New Laptop for Editing

Good evening all,

I am looking to buy a new laptop, the main function will be for editing photographs (I would like a monitor but do not have the space at present).

As always I would like to keep costs to a minimum. Do you have any tips on good laptops with excellent HD screens?

Thanks

Tom.

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www.flickr.com/tmondhallie13
Pentax Kr -
Pentax DA 17-70mm f4 AL SDM
Pentax DA L 18-55mm

One tip would be that they aren't cheap! If you want one with a full HD screen (this is best if you can afford it) with a decent amount of processing power, they are not at the lower end of the price range.

I recently took the decision to ditch my desktop PC for a good laptop with a full HD screen and I went for an Asus N56 VZ with Core i7 Ivybridge processor, 1Tb Hard Drive and 8gb RAM. This is plenty powerful enough for photo editing and easily outperforms my previous desktop which was a Pentium D 3.0GHZ dual core processor with 3Gb RAM.

However, the best bit is the screen. The Asus N56 series are renowned for having fantastic full HD screens and I can confirm that the monitor with this laptop is a real stunner. Colour accuracy is very good, it is matte, so does not glare or reflect, it is pin sharp and very bright / contrasty.

The downside is battery life (approx. 3 hours), but this is not an issue for me and everything else about this laptop is brilliant, including the Bang and Olufsen speakers which sound fantastic (for a laptop).

I would highly recommend this machine - it cost me around £800 from simplyasus.com and they even gave me a free upgrade from the one I ordered which meant I got a £1000 laptop for £800. I work with computers and have used many different laptops over the past 6 or 7 years and this one is by far the best I have used.

Hope this is helpful.

Regards
David

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Flickr

Nicola's Apartments, Kassiopi, Corfu

Some cameras, some lenses, some bits 'n' bobs

Anything with 8gb of ram will perform well...

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K-1Gripped K-1 ungripped K-5ii K7 Various lenses

Stuart..

I broadly agree, but it was the screen I was highlighting in the post above, which really is exceptional for a laptop and is perfectly suited to photo editing.

Regards
David

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Flickr

Nicola's Apartments, Kassiopi, Corfu

Some cameras, some lenses, some bits 'n' bobs

Have a look at the Dells here:

http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/precision-m6700/pd.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukbsdt1&l=en&s=bsd&~ck=mn

Especially the ones with the ultrasharp screens which are the same as their stand alone monitors and can be colour calibrated. I have an older 16" Studio XPS with the RGB shiny screen and it's great at night time with the lights out!

Sorry to hijack a thread but I am considering the same and wouldn't mind some opinions on the following

link

link

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Digital

K-30, GX-10, DA 16-45, DA 18-55 and DAL 55 - 300

Film

ME Super, 2 x MX, SP 500 and SP F

and lense or 2

They are both low resolution screens you really should be aiming for 1920 x 1080 HD screen preferably an IPS one.

Which laptop would that be then??? When I looked there where hardly any IPS windows laptops around... I got a 1920 screen but not IPS.

In fact if I remember correctly there where just two 1920 IPS laptops the Dell Precision and the HP Envy both of which are in Macbook Pro price range and I know which I would I would get at that price range...

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PPG Wedding photography Flickr
Concert photography

Currently on a Pentax hiatus until an FF Pentax is released

IPS 1920*1080 ---> Asus Zenbook UX31A
It`s super thin, it has SDXC reader. I have one and use it with Lightroom and Photoshop. It is damn good thing to carry with me.

For £500 less you could get a Windows Surface Pro which is full 1080p IPS and is even more portable

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PPG Wedding photography Flickr
Concert photography

Currently on a Pentax hiatus until an FF Pentax is released

I've recently been looking for a laptop like this, I settled for a Dell 15R SE with 1080p Matte screen. It was on the Dell outlet and was £430 inc VAT, with an i5 (M full power processor) and 8gb of RAM, 1 Tb HD. Seems a good deal to me but it hasn't arrived yet will have to let you know about how good the screen is. I've been using a 720p screen on a Dell XPS with the glossy type (trulife) screen and I would not recommend that for photo editing, is way too low resolution, with lightroom of photoshop and the editing panes there barely any room left for the photo. Also the glossy screen reflects very badly (trulife is supposed to have some anti reflective coating), I often resorted to switching all the room lights off at night and wearing black to have chance of seeing the photo rather than the room and my tee shirt The 15R I ordered has backlit keys so at least if it reflects and I have to resort to darkened rooms I'll be able to see the keyboard shortcuts

Make sure that the one you choose can also support a separate monitor of at least full HD and that both can be used at the same time. You may not have room for a monitor at present but that may change and working with two screens can often be advantageous.

The screen on my Asus N56 VZ is not IPS (as far as I know) but it is 1920 * 1080 and it is pretty damned good. It is better than almost every full size 1920 * 1080 monitor I have ever used and better than any price comparable laptop I've seen.

Regards
David

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Flickr

Nicola's Apartments, Kassiopi, Corfu

Some cameras, some lenses, some bits 'n' bobs

http://www.simplyasus.com/ASUS_N56VM-S4089V_1352938.html

Thanks for the tips.

What do you guys think?

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www.flickr.com/tmondhallie13
Pentax Kr -
Pentax DA 17-70mm f4 AL SDM
Pentax DA L 18-55mm

That one has the same screen as mine so I would give it a thumbs up for the visuals. The processor is slower (i5 vs i7), it has less RAM (6gb vs 8gb) and a smaller hard drive (750gb vs 1tb), but I don't think any of these will be a significant detriment for processing images.

These machines are very well made (aluminium, not plastic) and mine has performed faultlessly so far. Just one tip, if you buy one, uninstall the 'Asus Splendid Video' bloatware that comes pre-installed. It enables a default monitor profile which ruins the colour balance in Photoshop and this profile re-loads every time the PC is started, which gets rather annoying. The only way I could stop it was to remove this unnecessary software.

Regards
David

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Flickr

Nicola's Apartments, Kassiopi, Corfu

Some cameras, some lenses, some bits 'n' bobs