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Choosing the finest laptop for video editing begins with determining your present and future demands while taking into account the ideal alternatives within your budget range. Are you a novice when it comes to video editing? Is it difficult to determine which is the best laptop for video editing? Don't start with the laptop; begin with yourself and do some extensive research before you buy one. Start reading our guide and learn everything about the best laptops for video editing in 2022.
Ben Grindlow is the founder of ProXPN, a company that provides reviews about VPN products and services. Ben's interest in cybersecurity and privacy led him to start ProXPN, which has become one of the most well-respected VPN providers in the world. Ben is passionate about his work, and he is constantly exploring new ways to improve ProXPN's in-depth guides.
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Whether you're vlogging or making movies, on location or at home, these laptops are a dream.
Tired of your laptop hanging while you're editing your videos? Then upgrade to one of the best video editing laptops and get faster render times! The main players in this game are powerful processors, lots of RAM and strong video cards.
Add a high-quality, high-resolution screen to that and you'll edit your videos like never before. All this performance is not cheap, but working with high-res images is an energy and memory intensive task.
The 16-inch MacBook Pro is our number one, because it's the best MacBook on the market to successfully complete all your video projects. Our best buy laptop for video editing is the MSI GF63 Thin 10SC-683. This powerful workhorse simply offers the best laptop value for the money you will find.
See at a glance what great features the top 5 laptops below have to offer.
Our score: 9.6
If you're an Apple enthusiast, the new 16-inch Macbook Pro is hard to beat. It is equipped with the new and fast Apple M1 pro chip that takes on both the tasks of the processor and video card.
The 16-inch display is bright, colorful and has super-thin bezels, making it lightweight and portable too. At home or on the road, you can work faster than ever with this laptop.
Our score: 9.2
The MSI GF63 Thin has wafer-thin bezels, impressive performance, great sound and a beautiful screen in a sturdy frame. A dream machine among video editing laptops!
Screen size is an important factor to consider. Working with software like Adobe Premiere Pro often means splitting your screen for different functions: a preview window, timeline, effects tab, and so on.
A small laptop won't give you enough screen space to comfortably work on long edits. A diagonal measurement of 15 inches is a good balance between portability and screen space, but the larger the screen, the more comfortable the mounting process will be.
Then there is the matter of screen resolution and quality. Aim for the most accurate, high-resolution color display. Do you create and edit 4K or even 8K content? If so, go for a higher screen resolution than FullHD.
The processor is also an essential component for video editing. Go for at least a quad core processor (meaning, with 4 cores) and at least 16 GB of internal working memory (RAM).
Manufacturers identify their products using a SKU (Stock Keeping Unit), or part number. SKUs can be a universal number, such as a UPC code or part number from a supplier, or a unique identifier used by a specific store or online retailer.
When shopping online or in a store, the knowledge of the SKU will help you identify a unique product when there are many similar options, such as laptops from the same laptop series.
Laptops from the same series are often available in different colors and sizes and have, for example, a different video card, processor, storage and/or amount of RAM.
It is therefore important to look at the product specifications of the product you have in mind. SKUs are usually printed in fine print below the product name and are often preceded by the words ‘SKU', ‘Part Number', ‘Product ID' or the like.
The 16-inch MacBook Pro is not only the most powerful MacBook Apple has ever made, it's also the best.
Apple has improved almost every aspect of this iconic laptop over previous models. If you have the budget, this is the best video editing laptop money can buy.
This MacBook Pro has a deca-core M1 Pro chip on board. This includes both the processor (with 10 cores) and the video card. The MacBook Pro has a system on a chip (SoC), which includes the processor and video card.
The M1 Pro chip has a maximum clock speed of 3.2 GHz. This may not sound crazy fast, but because the parts, as with other systems, do not work separately from each other and the chip has a central memory, the processing speed is a lot faster.
