affordable photo editing laptop?

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 GraMc 30 Nov 2021

running into issues with my old laptop running and old version of lightroom on windows 8, and new high pixel non compatible raw files. 

Does anyone have any recommendations for a budget / affordable laptop that will be able to handle editing 20megapixel photos using lightroom or similar programme? 

I wont need to use it for anything else beyond streaming films occasionally and using google docs. 

I'm basically looking to spend the least amount possible while having enough memory / processing power or whatever so that I can edit photos without it taking a million years!

thanks for any ideas!

 HeMa 01 Dec 2021
In reply to GraMc:

Define cheap...

But if the cheapest Apple M1 Macbook Air is in your range (refurbished one), you're set. Stellar battery life, and more power than people though.

E.g some interesting things about photo-editing (in Lighrroom) from 8 min onwards.
youtube.com/watch?v=egr_TMj3IoE&

 MisterPiggy 01 Dec 2021
In reply to GraMc:

'morning,

I've no concrete, recent example (I still use a 2006 MacBook, PS Elements), but maybe searching 'best laptop for photo editing 2018' might give you some ideas for an affordable machine. RAM is pretty cheap these days as are SSDs, so upgrading is less costly than it used to be.

If your camera/scanner is making huge files, then a decent FHD screen would be pretty essential, I should think.

Anyhow, good luck in your hunt. I, for one, will follow this thread, though my current window shopping keeps bringing me back to the new Apple Air M1 - looks pretty handy for photo work.

j

 Tony Buckley 01 Dec 2021
In reply to GraMc:

I use a Lenovo yoga 7.

It has an SSD, so using an external drive for storage is pretty much a necessity.  But it runs Lightroom and other CC programs well enough for me.

T.

 RichardJKnight 01 Dec 2021
In reply to GraMc:

As already said its a bit of a can of worms defining affordable in laptop terms. Ultimately LR, and PS dont really need to worlds fastest graphics but are very hungry for RAM. 

Ive just decommissioned an old Dell tower PC after 11 years and moved over to apple with an M1 14” MBP for photo and light video editing. Just the base spec but paid more for additional SSD space; not because I need the internet storage for photos, I use an external SSD for that, but given how much swap memory the newer macs use I figured a larger SSD was sensible. This will be my only computer for hopefully another 10 years, so I decided the high initial outlay was worth it. 

Whilst I’ve moved to apple mainly for their ecosystem a Dell XPS laptop would have been my PC choice. 

I’ve moved away from a dedicated PC and like the flexibility of laptops (albeit with external monitors for more screen space).

The dell was running an i5, with 32gb RAM and all programmes on an SSD and was really struggling so I feel your pain. 

Post edited at 09:32
 ianstevens 01 Dec 2021
In reply to GraMc:

> running into issues with my old laptop running and old version of lightroom on windows 8, and new high pixel non compatible raw files. 

"non compatible raw files" suggests to me you might also want to look at upgrading Lightroom too - regardless of your thoughts of the sub model which has been discussed to death on here.

 jethro kiernan 01 Dec 2021
In reply to GraMc:

Just had a similar problem, my old 2013 Mac was struggling, much as I would have liked to get the M1 pro I ended up getting a certified reconditioned MacBook Pro, even the MacBook Air m1 was a little too much once you’d added a little ram and memory 😏

I got the reconditioned MacBook from https://www.affordablemac.co.uk/product/apple-macbook-pro-13-retina-display...

Still wasn’t “cheap” but for working with photo and more recently video I don’t really think there is a cheap option.

unfortunately my desktop is heading in that direction so might be looking at reconditioned iMacs next year 😞

but macs generally do keep going, I even managed to upgrade the storage and memory on the iMac which has kept it going for now.

it’s starting to struggle with video editing a little now.

Post edited at 11:58
In reply to jethro kiernan:

>even the MacBook Air m1 was a little too much once you’d added a little ram and memory 😏

RAM and memory are the same thing.

Anyway you need to factor in that the M1's memory handling is leagues beyond that of intel, and while the baseline model only has 8gb of memory, it feels like a computer with much more than 8GB of memory. 

I use my base model (8gb memory, 256gb ssd) Macbook Air M1 for photo editing, and it's very snappy indeed. I am quite sure it smashes any older intel macbook pro, even a pimped out one, out of the park in regards to performance. 

Storage is an issue, but I signed up to a premium iCloud subscription that gives me a ton of cloud storage and MacOS is good at just offloading old files to the cloud when I've not used them for a while. It's nice to also have a backup of all my pics in the cloud, so if my laptop breaks I've still got them. I think the 2TB cloud plan is £6.99 a month. Very comparable to something like backblaze, but with a way better user experience. 

