choosing the right laptop can be a bit challenging sometimes because there are
millions of options out there with various specs and hardware designs you
might be looking for a thin and light notebook with the best battery life and
portability or you might be looking for something that offers a good balance
between portability and performance or you might be looking for the absolute
best both of the walls to have a laptop where performance is key plus a bigger
display because size matters so we've teamed up with razer to bring you a
quick overview of some of the most popular type of laptops out there and
all the products that we're gonna be showcasing in this video will be linked
in the description down below so do think of this as a notebook buying guide
but based on our own personal experiences now we've been using Razer
laptops for the majority of our production workflow but you can take our
guidelines and apply them to any other notebook manufacturer now I do want to
preface something very important and that is there's no such thing as a
perfect laptop in fact the notebooks that we use aren't perfect either but
they happen to fit our workflow and they get the job done really well so I think
it's important for you guys to find what fits your criteria and what would work
now everyone that you're gonna be seeing this video have moved beyond the need of
using a basic laptop in fact the double market has shifted tremendously over the
past few years I mean we've moved away from fakey bulky
designs to Apple like thinner designs with powerful Hardware packed in and the
result of that is that you don't have to sacrifice form over function and
function over form to me I think the best thing that has ever happened to the
notebook space is the introduction of Nvidia's max to GPUs the performance
that you can get out of these mobile graphics card is just amazing I'm not
gonna be focusing on entry-level notebooks in this video because I feel
like that is a separate category by itself and yes I do understand that they
do exist and offer some sort of basic functionality but what if you're looking
for something beyond that well let's start things off with Finan lights
spoiler alerts miniaturization costs money and the reason I say that is
because the smaller the notebook gets and when you pack that with efficient
and powerful Hardware packed with great design and build quality you're gonna be
paying a lot of money for that now infinite line notebooks are tailored
towards people who value battery life and portability say for instance if
you're a student who has 8 a.m. classes ending all the way till 6 p.m. you need
something that lasts you all day long or if you're a business professional
hopping from one meaning to the next you need something that will actually take
you through those meetings without having to rely on a power break a lot of
notebook manufacturers are leaning towards Portland assigns meaning that
they only come with a few USB type-c ports which again may or may not be a
huge deal breaker for some of you out there but if you're someone who is
looking to connect different external accessories that can be a limitation and
there are other Ultrabook options offering a really good selection of i/o
for its smaller form factor I should also mention that the inclusion of CNC
unibody frames is a big deal here since it allows for super thin and light frame
designs without impacting build quality display is also another thing that you
need to watch out when you're shopping for a thin unlike notebook I would
highly recommend moving away from 4k on a 13-inch notebook because it just
doesn't make any sense plus it requires a lot of horsepower to drive that 4k
resolution and it can impact by your life so the best option is to opt for a
1080p display and you should be set the last thing that I want to touch base on
is performance now in this area you want to be looking for a you serious
processor from either AMD or Intel which means ultra-low voltage or G Series for
Intel's I select line up if you're looking for lower power consumption and
enhanced multimedia features now if you want even more performance for instance
a little boost for gaming or rendering based applications there are options
independent like space for a discreet graphics card keep in mind that the thin
light segments range between 13 inches and 17 inches but that really depends on
how big of a screen you really need now there is a performance cap within unlike
notebooks it's just a fact so if you're looking for something with a little bit
more horsepower than then you'll need to step it up to a slightly larger form
factor and the good thing is that you don't have to sacrifice the portability
factor to a certain extent because these days with technological advancements
from both Intel and AMD on the CPU side and AMD and NVIDIA on the GPU side you
can still maintain that portability aspect while achieving close to desktop
level performance a good example of that is a new blade 15 it packs a coarse 16
threads and an r/t supermax cube graphics card the thing is
when you get into mid sized notebooks it opens a wide category when it comes to
pricing for these size laptops so you can pick them up from $1,000 all the way
up to $4,000 which can get really really expensive so it's important for you to
