To spend a lot of money on a laptop?

[scorpiogirly]

I am in desperate need of a new laptop, my last one was bought in 2013.

I have also bought expensive ones due the fact I am a designer and use Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop a lot.

I am wondering if I really need to spend that much this time. There are plenty of decent looking ones for around 700. Last one was 1k.

If you're a designer and use the same packages, which laptop do you use or would you recommend?

I'm not a designer, but I have a MacBook. I'll never be without my Apple laptop/products!

I'm not sure how your voting is working but if you can afford it I'd buy the one with the spec that meets your needs. I wouldn't pay for things I didn't need unless there was no difference with a lower spec one for the same price

I’m not a designer but used to get MacBook Pro. Used a lot of pictures etc though for work.
These days I can get by just fine with a windows laptop, saving at least 50%
But if you need the design programs I’m not sure if there’s anything that competes with MacBook Pro?

Do you need a fully up to date spec one? I've been buying reconditioned second hand ones for the past 20 years - never bought a new one since the 90's They're absolutely fine for a good few years. There are several sellers on Amazon who recondition them and they're usually good as new cosmetically (they usually grade them according to whether there are scratches/marks etc). The only issue is that battery life is usually compromised, i.e. charge doesn't last quite so long, but I usually have them plugged into the mains anyway and there's still 2/3/4 hours charge which is enough for when working on the move until you can plug in again.

I live with someone who does a lot of work via design programmes, and if I'd realised that when we renewed their laptop I'd have gone for:

• the absolute highest speed processor possible - those programs are SO processor hungry it isn't funny
• at LEAST 16GB of RAM (if not 32GB)
• as much storage space and as many additional ports as possible, including USB and HDMI
• the highest definition screen we could find
• and almost certainly a Mac, either a MacBook or a second iMac (I have the first one and they're not getting it, since I work from home and it's way more stable and secure than the various Windows machines I'm forced to use for some things ;)

Things I wouldn't have cared about - the colour.

We opted for reconditioned meaning we could make our money go a lot further, with a 24 month guarantee. Plus sustainability etc. (The iMac is also reconditioned, although one of the things that irritates the socks off me with Apple is how often you'll install a new version of the operating system and half of your older programs stop working completely.)

Based on YouTube tech reviews the new range of apple macbook Pro, with their custom apple-created processors would be ideal for your professional needs. The models with the M1 Pro chip would more than suffice and I'd imagine you'd get 5 years of very good performance out of them and potential for a few years on top where they are still passable and receiving software/security updates. The base model 14 inch with M1 Pro is £1,899

You can probably get a fairly comparable Windows laptop with an AMD/Intel CPU, 16gb RAM and 3060/3070 mobile graphics for around £1k. I would say the apple battery life, efficiency, software support and build quality would make the extra cost for you as a professional however.

Do you really need a laptop? If not then a desktop will often be cheaper for a better spec (PC anyway).

I tend to use PC for engineering/analysis but Apple is likely better for design. Probably more robust too, although a Lenovo ThinkPad or HP Z Book are decent nowadays.

You need something with at least 16GB RAM, preferably 32GB. Also make sure it has a decent SSD that will hold the OS and important software - don't even consider anything below 500GB, 1TB is better.
Buy the fastest processor you can afford, it's nigh-on impossible to upgrade this later on.

I'm not in the market at the moment so can't give specific recommendations, but it's better to buy quality. "Cheap" (say sub £500) laptops are usually poorly made and break sooner. A decent one will be closer to £1000.

Some laptops can easily have their RAM and SSD upgraded, however I've found unless you can examine the laptop in the flesh before you buy it, it's best not to assume this will be possible. My current Dell laptop was just under a thousand but I've since added a bigger SSD and doubled the RAM, it was very easy to take the back off and install these things. I've had other laptops though where they're basically one piece of moulded plastic and you effectively have to destroy it to get access to these things.

Make sure it is compatible with Windows 11, my Dell for instance can't be upgraded due to not having the right security chip so will need to be replaced when Windows 10 is no longer supported. (Never had a Mac so can't comment on those.)

Since you're using Photoshop etc it would be a good idea to look for a "gaming laptop" as the graphics cards etc used in gaming are also ideal for photo and video editing.

Thank you all.

I definitely prefer laptops, I haven't had a desktop for about 15 years now. They just get on my nerves as they're always in the way.

I'm not really a mac person, have always preferred Windows.

I have been looking at this

store.acer.com/en-gb/conceptd-3-pro-laptop-cn314-72p-white-nx-c5vek-001

Grateful if anyone has any thoughts on it.

I have a hp envy 17 at the moment and although it's served me well, it has been driving me nuts for a while now.