- Hey guys, my name is
Matt Johnson and today
I want to share with you four
budget video editing laptops
that you can buy for under $1000.
These laptops are gonna
be capable of editing 4K
or 6K or even higher resolution
video in Premiere Pro
or DaVinci Resolve or basically
any video editing software
other than Final Cut, which is Mac only.
They'll also be great for
sound mixing, editing photos,
After Effects 3D graphics work.
Basically any content creation
or even gaming is going to
be great on these laptops.
That sounds great, Matt.
How the heck are we getting laptops
that are capable of doing this
for under a thousand bucks?
Let me tell you why right now
is such a good time to buy a laptop.
This is my Dell XPS 15 9570
that I bought in 2018 for over $3000.
I spent so much money on this laptop
primarily because it was one
of the few laptops available
at the time that offered a
six-core 12-thread processor,
which is great for editing video.
Jump ahead only two years,
and now in summer 2020,
you can buy a six-core 12-thread laptop
that is just as fast as
this one for 860 bucks.
What the heck?
What a discount.
And if you want even more power,
say eight cores and 16 threads,
how does $100 more sound?
Can you see why I'm so excited
about video editing laptops right now?
That said, when you're
dealing with budget laptops,
there are always some
compromises that have to be made
to reach this lower price point.
In this video, I want to
walk you through the laptops
I recommend as well as any
upgrades I think you should make
so you could make the correct
decision of which one to buy.
As always, the laptops are linked
down in the video description
if you want to read my recommendations.
All right, let's start with the cheapest
4K video editing laptop that I
recommend, the Dell G5 15 SE,
which comes in at the time
of my making this video
right at $862 bucks.
I think this is the best all-around budget
video editing laptop available today.
It has a decent keyboard and
trackpad, 256-gigabyte SSD,
Radeon 5600M graphics card,
USB 3.1 and type C connections,
an HDMI port, and even an SD card slot,
which I love seeing on a laptop.
Now, to be clear, this is not
necessarily a pretty laptop.
It is definitely cheaply
built with lots of plastic,
but where it's sacrifices looks,
it more than makes up for it in speed.
If you're a video editor that doesn't care
about what your laptop looks like
while you're sitting at a coffee shop
because you're actually getting work done,
then I think the G5 is a great choice.
It comes with a Ryzen 7
4600H CPU with six cores
and 12 threads of performance.
This is great for 4K editing,
but please do be aware that
there are some compromises
other than just the looks of
this laptop at this price.
First, it only comes with
eight gigabytes of RAM
in the $860 model.
The good news is you can easily
upgrade this to 16 gigabytes
for cheap yourself and all
you need is a screwdriver.
I will link to the RAM
upgrade that I recommend
for this laptop down in the description
next to the like button.
The next compromise for the
862 model is the screen.
It's a 60 hertz panel,
that from all my research,
doesn't appear to be very color accurate.
This screen should be fine
for the editing part of video editing,
but once it comes time to color correct
and color grade your footage,
I would highly recommend
investing in an external monitor
that is more color accurate
or investing in Dell's upgraded display.
Now, here's the good news.
If you have a bit more
room in your budget,
I would actually recommend
selecting the level
right above the base model of
this laptop that Dell sells.
You'll get 16 gigs of RAM
so you don't need to install it yourself,
and more importantly,
you also get a much
better 144-hertz screen
that's gonna be quite color accurate
and should work great for color grading.
Lastly, in regards to the G5,
the upgrade to the eight-core
Ryzen 7 4800H processor
will significantly speed up your editing
and I would highly recommend it.
Moving on, the second
laptop that I recommend
for budget 4K video editing
is the MSI Bravo 15.
At $999, this laptop
just barely squeaks by
under the thousand dollar budget limit,
but dang do you get a lot for the price.
With a Ryzen 7 4800H eight-core processor,
16 gigabytes of RAM, good
keyboard and trackpad,
and a Radeon 5500M graphics card,
this laptop is going to crush
whatever footage you throw at it.
There's gotta be a catch, though.
With any $1000 laptop,
there's always a corner cut somewhere.
For the Dell laptop, they cut
corners on the overall look
of the laptop and it looks
pretty plastic and cheap.
This MSI laptop, on the
other hand, looks better,
but they cut corners on the screen.
From my research, it looks like its panel
only covers about 60%
of the SRGB color space,
so it is not very color accurate.