Each part of the chip is in contact with data and memory without having to copy and send it. This makes everything much faster and more efficient. Apple even claims that the MacBook Pro with this chip performs 1.7 times better and consumes 70 percent less power than comparable laptops without an SoC.
You get 2 TB of SSD storage, which is really huge and ideal for professional use.
The image quality of the MacBook Pro 16 inch 2019 was already quite good with a resolution of 3072 × 1920 pixels and with a pixel density of 226 pixels per inch. This is now even better for video editors! The MacBook pro 16 inch 2021 has a resolution of 3456 × 2234 pixels – just short of 4K – with a pixel density of 254 pixels per inch (PPI).
Pixel density is a calculation that represents the number of physical pixels per inch on a device's screen. It is often referred to as pixels per inch or PPI. Pixel density is becoming increasingly important as the resolution of screens has increased dramatically in recent years.
The thin bezels make content feel overwhelming whether you're editing videos or watching a series. The screen of the 16-inch MacBook Pro also has a very good constant brightness of 1000 nits and a maximum brightness of 1600 nits. This way, your content can be seen clearly in reasonably brightly lit rooms.
In addition, the MacBook supports the DCI P3 color gamut. This is the standard for the American film industry and therefore very suitable for video editing. DCI P3 shows 25 percent more colors, with deeper blacks, than sRGB. The MacBook also supports the sRGB color gamut, with a perfect sRGB coverage of 125%.
And there's more: for the first time, ProMotion is on a MacBook. This makes things like scrolling or gaming feel super fast and fluid – and that while the technology also saves power!
The refesh rate up to 120 Hz is automatically adjusted according to how the content moves on the screen. For video editing, you can also choose a fixed refresh rate. This way you ensure that everything matches your visual material exactly.
The MacBook pro 2019 came out from Apple with the familiar Magic Keyboard. This eliminated the keyboard problems of previous models and brought a more comfortable typing experience. This time, Apple has improved the keyboard!
First of all, the keyboard has a row of function keys. Here you will find new shortcuts for Spotlight, the Dictation function and the Do Not Disturb mode, among other things. In addition, the Touch Bar, the thin touchscreen above the keyboard, has disappeared again. Not everyone loved the Touch Bar, but many programs like Photoshop are now making good use of it.
The Touch ID button has also changed. It has a new tactile bezel, making it easier and faster to unlock your Mac with your fingerprint. And as with the previous model, the escape key is a separate button and the arrow keys are also in an inverted-T arrangement, which is a much more intuitive layout.
The audio from the 16-inch MacBook Pro is almost more impressive than the visuals. There is a sound system with six speakers on board. This system also offers more powerful bass. It also has three studio-quality microphones on board, which compete with the best microphones out there. In addition you can always add wireless speakers.
It may be slightly less powerful than the best PC for video editing, but this laptop certainly meets all your needs when you're looking for the best laptop for video editing.
As far as ports are concerned, the Apple Macbook pro 16 inch (2021) will not come up short. On top of the Thunderbolt 4 USB-c ports and the audio connection that the previous model had, with this model you get an extra Thunderbolt 4 usb-c connection, an HDMI port, an SDXC card reader and a MagSafe 3 port.
The latter is an all-time favorite of many Apple fans: if you get stuck behind the charger, it will let go, instead of dragging the entire laptop off your desk.
Finally…
Thunderbolt 4 supports up to two 4K displays simultaneously – doubling what Thunderbolt 3 could handle. The latest version even supports an 8K display, which is good news for those who need a standard that supports the highest resolution display.
The value for money of this gaming laptop is extremely good, mainly due to some of the software capabilities built in by MSI and the separate Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 video card. Officially it is a gaming laptop, but that certainly does not make it less suitable as a laptop for video editing!
The MSI GF63 Thin is armed with a 10th generation processor from Intel. It is a Comet Lake H-series processor with six cores and a maximum clock speed of 5 GHz. And one thing is certain: this Intel Core i7-10750H processor is not to be trifled with, even if the processor is no longer the very latest.