figure out your budget that should be your number one priority and then find
what your needs are and then slowly start narrowing down from that so for
instance if you're a gamer you should probably look into a high refresh rate
display with a low resolution so that your games can hit those higher frame
rates given the hardware can actually support that I know if you're a creator
on the other hand you can look into sacrificing that refresh rate but for a
more color accurate display I think that's probably the best way to look at
it now do keep in mind that OLED panels do tend to get a little bit more
expensive so it's best that you might be better off with an IPS display offering
you a great color spectrum or a color coverage when it comes to DCI p3 or srgb
another nice thing about these larger form factor laptops is that you get more
connectivity so you want to make sure that the i/o is up to spec with today's
standards for example make sure that the USB ports are 3.2 gen 2 storage is also
an important factor for both gamers and creators and I think the million dollar
question that needs to be answered here is are you willing to store all of your
files locally or are you willing to rely on external storage solutions now I'll
give you a perfect example I use DaVinci Resolve to edit all our videos and
DaVinci project files take a lot of storage especially when I'm working with
4k footage so external storage seems to be the right choice for me personally so
I don't really need a lot of local storage so I'm perfectly fine with maybe
512 gigabytes of storage heck I would even be fine with 256 gigabytes of local
storage but if you're a gamer that can be an interesting conversation because
modern games these days especially Red Dead Redemption 2 can easily eat up a
hundred 50 gigabytes in no time so I would recommend 512 gigabytes of storage
or if you're willing to spend a little bit more a terabyte of storage would be
great because you can load it with your most favorite titles and basically keep
those games wherever you go without having to rely on an external storage
now I do want to leave on this note as the capabilities Abhiyan notebook
increases the amount of storage you would
would also increase so that's something to certainly keep in mind when you're
shopping for a 15 inch notebook larger notebooks are typically upgrade friendly
as well meaning you can swap out the memory kit or upgrade the storage to a
higher capacity and if you're interested in a step-by-step guide you can check
out our video right over here so overall you do get a lot of capabilities with a
15 inch notebook but you also do tend to sacrifice on a few key areas like
performance and cooling and if you're willing to go a little bit beyond that
and willing to sacrifice on a little bit of portability that's where a 17 inch
notebook comes into play now everything that I mentioned in the 15 inch form
factor can be applied to this segment but do keep in mind that these larger
form factor notebooks do come with slightly higher costs they also usually
tend to have better connectivity and better cooling resulting in more
consistent and higher CPU and GPU clock speeds while smaller notebooks can be
considered as complimentary to desktop systems a 17 inch notebook can be
considered as a desktop replacement another thing you want to look into is
display options for a 17 inch notebook and you might want to look for a 4k
option because 17 inches and 4k make a lot more sense because scaling works a
lot better in that form factor I don't think you'll ever go wrong with an
option so that's something to keep in mind so now that we've gone through some
general guidelines for notebook buyers let's go through some of the laptops
that Mike myself and Dmitri have been using for a while now so I'm first up
here and you might be wondering why do you have this old dell Vostro 1/3 to 0
from you what because it sort of talks towards the kind of consumer that I am
for notebooks every single one of my notebooks I've
bought myself and they've all been about the same size so this is a 13 inch Dell
Vostro and then from that I went on to this which is the voz it's a 13 inch
notebook as well this thing was absolutely legendary so what did I go to
after that well it's a 14 inch notebook and that is the ThinkPad x1 carbon 8th
gen Intel processor inside so this was my last one before moving on and I think
what I wanted to show you guys also is what I moved on to and that is the Razer
Blade stealth 13 and there's a there's a reason behind that and there's also a
reason why I've notebooks that are all the same size
about and that's because I do a lot of traveling but I also have higher end
computers here at home that I can do gaming and higher-level work on but for
me the 13 inch form factor of this and the 14 inch of some of the other
notebooks are absolutely perfect to shove into my backpack and not only that
this might sound absolutely crazy but it's just to fit on the trade tables of
planes and there's actually a reason why I wanted to bring up the stealth 13 in
this and it's because it's a good representation of where the thin and
light notebook market is headed and it's also why I switched to it from the
ThinkPad x1 carbon is because this one has a discrete GPU and a gtx 1650 to be
