I wish I could give this more than one like. Before I watched this, I watched a video on monitor calibration. It was 11 minutes for 30 seconds of information and just bloviation from an obnoxious guy for the rest of the time. It took forever, and I didn't even watch the whole thing. This video was 35 minutes packed with information presented in a logical and comprehensible way, perfect for an amateur like me who doesn't know anything about this sort of thing. I was totally absorbed in it, and it seemed to take 5 minutes. This is exactly what this sort of video should be. Kudos to Brent. I hope I'll run into you out in the New Mexico wilds one day, homie.
Wow, thanks man. I really appreciate the kind words. I knew this video wouldn't do well with my audience because it's not my normal content, but knowing that it helped even a few people makes it worth it.
Holy moly! This video is packed with great information. I'm going to have to watch it again a time or two to absorb it all as I'd love to have a laptop that will keep up with others in a workshop situation.
Awesome info. Thanks! My laptop is on training wheels compared to the least of yours. I bought mine primarily to use with my tracker system, so I don't need much for that. However, as I was geeking out on DIY computer stuff in the last two years, one of the best pieces of advice I came across was to check the RAM limits with the CPU, to see if you can go higher than what the manufacturer says. My laptop specs said I could only go as high as 16gb, but the CPU specs said I could go to 32gb. I bought a 32gb stick and it works just fine. It would be prudent to research going over the manufacturer specs, to make sure other people have successfully pushed the limits, but still worth checking out.
Last year I bought dell laptop with i7 integrated gpu and 16gb ram. Works fine, but not when using AI like denoising and auto masking. Denoising takes like 3-4 mins, and afterwards, the laptop just gets slower and really hot. 9 months later, i just bought a pc with 4070, and life just became flawless. But I am still looking into upgrading my laptop for travel purposes. Thanks for the informative video
Good overall review! I invested in a really good Benq monitor a few years ago which effectively removed screen specs from my buying decision. Also, my most recent machine is a Lenovo from Costco with 32 GB of RAM. You’d think it would scream, but at times (loading programs and files) it is surprisingly slow.
Thanks for this video. I have a 5-year old Lenovo Legion gaming laptop. It still runs and works, well. The biggest limitations I'm experiencing are the size of the internal SSD (512GB) and the speed of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GPU. It'll run all the AI tools in Lightroom Classic and Photoshop but it takes time...lots of time. If I have a batch of 10+ images I'm running the Enhance tool on, I'll switch over to watching RUclips or go have a snack while it's running. Since the device, itself, has been problem-free, I'm inclined to upgrade in the next year or so with another Lenovo gaming laptop. I see you have the Asus product. Did you happen to compare Asus with Lenovo before making your choice? If so, what sold you on Asus as better meeting your needs? I'm just interested and looking for other perspectives as I don't have an urgent need to upgrade and it never hurts to get a second opionon.
I didn't do any direct comparisons when I bought that Asus laptop, only because I've already used a LOT of Asus laptops before and I had a very good idea of how it perform, and mostly because it was such a good deal that I knew there would be nothing else even remotely close for the price range. I did include a Lenovo or two in the description that would be worth considering. Lenovo has definitely been making some good laptops these days.
What great timing. My old HP laptop no longer holds a charge even after replacing the battery. So i am looking for a new laptop and this info is going to be very helpful.
@@BrentHall well I am a bit of a luddite when it comes to computers. While I was working (now retired) I always had one IT person I could trust to give me a hand when I had to buy laptops for my team. Now I have to do it all by myself!! LOL!
And I just ordered a new laptop for work today! Primary function is for mobile work, but tried to get a unit that can do some double duty/think it is decent. Lenovo T16 icore 7 155U, 32Gb ram and 2tb storage. Graphics is integrated.
Mate another quality video Informative and unbiased. As for me I would also recommend if you are on an budget as a desktop the 10th or 11 Gen Intel I7 and I9 with a Nvidia 3080 Video card which so far for me has been stable, running Adobe lightroom, photoshop and Topaz. Brent can you also do a video on Video display units and printers, and their relationship to each other as I have my son busting my chops to upgrade my 10 year old screen ("probable a lot longer than 10 years" to quote him while watching your youtube clip), as some of us want to print are favourite images and man it can sometimes be a nightmare trying to get the colours right from what you see on a screen to what is printed. I personally on my recent holiday just took a Chromebook which has an OLED to double check the images (close to 2TB of images) that I took on the day and left the editing to when I got back home to do on my desktop. Also son says to edit in 10 bit colour.
