if you want to buy an Apple laptop for 4k video editing.
In this video I have three recommendations for you at three different price points.
Hey, my name is Matt Johnson and I'm going to cover a budget MacBook Option.
A best bang for your buck MacBook option and extremely powerful
beastly MacBook option that will handle literally anything that you throw at it.
Sound cool?
Okay.
To save you time, I've linked down in the video description to the laptops
that I recommend because I respect your time like that.
Let's get started now with the budget friendly option.
And I'm going to warn you now, this video is going to be a bit more
complicated than previous MacBook Buyer's guide videos that I've made in the past,
because it used to be that whenever Apple released a new chip generation,
like going from the M1 to the M2, it was a no brainer to recommend the M2.
But now that we're seeing Apple go from the M2 to the M3,
there's not nearly as big of a performance jump.
And there are now so many used and refurbished deals and sales
on older MacBooks that you can save a ton of money
and still get an extremely powerful laptop.
So with that said, I actually have two different low budget
video editing laptops for you to consider if you're on a very tight budget.
First, if you want a powerful video editing laptop
that's not going to break the bank,
I'm actually going to recommend that you purchase the 13 inch M2 MacBook
Air with the 512 gigabyte SSD upgrade, eight core CPU and 16 gigabytes of RAM,
which retails at the time of making this video for 1500 bucks new.
If this laptop sounds familiar,
that's because I actually recommended it
in my previous best bang for your Buck MacBook Buyer's Guide
because it's so great and it's still great.
And just like I said, my previous video with this laptop,
you're getting all of the performance that you need for 4K video editing
Because this base version includes hardware, encoders and decoders.
42648265 Prores in Prores raw.
meaning that this laptop can playback and render the video files
filmed by mini cameras today significantly
faster than laptops that have Intel and AMD processors.
That said, though,
I'm sure you've noticed that I did recommend some upgrades and here's why.
Starting with the most important, the reason that I recommend you upgrade
to the 512 gigabyte SSD is that Apple has throttled the 256 gigabyte SSD
and made it approximately half the speed of the 512 gig model.
This is going to make a huge difference when you are editing video,
so spending the extra $200 for this upgrade is completely worth it.
Next, the reason that I recommend six gigabytes of RAM is that while
you can probably get by with eight gigs if you are only video editing,
once you start multitasking, say you have a web browser
open in the background or you're playing music while you're editing.
Having 16 gigs, Ram is going to help your video editing software stay speedy.
Alternatively, now, if you want to save more money
because 1500 bucks is just too dang expensive for a laptop.
Let's talk about my second even cheaper budget video editing
MacBook recommendation, and that is the M1 MacBook Air,
which I've seen online at times for as cheap as 750 bucks on sale.
And whenever I checked recently it was 850, which is not bad.
Yes. This laptop came out in 2020, but it is still quite capable
when it comes to 4K video editing.
And if your budget is under $1,000, I think that it is a great choice.
now? At this point? I'm sure you're thinking that.
What about the 15 inch M2 MacBook Air that Apple recently introduced?
Why are you skipping that laptop?
It has better thermal performance than the 13 inch.
Well, here's the issue, because the 15 inch MacBook Air is newer,
if you can figure out with the best possible
specs for video editing, which would be to upgrade it
to 16 gigabytes of RAM and a 512 gigabyte SSD storage.
The price is 1700 dollars new at the time of making this video,
which would not be bad if Apple's base
14 inch MacBook Pro with the M2 pro chip that is drastically faster
wasn't selling for only $200 more brand new.
I even saw it on Black Friday for $100 cheaper than the 15 inch m2 MacBook Air.
So it's really hard for me to recommend a 15 inch MacBook Air for 1700
when you can commonly get way more power
four 1900 with the M2 Pro, So sorry,
the 15 inch MacBook Air is a no go for budget video editing in my opinion.
Just buy a base M2 MacBook Pro with the M2
pro chip inside and you're going to be much happier.
Anyways, this takes us to the best bang for your buck option,
which is the 14 inch MacBook Pro with the M2 pro chip with a 12 core CPU
and 19 core CPU, 16 gigabytes of RAM and a one terabyte hard drive space
for 20 $500 at the time of making this video.
Or you can get it for 1950 from Apple refurbished.
if you're wondering why I'm not recommending the M3 Pro
with similar specs,
the reason is that while the M2 Pro and M3 Pro both have the same amount of 12 CPU
cores, the M2 Pro has eight performance cores and four efficiency cores,
while the M3 pro only has six performance cores and six efficiency cores,
which means that there's not really a performance jump
whenever you go from the M2 to the M3 and in some cases
the M3 Pro is actually going to have a performance drop
because it has less memory bandwidth than the M2 Pro.
So it's really a much better bang for your buck to just buy an M2 pro,
especially if you can find one refurbished or on sale.