Multitasking is no problem for this powerhouse. For example, you can watch a series on Netflix while you edit your videos without the MSI stuttering.
Like its predecessor, the new XPS 15 has a dedicated Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 video card, which is ideal for photo and video editing or data-rich spreadsheets. Nvidia has paired 4 GB of VRAM with the GeForce GTX 1650.
The screen of MSI GF63 Thin has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels (Full HD or FHD). It offers beautiful colors and is very detailed. 4K would of course be no better and is essential for certain video projects.
The screen reproduces 99% of the sRGB color gamut, which is unfortunately lower than the 123% average of premium laptops.
When it comes to brightness, this model doesn't score too well with an average of 250 nits. This puts it well below the 367 nits average for premium laptops – but we can't complain: there are very few laptops of this price that allow you to edit videos.
Another area that MSI has focused on in this model is sound. The MSI has two surround sound speakers from Nahimic Audio.
Nahimic Audio speakers are in many gaming laptops and are specially made to bring the game to life. So you can probably imagine that the sound quality of these speakers is quite good. This also comes in handy for video editing.
Surround sound is a technology used to enrich the quality of sound reproduction for listeners. This is done by means of additional audio channels. These channels are located in multiple places, making it sound as if the sound is coming from your environment.
Although the MSI GF63 Thin is a fairly small laptop, they still managed to keep the keys and touchpad fairly large. This is partly because it has a numpad on it.
The keys have a fine edge and there is a good spacing between keys, which guarantees accuracy. The travel – how far the keys go down when you press them – is quite shallow, making your fingers fly quickly across the keyboard.
In addition, the keyboard is backlit, ideal when you work in a dark room. You have to like red, because you don't get any other option with the backlight of this keyboard!
That touchpad is large and smooth and has built-in mouse keys, so you can quickly access the Windows menu, among other things. The large touchpad ensures that your fingers hardly ever touch the edges as you navigate smoothly through websites and documents. The palm rejection is also a great asset, keeping the cursor in place while you work on the keyboard.
The Surface Pro 8 is both a powerful laptop and a portable tablet, and is the most versatile video editing laptop you can get. You can detach the screen from the keyboard, so you get a tablet as a bonus.
Armed with quad-core (4 cores) Intel Core i7-1185G7 processor, 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD, the Surface Pro 8 is plenty fast for all your multitasking needs.
The video card in this laptop is the Intel Iris XE Graphics. It is an integrated video card, which means it is built into the processor and does not have its own memory (VRAM).
Integrated graphics hardware does not use a separate memory bank for graphics or video. Instead, the video card uses the system memory, which is of course shared with the processor.
The storage is therefore more impressive, with more than 1 TB of space for all your edited videos – or at least a good portion of this, without the need for an external SSD.
The Surface Pro 8's screen has 2880 × 1920 pixels and is bright and vibrant. This makes it perfect for drawing, video editing or watching video material. This panel beautifully displays high-quality videos and movies.
Microsoft's display covers an excellent 104% of the sRGB color gamut. The MacBook Pro, our #1, still holds the top spot with its 125% coverage of the sRGB color gamut and support for the ICD P3 color gamut.
The brightness of the Surface Pro 8 is also excellent, with an average of 450 nits. But the MacBook Pro (1000 nits) is still unbeatable for video editing.
The Surface Pro 8's speakers are average. The two speakers are located on the side of the screen and transmit the sound towards the user.
Vocals and instruments come out nice and clear, but the bass is minimal. Microsoft does not provide audio software with this laptop; it is not possible to adjust levels or presets.
Although the Surface Pro 8 is often sold in combination with the keyboard and a pen, the Pro 8 is also available without a keyboard. Of course you do need the keyboard for video editing.
The Surface Pro 8's keyboard is fairly shallow, with 1.2 millimeters of travel. The keys do have a firm click, which makes typing very pleasant.