Brent - curious if you have any thoughts on getting an eGPU to plug into an existing laptop. I have a Lenovo T14s Gen 3 for work and it does fine on denoise (less than a minute to export from Topaz) as it has a AMD Ryzen Pro 6850U Processor , 16 GB of LPDDR5 6400Mhz RAM, and integrated AMD Radeon 680M Graphics. I have found the OneX GPU for $650 with an AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT and like that it will work with Thunderbolt USB 4. Any thoughts on how much that would improve performance? They also came out with a new one with the 7800 but it's much larger and ~$1k so about in range of an entirely new laptop.
I thought I mentioned that in the video? Basically it was an impulse purchase. Best buy had an open box for almost $1K off. So for that price i couldn't find a new or used pro art with anywhere near similar specs and I didn't want to spend an extra $500 for the pro art. I decided the downsides of the ram and screen and thin chassis were were worth it for that price point to get the GPU and a decent cpu, though I would still prefer the amd version of the same laptop. Overall it wasn't the best decision I've ever made, but it wasn't the worst either. It still does most everything I want it to do, and I will definitely make good use of it for a decently powerful travel laptop. Plus, once I got a lot of windows, power, and software settings tweaked, it runs a lot better now, which might be a future video because windows does some weird stuff with power management and GPU settings that are highly disadvantageous for creators.
@ i’m sorry, yes you did mention that in the video. A future video on the software settings for windows would be really great. Thanks so much for your detailed reply and for your channel .
@hilarie4 no worries, it was a long video...😅 I'll be surprised if anyone actually watches/ listens to the whole thing. I'll work on that other video and hopefully have it out in the next month or so.
I’ve been getting junk files that mess with my photo editing. Bitdefender doesn’t stop them. Any way to eliminate them? Bit defender’s file clean up will get rid of them, but they show up again, often in a few minutes.
Absolutely. No viruses, super light (macbook air) for expedition backpacking, super fast, runs EVERY piece of software needed for photo editing and running a professional photo business. It's the difference between a using a 600 f4 an hour before sunrise and trying the same with a sigma zoom. You either buy something cheaper to save a few bucks with limitations or get the right gear and do it right.
I always build my own desktop PC's... I built a top spec one at the start of the year - absolutely kills everything re Photoshop or Denoise in LR, all displayed on a beautiful 27" Eizo. My laptop is a top spec XPS i7, 32GB ram, discrete GPU, 4K Oled screen... But it's 6 years old, and now runs like a pile of sh*t with LR in the develop module! Honestly, I've never been any fan of Apple, totally overpriced in my opinion, haven't owned anything Apple since an ipod... But after seeing the M series chips in action from fellow photographers in the field, they really are totally game changing!... The performance is way ahead of anything Intel or AMD can offer in a laptop presently in that form factor. Let alone the new M4 Pro & Max chips, which are now competing with top end Desktop chips!... All while on battery!... Absolutely bonkers 😱. (Most PC laptops have to be plugged in to get max performance and come with ridiculous over sized charging bricks). I'd love to be able to wait until Intel/ AMD / or even Qualcomm get their act together and catch up... But for my remote editing needs, I think I'm going to have to give in and bite the bullet and run dual platforms. I never thought I'd ever own anything Mac again, but presently for photo & film editing... I have to give it to them, they really are that good and this close to buying one!
Well no, I chose the ASUS vivobook OLED over an MacBook. Some reasons are OLED, The whole DCI P3 spectrum. It’s even has a replaceable m.2. It runs both Lightroom and PS without problem. Also Premiere. Davinci is a bit sluggish tho! The keyboard is “normal sized” so when I do things on my desktop I won’t feel the frustration of pressing the wrong keycaps thanks to doing things on reflex!
I wish I could give this more than one like. Before I watched this, I watched a video on monitor calibration. It was 11 minutes for 30 seconds of information and just bloviation from an obnoxious guy for the rest of the time. It took forever, and I didn't even watch the whole thing. This video was 35 minutes packed with information presented in a logical and comprehensible way, perfect for an amateur like me who doesn't know anything about this sort of thing. I was totally absorbed in it, and it seemed to take 5 minutes. This is exactly what this sort of video should be. Kudos to Brent. I hope I'll run into you out in the New Mexico wilds one day, homie.
Wow, thanks man. I really appreciate the kind words. I knew this video wouldn't do well with my audience because it's not my normal content, but knowing that it helped even a few people makes it worth it.
Excellent job, Brent. Great explanations and breadth of coverage without getting super technical.
Hey thanks, I really appreciate that! I'm glad it helped.
Dude! This is perfect. I’ve been looking at laptops. This helps a lot because I wasn’t sure exactly what specs I needed.
