- 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.