Post edited at 12:18
1
 HeMa 01 Dec 2021
In reply to GripsterMoustache:

> >even the MacBook Air m1 was a little too much once you’d added a little ram and memory 😏

> RAM and memory are the same thing.

Well RAM is RAM. But I guess Jethro meant HDD (or actually SSD) space with memory.

Both for which Apple does charge a premium (and neither is user upgradable... you but what you need). Luckily External SSD or HDDs are cheapo and a rather good solution.

> Anyway you need to factor in that the M1's memory handling is leagues beyond that of intel, and while the baseline model only has 8gb of memory, it feels like a computer with much more than 8GB of memory. 

> I use my base model (8gb memory, 256gb ssd) Macbook Air M1 for photo editing, and it's very snappy indeed. I am quite sure it smashes any older intel macbook pro, even a pimped out one, out of the park in regards to performance. 

Indeed, even the binned (base model) M1 Air is a beast. More than enough for non professionals for even extensive photo editing. And really capable for again non professional 4K video editing.

> Storage is an issue, but I signed up to a premium iCloud subscription that gives me a ton of cloud storage and MacOS is good at just offloading old files to the cloud when I've not used them for a while. It's nice to also have a backup of all my pics in the cloud, so if my laptop breaks I've still got them. I think the 2TB cloud plan is £6.99 a month. Very comparable to something like backblaze, but with a way better user experience. 

Yup, cloud storage is certainly an option, you just need to have a good connection for it to be usable. External SSD/HDD is the other option. 

I manage to edit just fine with some 500GB Samsung T5s as my scratch drive with Prores 4K video on my feeble old 12" Macbook (using Resolve). Yeah, need to wait if doing lots of fancy grading or additional stuff. But works for a hobbiest. And the M1 is like ten times faster in real life than my 12" MB (for video editing).

The other good thing to keep in mind, is that while similar performance PC laptops are available, more often than not the Windows counterparts just don't seem to last as long (or perform as well as Mac when older).

That being said, the new Intel processors that are coming, will offer some considerable boost to their older versions (in part they share the idea of two kinds of CPU cores, just like the M1s). But they ain't out yet, and won't be cheap me thinks (especially the better ones, that will last, think of Dell XPS series and so on). But Apple is most likely going to publish the "new" Macbook Air (or simply Macbook) with a newer processor (M2?). Which might mean that the current M1 Macbook Air prices will go down. As per the rumor mill, that new generation will offer more performance (d'oh)... but for relatively simple tasks like light 4K editing or photo editing, even the base M1 will be just fine.

 jethro kiernan 01 Dec 2021
In reply to GripsterMoustache:

Sorry yes storage and memory 😏

 jethro kiernan 01 Dec 2021
In reply to HeMa:

Yes I did look at the Air M1 but with 16gb Memory and I Tb storage it was still nearly twice the price of the reconditioned i7 MacBook Pro I eventually got so was unable to stretch to the extra cash much as I’d like to.

 HeMa 01 Dec 2021
In reply to jethro kiernan:

Indeed, they be spendy. But you could have lived with only the 8Gb RAM. Unified memory and super fast SSD (for swapping) make it feel like double the PC equivalent. 

For the SSD, externals are the obvious solution... but they do bring their own problems. That being said, the USB4 that is on the M1 Air is actually faster than the TB3 on your MBP. But it all boils down to what you need (really) and how much £££ you have.

Here's something to look at:
https://www.4kshooters.net/2021/06/21/is-the-949-m1-macbook-air-powerful-en...

Note, the 949 USD version is indeed the binned GPU and 256Gb storage plus 8Gb RAM. So the cheapest option. And as can be seen, it handles pretty rough video-editing work. If you're mainly into photo's, they are a lot less resource intensive... Maxtech youtube videos did also put the base model to the test and performed really well on quite heavy LR work.

That being said, the intel powered MBP are good machines and will serve you well. They do get hot though, and the battery is not the best on them (still better than most similar Windows laptops). Plus they do stall, when you unplug them. Unlike the new AS, which performs exactly the same plugged in or not.

Post edited at 14:23
 DJayB 02 Dec 2021
In reply to GraMc:

This looks pretty cheap and I think could manage what you need it to do...it works well for me.

https://ag-photographic.co.uk/paterson-ilford-starter-kit-4571-p.asp

Post edited at 08:52
 HeMa 02 Dec 2021
In reply to DJayB:

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work as promised...

