Seasoned photographers know that the search for the right laptop comes down to far more than a list of individually impressive specs. The perfect laptop for photo editing will not always be the one with the most bells and whistles, because perfection here is about so much more: usability, ease, intuition — all the things that combine to create not just powerful imagery, but a powerful workflow as well.
With this total experience in mind, we have created a list of the best laptops for photo editing in 2021.
Update 11/9/2021 by Jaron Schneider and Matt Williams: Added the Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Max as the best overall laptop, and adjusted our recommendation for best budget laptop to the Macbook Air M1.
What We’re Looking For:
A photographer has many competing needs when selecting a laptop, so we have attempted to cover the most common areas for this list. We have considered price, functionality, performance, and durability to come to the following selections.
CPU: M1 Max 10-Core (8 high-performance and 2 high-efficiency cores)
GPU: M1 32-Core integrated
RAM: 64GB unified RAM
Storage: 1TB Integrated PCle 4.0 SSD
Display: 16-inch Liquid Retina XDR (3,456 x 2,234 pixels)
Size: 14.01 x 9.77 x 0.66-inches
Weight: 4.8 pounds
Price: Starting at $3,899
If your core focus is having access to the best possible hardware available, then look no further than the new MacBook Pro powered by the M1 Max. This laptop combines an incredible display and the return of the HDMI port and SD card reader with an outstanding keyboard and insane performance.
Read PetaPixel’s Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Max Review
Looking at the performance metrics in our testing, the new MacBook Pro is without a doubt the best and most powerful laptop money can buy. It smokes the competition across nearly every one of our tests and has an insane battery life and near-silent operation. From a pure performance standpoint, this is the most impressive laptop we at PetaPixel have ever tested. I feel like we just said that when the M1 originally launched, and yet Apple one-upped themselves again.
That said, this machine is likely too much power for the average photographer, and only those with a true hybrid workflow of photo and video will really find themselves needing all that the M1 Max chip is capable of. It’s also a very expensive machine. For that reason, it’s not our pick for the best Mac that photographers should buy (that still goes to the MacBook Pro with M1) but we have to tip our cap to Apple: the company has made a seriously impressive machine that isn’t beat by anyone. If you need power and the most you can possibly find, this is it.
CPU: Intel Core i7-11800H (11th Gen)
CPU: Intel Core i7-11800H (11th Gen)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 4GB GDDR6
RAM: 32GB DDR4
Storage: 512GB M.2 PCle NVMe SSD
Display: 15.6-inch, 3.5K OLED (3456×2160)
Size: 13.57 x 9.06 x 0.71-inch
Weight: 3.99lb
Price: Starting at $2,008.99
The key to any pick for “Best PC” on a list like this is not that it does a few things …….
Source: https://petapixel.com/2021/11/09/the-best-laptops-for-photo-editing/