It's no surprise that the touchpad works perfectly with Windows. The device responds instantly to gestures, such as swiping up with three fingers to display all open windows or tapping with four fingers to open the Action Center.
You can also choose a keyboard with a fingerprint reader and/or the Microsoft Surface pen. The latter is ideal if, in addition to video editing, you also perform other graphical tasks, such as design. Using the pen feels identical to using a pen or pencil on paper.
You can also choose a keyboard with a fingerprint reader and/or the Microsoft Surface pen. The Surface Pen is still one of the best on the market. It usually doesn't come with the Surface Pro 8, so you'll probably have to buy it separately. However, it works flawlessly and offers tilt sensitivity, shading, 4096 pressure points and an eraser.
The 16-inch Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme is a slim, thin and light business laptop made of sturdy materials.
The ThinkPad X1 Extreme weighs less than the competition and is quite portable for a 16-inchLaptop. At 1.8 kilos, the Lenovo is lighter than, for example, the MacBook Pro (2.1 kilos) and the MSI GF63 Thin (1.9 kilos). The laptop is certainly not cheap, but if you have the budget, the laptop is more than worth it!
The X1 Extreme lives up to its name when it comes to performance: this laptop is lightning fast. It is equipped with an octa-core (8 cores) Intel Core i9-11800H processor, 32 GB RAM and a 1 TB of SSD storage.
The maximum clock speed of the processor is no less than 5 GHz and can multitask like no other! Thanks to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 video card with an impressive 16 GB VRAM, the ThinkPad X1 Extreme is also suitable as a gaming laptop.
This dedicated video card is powerful enough for all your video projects and to run modern games on medium to high graphics settings.
ThinkPad X1 Extreme is aimed at professionals and has a phenomenal 4K (3840 x 2400 pixels) touchscreen with HDR support. The screen is detailed and bursting with vibrant, saturated colors. This is without a doubt one of the best 16-inch screens on a business laptop, or any laptop for that matter.
HDR offers a dramatic improvement over traditional SDR (standard dynamic range) content in two areas: light and color.
HDR video uses new hardware that displays a much higher contrast between the brightest whites and the darkest blacks on your screen.
This display covers an excellent 186% of the sRGB color gamut! At a maximum of 600 nits, the X1 Extreme's display is also very bright, although the MacBook Pro's display in our list is slightly brighter.
Lenovo has given its speakers a significant update. The dual speakers have been moved from the bottom to the sides of the keyboard and are 20 percent larger than before. These innovations certainly benefit the sound quality of the laptop.
The sound produced by the ThinkPad X1 Extreme fills a medium-sized room. Middle and high tones are very clear and the bass is also slightly present. There is no distortion at maximum volume either.
The sound quality is quite good, although it varies depending on the genre of music you're listening to. The speakers keep up with simple string rhythms in acoustic music, but complex rock songs, for example, sound a bit less detailed.
ThinkPad keyboards are reliable and the X1 Extreme's is at the top.
That's largely due to the 1.7 millimeters of travel of the keys, which is above average for a laptop this thin.
The keyboard is also backlit.
Furthermore, the touchpad of the ThinkPad X1 Extreme offers an excellent response speed and you can scroll through web pages pleasantly. The smooth surface won't waver at the Windows 10 gestures you want to perform, including three-finger swipe to switch apps.
This Asus ZenBook Pro Duo is a breath of fresh air in the laptop world, especially at a time when business laptop designs have become a bit safe and boring. It has a second 4K display, which is very rare in laptops.
The Asus ZenBook Pro Duo comes with an octa-core (eight cores) Intel Core i9-11900H processor with a maximum clock speed of 4.9 GHz.
It has a dedicated or separate Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 video card. This means that the Asus ZenBook Pro Duo is a pretty fast laptop that can handle almost all tasks with ease, including acting as a gaming laptop.