First of all, I had a hell of a lot o difficulty in trying to place my SD-card in the film holder... In fact, I could not extract the film at all from my SD-card.

But in the end, the only results that I got were slightly blurry images of the SD-card... not the climbing pictures that I had took...

Sh!tty product in my opinion... not fit for purpose.

 ChrisJD 02 Dec 2021
In reply to HeMa:

> Define cheap...

Looks like TechRadar defines a 'Cheap Laptop' as £200-£600, which seems about right:

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/the-best-laptop-deals

 HeMa 02 Dec 2021
In reply to ChrisJD:

I guess so... which means that M1 Air is out of the question (even refurbished one is 850).

But then again these "cheap" ones are often fully plastic. Meaning that they will actually break if you use them as laptops (the frame bends and the logic board will break). My friends have had a bunch of such laptops and even as their personal laptop, they only tend to last 1 to 2 years, both have a proper laptop from work.

This is just to point out, that that cheap ones are cheap for a reason. And if the person actually plans to use them as laptops (instead of them being a clamshell all in one desktop computer), they might not fare that well in the long run.

1
 ChrisJD 02 Dec 2021
In reply to HeMa:

The OP didn't say cheap though, they asked:

 ... budget / affordable laptop that will be able to handle editing 20megapixel photos using lightroom or similar programme

 ... looking to spend the least amount possible while having enough memory / processing power

Looking for that sweet spot: cost versus performance

In reply to HeMa:

>But then again these "cheap" ones are often fully plastic. Meaning that they will actually break if you use them as laptops (the frame bends and the logic board will break). 

Yep, I've been a dell/toshiba user for a long time before I switched to Mac this year. I'm never going back. The build quality is leagues ahead of competitors, and the new ARM architecture Apple Silicone will be hard for Intel to compete with for quite a while imo. 

I would argue that in regards to build quality, and performance, the M1 Air is the best bang for your buck laptop you can get by far. Mine manages 15 hours of screen time (just web browsing, youtube, emails, etc) on a single charge, and then if I want to do light video or image editing, it breezes through it. 

And it's built like a tank. It feels so solid, compared to compatibly priced laptops with worse general performance. I will have this laptop for years longer than I'd have a plastic laptop from a competitor. The big let down, at the price point, is without a doubt storage. 

But for £100ish you can get a 1TB m2 ssd, and a usb3.1 caddy for it, and have a ton more storage on the cheap. Admittedly you'd then need to carry the SSD with you, but that's a very small form factor solution. 

I've not needed to do it yet, and I'm unsure I'll need to with offloading stuff I haven't touched for a while to the cloud, which MacOS handles itself seamlessly. It all depends on your personal workflow though. If you have hundreds and hundreds of gigs of files that you access regularly, it'll be a usability nightmare with cloud storage. But then you could go for the external SSD. 

Also, if you're an iPhone user it's nice to have your phone just work with your laptop seamlessly. Transferring files, tethering, facetiming, etc. 

But ultimately if your budget is a firm £600, then you're unlikely to find one in that range. Looking now, they hold their value really well and you likely won't get one for much under £750 second hand, or £850 brand new.. But that is yet another reason to get one, imo. You might spend £150 more getting one now, but if you want to sell in 3-4 years time you'll actually get some decent money for it and likely recoup that cost anyway. 

A £600 laptop bought new now, will likely be near worthless on the second hand market in 4 years time. 

 

1
OP GraMc 07 Dec 2021
In reply to GripsterMoustache:

thanks for all the replies v helpful!

luckily a mate with a good condition newish mac book pro spotted this thread and has taken pity on me and is going to sell it to me at trade in price. thanks internet. 

seems like the spec to price ratio on a second hand mac just makes way more sense than a newer budget windows laptop.

 HeMa 08 Dec 2021
In reply to GraMc:

It does, albeit less so with intel Macs... The apple silicon ones will hold their value more.

That being said, even an intel MBP will serve you well for LR stuff... apple silicon one (M1 13" or the way too spendy M1Pro/M1Max 14" or 16") will certainly be a lot snappier, now and in the future... and keeps it's value more.

But the older intel ones will still keep you doing what you do for a long while... Some stuff will be slower, but still doable.

E.g. I have a super slow 12" Macbook from 2016 (crappy intel m5 processor). And can still edit RAW easily from my GH4s or GH5. Plus do some light 4K editing in Resolve. Not fast, but doable for a hobbyist.


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