I'm glad it helped! 💻
Holy moly! This video is packed with great information. I'm going to have to watch it again a time or two to absorb it all as I'd love to have a laptop that will keep up with others in a workshop situation.
Thanks, I'm glad it helped!
Awesome info. Thanks!
My laptop is on training wheels compared to the least of yours. I bought mine primarily to use with my tracker system, so I don't need much for that.
However, as I was geeking out on DIY computer stuff in the last two years, one of the best pieces of advice I came across was to check the RAM limits with the CPU, to see if you can go higher than what the manufacturer says. My laptop specs said I could only go as high as 16gb, but the CPU specs said I could go to 32gb. I bought a 32gb stick and it works just fine. It would be prudent to research going over the manufacturer specs, to make sure other people have successfully pushed the limits, but still worth checking out.
Last year I bought dell laptop with i7 integrated gpu and 16gb ram. Works fine, but not when using AI like denoising and auto masking. Denoising takes like 3-4 mins, and afterwards, the laptop just gets slower and really hot. 9 months later, i just bought a pc with 4070, and life just became flawless. But I am still looking into upgrading my laptop for travel purposes. Thanks for the informative video
Good overall review! I invested in a really good Benq monitor a few years ago which effectively removed screen specs from my buying decision. Also, my most recent machine is a Lenovo from Costco with 32 GB of RAM. You’d think it would scream, but at times (loading programs and files) it is surprisingly slow.
Thank you thank you!! In the market for a new laptop and you have shed light on much for me. Thx again.
You're welcome, I'm so glad it helped!
Thanks for this video. I have a 5-year old Lenovo Legion gaming laptop. It still runs and works, well. The biggest limitations I'm experiencing are the size of the internal SSD (512GB) and the speed of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GPU. It'll run all the AI tools in Lightroom Classic and Photoshop but it takes time...lots of time. If I have a batch of 10+ images I'm running the Enhance tool on, I'll switch over to watching RUclips or go have a snack while it's running.
Since the device, itself, has been problem-free, I'm inclined to upgrade in the next year or so with another Lenovo gaming laptop. I see you have the Asus product. Did you happen to compare Asus with Lenovo before making your choice? If so, what sold you on Asus as better meeting your needs? I'm just interested and looking for other perspectives as I don't have an urgent need to upgrade and it never hurts to get a second opionon.
I didn't do any direct comparisons when I bought that Asus laptop, only because I've already used a LOT of Asus laptops before and I had a very good idea of how it perform, and mostly because it was such a good deal that I knew there would be nothing else even remotely close for the price range.
I did include a Lenovo or two in the description that would be worth considering. Lenovo has definitely been making some good laptops these days.
I've been looking getting ready for B.F. Thanks for your help
What great timing. My old HP laptop no longer holds a charge even after replacing the battery. So i am looking for a new laptop and this info is going to be very helpful.
Oh nice, I'm glad it helped!
@@BrentHall well I am a bit of a luddite when it comes to computers. While I was working (now retired) I always had one IT person I could trust to give me a hand when I had to buy laptops for my team. Now I have to do it all by myself!! LOL!
And I just ordered a new laptop for work today! Primary function is for mobile work, but tried to get a unit that can do some double duty/think it is decent. Lenovo T16 icore 7 155U, 32Gb ram and 2tb storage. Graphics is integrated.
Oh nice! Let me know how that works out, especially with the Adobe ai denoising and that iGPU performance.
This is the video I didn't want, but needed.
That's awesome to hear! 😅😜😁
Just went back to PC from Mac. The i7 is a beast.
Mate another quality video Informative and unbiased. As for me I would also recommend if you are on an budget as a desktop the 10th or 11 Gen Intel I7 and I9 with a Nvidia 3080 Video card which so far for me has been stable, running Adobe lightroom, photoshop and Topaz. Brent can you also do a video on Video display units and printers, and their relationship to each other as I have my son busting my chops to upgrade my 10 year old screen ("probable a lot longer than 10 years" to quote him while watching your youtube clip), as some of us want to print are favourite images and man it can sometimes be a nightmare trying to get the colours right from what you see on a screen to what is printed. I personally on my recent holiday just took a Chromebook which has an OLED to double check the images (close to 2TB of images) that I took on the day and left the editing to when I got back home to do on my desktop. Also son says to edit in 10 bit colour.
Thanks man, I'm glad you liked it! I'd love to do videos about printing, but I need to get a printer first...😅😜
New to the channel. I watched the entire video. Great stuff! Thanks.