This is certainly not a secondary consideration in today's gaming laptops. In many cases it is not even necessary to lower the resolution of the game because the RTX 3080 can handle most games effortlessly. However, in some intense games it is advisable to lower the resolution to guarantee more frames per seconds.
The ZenBook Pro Duo's dual screen configuration is by far its most notable feature. The top screen is a beautiful 15.6 inch 4K touchscreen with stunning picture quality. The colors are vibrant and the contrast is outstanding.
The primary OLED display shows a staggering 203.4% of the sRGB gamut, which is much more than the average.
The second screen, or screenpad, which has a diagonal of 14 inches and a resolution of 3840 x 1100 pixels, is placed directly below the main screen.
This allows you to move almost seamlessly between the top and bottom screens.
The ScreenPad is capable of displaying 107.8% of the sRGB gamut, which is not bad. The Duo's OLED screen has an average brightness of 331 nits, while the ScreenPad achieves 289 nits.
Of course having a second 4K screen has consequences for the laptop. The Asus ZenBook Pro Duo is a lot thicker and heavier than other ZenBooks, and it's a lot more expensive.
A point where Asus can improve is audio. The audio has already improved quite a bit compared to its predecessors, however. It's clear, but the bass is minimal and the speakers aren't powerful enough to fill the room. Loud ambient noise can outpace the speakers.
Asus doesn't add audio software, so you can't control the speakers. Those looking for quality sound should purchase good noise-canceling headphones.
The keyboard has been pushed down a bit because of the second screen, towards the bottom half of the laptop. The keys have both longer travel and sharper feedback. There is sufficient space between the keys, which guarantees accuracy.
The touchpad has been moved to the right side of the keyboard. This will probably take some getting used to at first, as you would normally expect it under the keyboard. Most ZenBook Pro Duo users will probably want to use a good external mouse.
Both screens on the Duo are touchscreens, but you can also purchase a pen for operation. The Asus Active Stylus is made of aluminum and feels sturdy, similar to a fountain pen. With 1024 pressure levels, it does a good job of simulating a real writing experience.
Buying the best laptop for all your video projects involves a lot of things to consider. All terms in this buying guide are important for the performance of a laptop, so it is well worth reading the following glossary as part of your research.
Computer memory, working memory or RAM (random access memory) is your system's short-term data storage. It stores the information that your computer is actively using so that it can be accessed quickly. The more programs your system uses, the more memory you'll need.
While 16 GB is good for a laptop for photo editing, 16 GB of RAM is fine for HD video, but with 4K or 8K video editing, that minimum rises to 32 GB or more. Data needs to be quickly accessible to both the video card and RAM, so storage speed is critical.
In addition to the storage space, the RAM has a number of important aspects, including speed and timing.
With each generation of RAM (for example, the older DDR3 is slower than the newer DDR6), there is a certain range of clock speed and timing. Timing reflects how quickly working memory accesses individual bits across multiple data columns.
Faster RAM speeds give your processor faster access to the data stored on the hard drive, so you immediately have super-fast collaboration between that processor and your working memory.
Storage speed is especially important if you have multiple RAM-loading programs open at once, such as After Effects or Cinema 4D. Shortage of RAM leads to slow performance.
The processor, also known as the CPU (central processing unit), is the brain of every laptop and has the biggest influence on your productivity. A faster processor means programs load faster and hang less quickly.
You can also run several programs at the same time and the laptop does not stutter when you perform processor-intensive tasks, something important to video editors.
For video editing you need a multi-core Intel i7 or i9 processor with, preferably, four or more processor cores.
There are also several AMD processors on the market that are very suitable for video editing, including the Ryzen 7, Ryzen 9 and Threadripper series.
In recent years, the AMD graphics cards have moved from price-oriented and power-hungry solutions to industry-leading designs that deliver more cores, more performance and lower power requirements, such as AMD's next-gen Ryzen 5000 chips.
