I should just go with that one recommendation. 🙂
Really appreciate the link to that site with deals, Ezra.
Would you buy refurbished or pre-owned from ebay?
There are so many brands and models out there
YOU SAID IT!
You’re very welcome!
The Precision 5540 looks like a really nice piece of machinery. I wouldn’t be afraid to buy refurbished from an authorized retailer or top rated seller. Just be sure to check the seller’s feedback rating. If it’s less than 99% positive, stay far away.
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