For editing, you should be good,
but once you want to color
correct or color grade,
I would highly recommend
using an external monitor.
And I will link to
monitors that I recommend
down in the video description
that are affordable.
Up next, my third laptop
recommendation for you
is gonna go slightly over budget,
but this company has sales all the time,
so I'm betting that you
should be able to pick it up
for under a thousand bucks.
My third recommendation
is the Lenovo Legion 5.
At the time of this recording,
the model I recommend is 1060 bucks
and it comes with a Ryzen
5 4600H six-core processor.
And it's all-black design
doesn't give off a super
gamer-y vibe, which I like.
Now the first thing you may notice
upon researching this laptop
is there's actually a cheaper model
with the same CPU that retails for $999.
And then you look closer
and realize, wait a second,
this cheaper model also
comes with a bigger SSD
and a 120-hertz screen.
The 1060 hertz model only
comes with a 60-hertz screen.
What's up with that?
Why am I recommending a
more expensive laptop?
The reason I recommend
spending the premium
for the 1060 model is that it comes
with a much more color accurate
display than the 999 model.
Upgrading the SSD to 512 gigabytes
will only set you back 60 bucks
on Lenovo's customization page.
And I would definitely recommend upgrading
to 16 gigabytes of RAM
there as well for $50 extra.
If you have the budget to,
upgrading the CPU to the
Ryzen 7 4800H for $100 more
is also a great choice that will result
in much faster editing and rendering.
I realize we're getting pretty high
over the $1000 budget here,
but remember, Lenovo
has sales all the time.
So I would definitely recommend checking
if they have this laptop on sale
as well as check all of the
other laptops I'm recommending.
You never know when one of
them is gonna be discounted.
Rounding things up, I have
one final video editing laptop
recommendation for you.
And I'm gonna warn you now it
comes with some controversy.
So I would definitely
recommend doing some research
if you're planning on getting this laptop.
The fourth laptop that I'm
cautiously recommending
is the Asus TUF A15 gaming laptop.
Now on the surface, the
specs for this laptop
resemble the other options with
a good overall build quality
that's definitely a bit
more gamer-aesthetic
with lots of RGB and over-the-top styling.
With a Ryzen 7 4800H eight-core CPU,
an easily upgradeable 16 gigabytes of RAM,
512-gigabyte SSD that
can also be upgraded,
capable Nvidia 1660 Ti graphics card,
this all sounds pretty good, right?
And at $999, this laptop is beating
all of the others on price.
So what's the catch?
Just like with the MSI laptop,
the display is a 144-hertz panel
with a mediocre color gamut.
You're going to want an external monitor
if you're doing any color grading.
But what about the controversy?
Matt, you said this
laptop was controversial.
Another YouTube channel, Hardware Unboxed,
reviewed this laptop
and found that it had
horrible cooling issues.
Enough so that they felt like Asus
intentionally designed it
badly so people would instead
buy their more expensive laptops.
Big claim.
Now, Asus has denied this,
and Hardware Canucks,
another reputable computer
review channel on YouTube,
has stated that their A15 laptop
didn't have any cooling issues at all.
They praised how cool it stayed
even when rendering a 3D model in Maya.
See why this is controversial?
This is why I'm only cautiously
recommending this laptop.
And there is new information
coming out all the time
so I'm sure there'll be more
info after I create this video.
So I would highly recommend
that you do your own research.
Also, if you decide to get the A15,
I would highly recommend
buying it from a reputable site
that has a good return policy
in the event that you try it,
find that your laptop has
bad overheating issues,
and then you can return it easily.
With that, those are four
4K video editing laptops
that I would recommend for under $1000.
Do you edit on Final Cut, though?
Well, in that case, I'm
working on a MacBook
video editing recommendation video
and I would love if you would subscribing
if you want to see it.
Also, if you find yourself
editing from home,
instead of buying a video editing laptop,
I would highly recommend building
your own video editing PC.
My latest video editing PC build guide
will show you all of the
parts that you need to buy
to build a $650 4K video editing PC.
Save you a bit of money.
I also have a video
that's over an hour long
showing you the entire building process
from taking the parts out of the box
all the way to turning the computer on.
That video is also linked
down in the video description as well.
Also, would you be interested in seeing
more laptop recommendation
guides like this?
Maybe for more expensive
video editing laptops.
Please leave me a comment
and let me know below.
Thanks so much for watching
and have a great day.
