

You can work on your project in an editing bay, pack it up and take it home for more tweaks. An editing rig built around a laptop won’t tie you to a desk. Some have slower CPUs, tighter caps on memory capacity, and anemic internal storage. Laptops also have fewer USB ports than desktop machines, which makes it harder to connect all your peripherals. Your portable system, on the other hand, has a 17-inch panel-if you’re lucky. At home, you might have a pair of specialty 4K monitors on dual-monitor mounts that allow your timeline to stretch as far as you want while displaying your software’s many different panels. The best laptops for video editing: Reviews & RecommendationsĮditing video on a laptop requires some sacrifices. Editors use external hard drives, monitors, and other peripherals, none of which do any good if you can’t plug them in. Working with video draws a lot of power, and it makes sense to keep a laptop plugged in while working.įinally, we also paid attention to the laptop’s ports. Related to that, battery life took on less importance in this context. Many video editors spend most of their time working at a desk, even when using a laptop. Some laptop reviews spend time considering the computer’s size and weight, but that was also secondary. Instead, we set our sights on processing power and CPUs, graphics cards, and the size, resolution, and color accuracy of monitors. We focused on specs but with an eye toward video editing, specifically some desirable general-consumer features, like touchscreens, aren’t important in this context. When evaluating the best laptops for video editing, we looked at 12 top picks among professional editors, reviewers, and users. How we chose the best laptops for video editing Best tablet for video editing: Apple iPad Pro 12.9-inch.Best for video editing and gaming: Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XC.Best for YouTube: Apple 13-inch MacBook Pro.It’s not always easy, so we’ve put together our list of the best laptops for video editing so you can spend less time shopping and more time cutting your masterpieces.

Instead, you need to compare complicated specs and think about how they relate to the type of work you’re doing. Unfortunately, computer manufacturers rarely market their machines specifically to video editors.

Thanks to technological advances, however, all that muscle now fits in a unit small enough to slip into your backpack. In the past, this kind of performance required a desktop computer with a high-end production monitor. Video, especially 4K and above, requires a fast central processing unit (CPU), a powerful graphics processor, and a screen that can display the most accurate color. Laptops for video editing deliver the power and performance few other applications need.