more accurate and for me that was really critical for two reasons first of all
i'm designing our new office and you guys might not have known this but i was
an architect before moving over into full time hardware canucks
and I've been using AutoCAD and AutoCAD the acceleration from the GPU and this
really helps me move things around and a more fluid pace and especially with
copying pasting and going into 3d right now using Sketchup for 3d and that
discrete GPU brings things to the next level and not only that I'm the kind of
guy who when I'm on the plane or when I'm just sitting on the couch I like to
play pretty basic games by today's standards look I know that a larger
device like a 15 inch notebook would probably get me a lot more power get me
into some higher level gaming but I just don't need it I'm totally okay with a 13
inch notebook right now with long battery life a discrete GPU and it just
fits my lifestyle perfectly because I can come home I can game wherever I want
to at home and maybe even if I'm cooking I could bring this with me on the
counter so that's pretty much why I am in this 13-inch form factor and I'm sure
it's gonna appeal to a lot of people from students to even gamers who have
more powerful systems at home like me my experience with notebooks has been an
interesting journey over the past 10 years
in fact I've come to value three main factors when it comes to choosing a
notebook for myself and that's performance portability and design and
the Razer Blade 15 hits all those factors really well to be
perfectly honest with you I didn't choose this laptop Razer did sample this
as a review unit and over time using this on a regular basis I've come to
realize this notebook has played a vital role in my production workflow basically
95% of the videos that you've watched on this channel from my end for the last
year or so have been edited and rendered on this laptop ever since my switch to
da Vinci result studio I've been very impressed with the blade 15s performance
and resolves utilization with all of that hardware the model that I have
features an RT x 28 Emacs Q and that really helps accelerate export times and
when you pair that with Intel 6 core 1230 CPU it's really a breeze when it
comes to editing 4k footage making thumbnails using Photoshop and about all
of that I really love the design of the blade 15 I also really love this huge
glass trackpad with support for windows position drivers and when you pair that
with a really fast 240 Hertz display that's also really color accurate for
content creation the experience is fast and fluid especially when you're
switching between virtual desktops it's honestly a breeze the last thing that I
want to touch base on is portability because I carry VP design everyday 20
liter backpack and this thing can pack literally everything that I use for
video production including my camera my lenses microphone cables my portable
lights but most importantly it can fit this blade 15 advanced without a problem
and that to me is a huge bonus because when I'm visiting family in Toronto I
can carry all of this horsepower with me on the go play my favorite racing games
hop into a multiplayer session with my brother playing cs:go or overwatch this
laptop doesn't compromise in all of those areas and that's something that I
love about the Blade 15 advance if one year ago we decided to do this video
I would not be rooting for the 17 inch form factor but yet here we are I never
work from a coffee shop outside of the studio so the purpose of any notebook
for me is to be as powerful as possible and also be able to do this
that is right it must fit into my backpack so when I do work remotely
transportation is not an issue I'm so happy that we're beyond the absolutely
thick and massive 17 inch notebooks but with exercise come all the benefits so
the screen for example on my 17 inch blade Pro is much bigger that usually
means higher resolution so for case scaling on Windows is palatable
whereas 4k on the 15 inch notebook is just a joke
if only window scaling worked as good as it does on Mac OS then 4k on the 15 inch
form factor wouldn't be an issue but it is I actually get more screen real
estate with my 4k 17 inch form factor even with high scaling than a
1080p screen on the 15 inch notebook a thicker body also means extra ports it's
kind of sad though that we have to upsize in a notebook space to get an SD
card reader but usually there are more ports on 17-inch notebooks because of
the additional space so with this notebook I have an Ethernet port full
size HDMI an additional type see that I do not have with my blade 15 but even
more to come back to my original point about having the best performance this
is by far the most powerful notebook I've used in terms of clocks and cooling
my GPU for example boosts to 1700 megahertz which is about 300 megahertz
higher than what I was getting with my blade 15 the CPU is cooler and the fans
are quieter we have more space there for bigger cooling solution that your heat
sinks more fans it all makes sense I have no regrets ditching the 15 inch at
all this is my studio machine when I'm away from the studio back to you boys so
I hope you were able to take something away from this video thank you so much
for watching again stay safe spend responsibly my friends and I'll
talk to you guys in the next one