Well damn, that's massive appreciation x 2 😃🤯😁
Nice keyboard/mousepad/book setup you got there
Thanks! I'm really stoked that someone noticed 😁🧙🏻♂️
Brent - curious if you have any thoughts on getting an eGPU to plug into an existing laptop. I have a Lenovo T14s Gen 3 for work and it does fine on denoise (less than a minute to export from Topaz) as it has a AMD Ryzen Pro 6850U Processor , 16 GB of LPDDR5 6400Mhz RAM, and integrated AMD Radeon 680M Graphics. I have found the OneX GPU for $650 with an AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT and like that it will work with Thunderbolt USB 4. Any thoughts on how much that would improve performance? They also came out with a new one with the 7800 but it's much larger and ~$1k so about in range of an entirely new laptop.
I've never tried an eGPU before, so I have no idea how they'd perform or the pros vs cons for one. Might be interesting though.
Why didn’t you go with the Asus G16 ProArt instead of the Zephyr G16?
I thought I mentioned that in the video?
Basically it was an impulse purchase. Best buy had an open box for almost $1K off. So for that price i couldn't find a new or used pro art with anywhere near similar specs and I didn't want to spend an extra $500 for the pro art. I decided the downsides of the ram and screen and thin chassis were were worth it for that price point to get the GPU and a decent cpu, though I would still prefer the amd version of the same laptop.
Overall it wasn't the best decision I've ever made, but it wasn't the worst either. It still does most everything I want it to do, and I will definitely make good use of it for a decently powerful travel laptop. Plus, once I got a lot of windows, power, and software settings tweaked, it runs a lot better now, which might be a future video because windows does some weird stuff with power management and GPU settings that are highly disadvantageous for creators.
@ i’m sorry, yes you did mention that in the video. A future video on the software settings for windows would be really great.
Thanks so much for your detailed reply and for your channel .
@hilarie4 no worries, it was a long video...😅 I'll be surprised if anyone actually watches/ listens to the whole thing.
I'll work on that other video and hopefully have it out in the next month or so.
@@BrentHall I listened to the whole thing I just missed some points. I don't think it was too long.
I’ve been getting junk files that mess with my photo editing. Bitdefender doesn’t stop them. Any way to eliminate them? Bit defender’s file clean up will get rid of them, but they show up again, often in a few minutes.
Curses! A week too late! Got a Lenovo LOQ with plenty of horsepower. It's doing better with Luminar Neo than my desktop PC, and for $700.
I look for 90%+ Adobe color space, and cymk space.
👍👍👍👍👍👍
All Topaz here.
The Apple M4 laptops are basically the only way to go these days.
Not if you wanna be super limited on what you can or can't do with your laptop. By all means it content creation is All you do, then yeah.
Absolutely. No viruses, super light (macbook air) for expedition backpacking, super fast, runs EVERY piece of software needed for photo editing and running a professional photo business. It's the difference between a using a 600 f4 an hour before sunrise and trying the same with a sigma zoom. You either buy something cheaper to save a few bucks with limitations or get the right gear and do it right.
Purfumed cage. No thanks.
I always build my own desktop PC's... I built a top spec one at the start of the year - absolutely kills everything re Photoshop or Denoise in LR, all displayed on a beautiful 27" Eizo.
My laptop is a top spec XPS i7, 32GB ram, discrete GPU, 4K Oled screen... But it's 6 years old, and now runs like a pile of sh*t with LR in the develop module!
Honestly, I've never been any fan of Apple, totally overpriced in my opinion, haven't owned anything Apple since an ipod... But after seeing the M series chips in action from fellow photographers in the field, they really are totally game changing!... The performance is way ahead of anything Intel or AMD can offer in a laptop presently in that form factor. Let alone the new M4 Pro & Max chips, which are now competing with top end Desktop chips!... All while on battery!... Absolutely bonkers 😱. (Most PC laptops have to be plugged in to get max performance and come with ridiculous over sized charging bricks).
I'd love to be able to wait until Intel/ AMD / or even Qualcomm get their act together and catch up... But for my remote editing needs, I think I'm going to have to give in and bite the bullet and run dual platforms.
I never thought I'd ever own anything Mac again, but presently for photo & film editing... I have to give it to them, they really are that good and this close to buying one!
Well no, I chose the ASUS vivobook OLED over an MacBook.
Some reasons are OLED, The whole DCI P3 spectrum.
It’s even has a replaceable m.2.
It runs both Lightroom and PS without problem. Also Premiere.
Davinci is a bit sluggish tho!
The keyboard is “normal sized” so when I do things on my desktop I won’t feel the frustration of pressing the wrong keycaps thanks to doing things on reflex!