Talking about the upgrades that are recommended for the M2 Pro,
Now you will first noticed that it recommended
that you upgrade the CPU from ten core to 12 CORE, which is the highest level
M2 Pro CPU that Apple offers before switching to the M2 max chip.
This bump of two CPU cores and three GPU cores over
the base model is going to give you a nice boost in your editing speed
and I think it is worth it if you can afford it.
Of course, if you want to save even more money, the M2 Pro with the ten
core CPU is still a great option and it is light years better than any MacBook Air.
So I would buy even the cheapest M2 pro that you can find
if you need to save some more money.
the second upgrade that I recommend for the best bang for your buck
MacBook is the you need to upgrade the SSD from 512 gigabytes to one terabyte.
The reason for this
is that just like the base level M2 MacBook Air that only came with 256
gigs of memory that Apple was throttling and making approximately 50% slower.
Well, that's also true of the base 512
gig SSD in this M2 Pro MacBook.
So if you want the absolute fastest SSD speeds, which for video
editing you definitely do,
you need to pony up the extra cash for the one terabyte SSD on this laptop.
lastly from memory, because I'm sure you're wondering I would stick with 16
gigabytes of RAM because the cost free to upgrade the RAM to 32 gigabytes
would probably better be spent on you just upgrading to the maxed out
version of this laptop that we need to talk about right now.
this final MacBook is an absolute beast that's going to give you a crazy
amount of power.
So if you had a6k, eight K or 12 K raw video,
which to be clear the cheaper M2 Pro can handle.
But if you want to edit that resolution and quality of footage as fast as possible
and you have a larger budget,
this final laptop is a laptop that I would recommend for you.
First, I know you're probably thinking that this is easy.
If I want the best MacBook, I just go to Apple's
website and max out the M3 max for over 7000 bucks, right?
Well, no, actually.
And you can actually think of this third laptop as another best bang
for your buck option that's going to give you even more power
while still not getting anywhere
close to the absolute maxed out price for a laptop.
All right.
For option number three,
I'm going to recommend you upgrade to the 16 inch MacBook Pro.
yes, we're finally going up in size, but we are still sticking with the two Max
and ignoring the M3 max, because in all my research, it's looking like the M2 max
is going to give you very similar video editing performance to the M3 Max, but
you can get it for significantly cheaper, so don't waste your money.
Specifically, I recommend the M2 max with the 12 core CPU and 30 core CPU.
which you can get new for 3700 bucks or refurbished
for 2900 bucks from Apple at the time of making this video.
This is the entry level M2 max model and it has one significant change over
the M2 Pro that's going to make a huge difference for video editing.
We're going to talk hardware, encoders and decoders again.
But don't worry, I promise you, this is the last time.
the M2 max, takes all of those encoders and decoders
from those previous laptops and it gives you twice as many of them.
So this is going to skyrocket your video editing and rendering speed
even faster over the M2 Pro In addition, because you are choosing the 16
inch model of the MacBook Pro,
you're also going to deal with less throttling of the CPU
than if you chose to put the M2 max into the 14 inch chassis.
Yet again, just like my last video editing MacBook Buyer's Guide video,
I want to give Max and video mirror over at Max Tech, a big
thank you for discovering this difference between these two laptop bodies.
Their videos about these laptops are awesome.
I highly recommend checking them out.
I'll link to them down below.
Now that we've covered the CPU, let's talk memory by default.
If you select the M2 max, apple is going to require you to also select 32
gigabytes of RAM.
And I think that that is plenty.
Remember, this is unified memory that is shared between the CPU and GPU.
And even if you are heavily multitasking, you should be fine for video editing,
even higher resolution footage.
so I would save your money and not upgrade to 64
gigabytes of RAM or the eye watering 96 gigabytes of RAM.
Trust me, you do not need that for video editing.
Lastly, for storage, just like with the M2 Pro and the M2,
I would avoid that 512 gigabyte SSD like the plague and upgrade
to at least one terabyte of SSD or more if you can afford it.
Remember that if you're editing 6k8 or Raphael's
having some extra space on your hard drive for caching, etc.
is always nice.
So that's where I would spend some extra money.
If you have it With that, you are now looking at an absolute
beast of a laptop
that's capable of editing pretty much any resolution
or format of footage that you want to throw at it
for a much cheaper price than the M3 max.
And there you have it, three Apple laptops that I recommend
at three different price points plus a couple bonuses.
Regardless of your budget,
you should be able to find an option that works well for you.
But if I had to pick the 14 inch MacBook Pro with the upgraded M2 Pro
CPU and one terabyte SSD upgrade is the best bang for your buck,
I'll link to all these laptops down below if you want to check them out.
And I will also link down below to my edit videos like a pro guide.
If you're a video editor, which I assume that you are considering,
this is a video about video editing laptops.
This guy is going to show you
some of the biggest things that took me years to learn as a video
editor that are going to skyrocket your video editing capabilities.
This guy is completely free
and you can download at the link down in the video description.
Thanks so much for watching and have a great day.