hey my name is matt johnson and 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 we're going to
cover a budget option a best bang for
your buck option and an extremely
powerful beastly option that will handle
anything you throw at it sound cool okay
to save you time i've linked down in the
video description to the three laptops
that i recommend because i respect your
time like that now let's get started
with the budget friendly option
typically in the past the words budget
and apple don't really go together but
that's all changed with the advent of
their m1 apple silicon chips so if you
want a powerful video editing laptop
that is not going to break the bank
i'm actually going to recommend you
purchase the m1 macbook air with 16
gigabytes of ram
yes this is literally the cheapest
laptop that apple makes with an m1 chip
and with that ram upgrade it comes out
to 1200 bucks
but trust me this laptop is fantastic
for video editing even if you're editing
4k video now i know some of you are
probably thinking really matt the
macbook air you're telling me that i
shouldn't even upgrade the gpu to eight
cores or consider the 13-inch macbook
pro yes that's what i'm telling you and
here's why with the m1 macbook air model
you're already getting 95 of the
performance that you need from the m1
chip and those upgrades to the gpu or to
the 13-inch macbook pro are going to be
very negligible at best because every m1
chip already has two of the most
important features for video editors
these two features are a hardware
encoder and decoder for the h.264 and
h.265 video formats in 8-bit and 10-bit
meaning that this laptop can play back
and render the video files filmed by
many cameras today
significantly faster than anything from
intel or amd
and these encoders and decoders come
with the base cpu and gpu in the m1
heck the only reason that i'm
recommending you upgrade the ram is if
you're a heavy multi-tasker and you want
some future proofing but if you're
really on a budget stick with the 999.8
gig model though it should still work
well as long as you don't have a ton of
programs open
now here's the other reason that i don't
think you should spend a lot on upgrades
for the macbook air and that ties into
the second macbook that we need to talk
about which is the best bang for your
buck macbook the best bang for your buck
video editing macbook that i recommend
for you is the macbook pro 14 inch with
the m1 pro cpu which comes in at roughly
two thousand dollars remember that the
budget macbook air that i recommended is
1200 but if you start spending money on
upgrades for the air like the 8 core gpu
and an upgraded ssd you're sitting at
14.50 or if you switch to the macbook
pro 13-inch you're spending 1700 for a
similar system here's the issue
every dollar that you spend on an
upgrade over the 1200 macbook air is
getting you closer and closer to the 2
000 price of the 14-inch macbook pro and
this is a problem because the 14-inch
macbook pro is such a dramatic and
significant upgrade over the macbook air
and really most other laptops for that
matter there very quickly comes a
tipping point where if you want to spend
more than twelve hundred dollars or so
on a macbook air
it's really going to become smarter to
just save up your money so you can
afford the 14 inch macbook pro at 2000.
okay so what makes this 14-inch m1 pro
macbook so good and the best bang for
your buck well for this 1999 you are
getting a laptop that is going to run
circles around apple's previous most
expensive intel laptops that cost well
over four thousand dollars compared to
the macbook air you get a bigger and
better mini led screen with 120 hertz
refresh rate more ports magsafe super
fast ssd a ton of great stuff but
most importantly for video editing
remember how the m1 chip on the macbook
air has dedicated hardware video
encoders and decoders for h.264 and
h.265 well of course the m1 pro has
these too but in addition it also
includes hardware encoders and decoders
for the prores video codec 2 which is
one of the most popular codecs today and
when you combine these hardware encoders
and decoders with the incredibly fast m1
pro cpu and gpu
it's frankly insane and your editing is
going to be orders of magnitude faster
and let me remind you you're getting all
this performance with the 14-inch
macbook pro with the base m1 pro chip
so if you want the best bang for your
buck
my recommendation is to buy the 14 inch
macbook pro with the m1 pro with the 8
core cpu and 14 core gpu
i don't think that the upgrade to the 10
core cpu or 16 core gpu is really worth
it for video editing you are not going
to see a huge increase in the hardware
encoder and decoder speed whenever you
spend more money on those upgrades for
memory i would stick with 16 gigabytes
of ram because this is unified memory
that is shared between the cpu and gpu
and this laptop is just so optimized
this amount of ram is going to be
significantly more efficient than
regular memory that you may be used to
and even if you're a heavy multitasker i
don't think you're going to see any
major difference if you switch from 16
to 32 gigabytes of memory so i would
save your money
for storage though this is one area
where i would consider upgrading i would
choose one terabyte if you have the
money because extra space is always a
good thing
lastly if you choose this base model
you're going to notice that by default
it comes with a 67 watt power adapter i
would highly recommend upgrading the
power adapter for 20 to the 96 watt
adapter as this is going to give you
access to fast charging which as the
name implies will charge your laptop
much faster
congratulations you've now spent
anywhere from 2000 to 2220
at most and you now have a laptop that
is going to blow your mind hopefully
without completely destroying your
wallet but we're not done yet we have
one more laptop to talk about and this
laptop is an absolute beast this is
going to give you a crazy amount of
power so if you edit 6k 8k 12k
or raw video which to be clear the
cheaper 14 inch macbook with the m1 pro
can handle but if you want to edit in
that resolution and quality of footage
as fast as possible and you have a
larger budget this final laptop is the
laptop that i would recommend for you
first i know you're probably thinking
matt this is easy if i want the best
laptop i just go to apple's website and
max of the machine for approximately six
thousand bucks right
well no actually and you can actually
think of this third lap as another best
bang for your buck option that's going
to give you even more power while not
getting anywhere close to the maxed out
price for this 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 and
this is also the point where i'm going
to recommend the upgrade to the m1 max
processor specifically the option with
the 10 core cpu and 24 core gpu this is
the entry level m1 max model and it has
one significant change over the m1 pro
that's going to make a huge difference
for video editing we got to talk
hardware encoders and decoders again but
don't worry
i promise you this is the last time
remember how i said that the m1 pro has
dedicated hardware video encoders and
decoders for h.264 h.265 and prores
video formats to make the editing and
rendering super fast
well the m1 max takes everything to
another level because it includes two of
them yes you get twice as many hardware
encoders and decoders with this chip
which is going to skyrocket your editing
and rendering speed even over the
already blazing fast m1 pro
in addition because you are choosing the
16 inch model of macbook pro you are
also going to deal with less throttling
of the cpu than if you chose to put the
m1 max into the 14 inch chassis i want
to give a huge thank you to max yuryev
over at maxtec for discovering the
difference between these two laptop
bodies his videos about these laptops
are awesome i highly recommend checking
them out and i'll link to his channel
down below
now that we've covered the cpu let's
talk memory by default if you select the
m1 max apple is going to require you to
also select 32 gigabytes of ram and i
think that this is plenty remember this
is a unified memory that is shared
between the cpu and gpu and even if
you're heavily multitasking you should
be fine for video editing even higher
resolution footage so i would save your
400 bucks and not upgrade to 64
gigabytes of ram lastly for storage this
is definitely an area where i would
consider upgrading to at least one
terabyte if not two depending on your
budget remember if you're editing 6k 8k
or raw files having some extra space on
your hard drive to store those files is
always nice so here'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 3 300 bucks
and there you have it three apple
laptops that i recommend at three
different price points
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 base m1 pro is such
a killer option for that price and
definitely the best bang for your buck
lastly i will link to all of these
laptops down below if you want to check
them out it would also be a huge help to
me if you would consider liking this
video and subscribing if you want to see
more videos about video editing and
filmmaking in the future
thank you so much for watching and have
a great day
[Music]
you