The battle between Intel and AMD, two established names in the market, rages on. One thing is certain: AMD continues to compete with the more established Intel. Processor cores are separate processing units within your laptop's central processor. The processor core receives instructions from a single computational task, processes this information and stores it temporarily in working memory.
All processors have active threads. The number of threads you have depends on the number of cores in the processor. Each core can have two threads. So a processor with eight cores can have 16 threads.
A thread is a virtual version of a core. Physical cores are divided into virtual cores (threads) to increase efficiency. The more cores the processor has, the better it is able to understand instructions from multiple tasks, which is very important when multitasking!
AMD processors are generally slightly better suited to multi-thread dependent programs, as these processors typically have more threads compared to their direct competition. Several Adobe programs, such as Photoshop, rely on this.
The clock rate measures the number of cycles the processor performs per second, measured in GHz (gigahertz). This basic unit helps you understand the speed of a processor.
A higher number means a higher clock speed. In order for all your programs and apps to work, your processor must constantly perform calculations. With a higher clock speed, the laptop performs these calculations faster and the applications run faster and smoother as a result.
Integrated graphics cards do not have their own processor, while dedicated graphics cards have their own processor and working memory, also called VRAM. These are the two types of video cards to choose between.
A dedicated video card usually provides more power and is faster than integrated graphics cards. There is a corresponding price tag attached to this.
For demanding tasks and heavier use of the laptop (e.g. video editing), it is best to go for a dedicated video card.
Integrated video cards are enough for lighter graphics and therefore cost a lot less.
Standard laptop models usually come with a built-in LCD display with a resolution of 1280 × 800 pixels. This level of resolution is good enough for basic operations, but it goes without saying that a high resolution is much more user-friendly and necessary for video editing.
When editing the 4K videos, you need a laptop with a 4K screen, which is 3840 x 2160 pixels. With a 4K screen you see the content in the most optimal format.
The nit is the standard unit of brightness used to describe different light sources. A higher value means a brighter display.
Laptop displays typically have an average brightness between 200 and 300 nits. A rating over 300 nits is good and a rating over 500 nits is extremely good.
The most commonly used color gamut on a laptop is sRGB, the standard Red-Green-Blue gamut.
sRGB is the common RGB color gamut for all devices that use color, such as digital cameras, scanners, computer monitors, printers, and projectors. That way there is uniformity in the display of colors on all devices.
Don't forget the connections when you buy a new laptop. USB 3.1 type-c is a plus, as you can connect a fast external hard drive to it to safely store your project files.
A Thunderbolt 3 port is faster and can also be used to transfer video signals to, for example, a second screen.
An SD card reader saves you using dongles or adapters whe
The best RAM capacity for video editing is 32GB. This is the amount of RAM required by a computer for video editing. You'll be able to work with any file up to 8 hours long if you have 32GB of RAM. You may run many programs at the same time while still efficiently editing and previewing your movies with 32GB of RAM.
The amount of RAM your system has makes a big difference in Video Editing performance. You won't notice any benefit until you have at least as much RAM as you need, but if your RAM gets too little for the kind of Video Editing job you're working on, you'll immediately notice.
SSD or HDD is the best type of hard drive for video editing? Both SSD and HDD drives are crucial to a video editor. Although an SSD is more expensive, it is quick and will improve video editing and playback performance. Large-capacity HDDs, on the other hand, are slow but inexpensive, making them ideal for archiving finished videos.
In most cases, AMD has the upper hand when it comes to living playback and exporting performance in Premiere Pro. Intel's Core processors (particularly the current 12th Gen models), on the other hand, are fantastic alternatives because they perform almost as well as a similarly-priced AMD Ryzen CPU while also having Quick Sync, which may be used to process H.
Some models outpace the basic i5 in terms of performance. i5 can handle editing to a certain extent, but with more RAM and a stronger graphic card, Core i5 is adequate for video editing. A Core i5 is sufficient for video editing at 1080p resolution.
