a PC world fans Adam here with fellow video professional Dan masa oka and
we're here to talk about video editing laptops now I know there's a lot of
content creators out there who do a lot of things other than video editing but
we're video at Meridian and we've been on the search for the best video editing
laptop that we can find and we did a video earlier this this year kind of
focusing on workstation laptops and comparing examples there one of the
takeaways from that video was that we wanted to look into gaming laptops
throughout the year one of the big trends that has cropped up in laptops
has been companies taking their gaming laptops and realizing that a lot of
professionals like us are using them and turning them into content creation
laptops the perfect example is here in front of me I got the Acer predator
Triton 500 which then they spun off the Acer concept d7 it in almost every way
it is the same exact laptop same way yeah yeah same layout same ports you
know literally the same physically except for some key differences that
that helped creative people like us take better advantage of it so we're gonna
kind of walk through this and you know and kind of see hey is this something do
we kind of like this trend are these gaming laptops still valuable I mean I
feel like the creative world in general a lot of us have been saying just give
us a version of this that's more suited so I guess your question is does it
really you know they've answered that I guess and done it and now is this it
does it solve all the problems yeah well let me go over the specs this predator
triton 500 is configured with an 87 58 and a 2060 which you can also get on the
concept d7 but both of them go up to a 90 750 H
with an RT X 2080 which is actually what's in this one right now so I can't
necessarily do head-to-head benchmarks not perfect Atlas yeah because it's not
perfect after all to Apple but let me let me go through some of the things
that have kind of changed between the two one of them is cosmetics obviously
this one is black it has the nice gamer aesthetic with the
RGB logos and the the RGB keyboard this one they they turned white they took
away that that big predator logo on the back and it's it just says nice little
Acer on the top also the keyboard has only one static warm glowing color which
honestly I think that's fine yeah yeah I mean uh me personally I wouldn't be I
wouldn't feel weird going into a company with a gaming laptop and doing some
video production now that wouldn't necessarily bug me but I would say this
one looks a little bit nicer but I also wouldn't say like I need to pay more for
RGB though so there's also that you're saving that money from doing RGB here
like that that's not necessary you know some people like their RGB though you
know I like it I doesn't like it yeah I don't need it true you definitely don't
need it another one of so moving on to one of the bigger things is the screens
so this one's configured with a 1080p high refresh rate screen goes up to 144
Hertz but this one is configured with a 4k screen at 60 which I myself really
love editing it for you like 4k I don't mind 1080 because yeah at this
size of a screen I feel like it's gonna be too small
doing 4k which I will say these are both 15-inch yeah so at that point I'm like
1080 is totally totally perfect for me and what do you feel about video editing
on a high refresh rate monitor that I don't think I need to edit on a high
refresh rate monitor the gamer and me would appreciate it yeah but honestly I
don't 60s fine you know 60 is fine he's fine
yeah I will say I thought that same way channel until I took this one this was
my main workhorse Pompey Texas yeah and the hyper fresh rate for video editing
was actually pretty nice so what it was so much different at like
what every action you take is a lot more smoother kind of moving around you know
it's not just for gaming it's also in the the small little details of
navigating the OS and scrubbing playback and you know moving things like that
definitely not a necessity definitely not a necessity but I was surprised to
be like oh wow ok if you had between its 4k
versus having the higher refresh what would you choose oh I would choose 4k
easily easily okay like the yeah I just don't want to
discount the high refresh rate it definitely has a purpose but manfor for
what i like to do i like 4k I like having as much real estate say I would
say I care more about color accuracy okay well then you might be you might be
in luck because one of the big selling points of this is that it's been a
Pantone certified and I will say there's been a couple other laptops like this in
different ranges like the gigabyte arrow 15 that also has Pantone validation and
these screens mmm just like that oh just like the video we did last time with the
Lenovo ThinkPad p1 that had a calibrated screen and it's just like all for for
creative professionals like this the for us that that really makes a big
difference so I don't know a ton about Pantone and then like you know obviously
the graphic designers look like you know they care about those colors but as far
as like the video world you know it's not not a hundred percent you know
familiar with that so it's like you know I care about like you know is it you
know right 2020 you know I are we're going to that HD HDR levels you know
that's yeah no no HDR no REC 2020 I would say that you know these creative
laptops are meant for a wide wide variety of content creators so not just
video professionals but it is Adobe RGB so slightly wider than srgb yeah and I
like head-to-head on these two laptops you can't really see it on video but
there is definitely a difference in the colors okay you're gonna get more
vibrant for more accurate colors on this one so one of the things that I
definitely have missed yeah in this transition from gaming into content
creation are some of the things that we saw in the the workstation laptops the
first one that really hits me hard is an SD card I you know we we don't shoot on
red cameras we don't need you know anything too crazy and even when we do a
little bit of photography as well we actually need on SD card yeah and it's
really nice to be able to have that port you just pop in an SD card but most
gaming laptops don't so because this uses the
same exact chess chassis this is missing an SD card and I truly missed it in my
in my day-to-day workflow can I use do I use an external thing of course you know
I but when I have to rely on an extent as a card reader that's nice yeah
definitely a nice thing to have but one of the bigger things is that this is
missing some of the features that you get from the workstation laptops now how
important that is depends on the person but what are some of the things that we
kind of missed out from that so the other ones will have like Xeon
processors for working aircraft which also means that then it has access to
error correcting memory but had quad rows which we we definitely did not need
yeah you know this the laptops went under or undergo a lot more testing and
so a lot of them have like certain the mil spec standards and that they passed
and then I think just at that price point and you know the level of service
it's a different kind of relationship and contract you end up getting with
those companies they're like you know something goes wrong they are gonna bend
over backwards because you are a different level of customer and they
want to make sure that you are taken care of so it's true one thing I do like
that you know I didn't necessarily see on every laptop is that it has Ethernet
yeah yeah and and full-size Ethernet yeah and full size HDMI I mean the
port's already on this version we're pretty nice like that's a game in it so
I think that's one of the good things I feel like gaming is bringing over is
that it's bringing you know some extra port like that exactly one of the last
major changes which I don't know if it's partially marketing or what but in the
gaming laptop this one has a turbo button which sounds
pretty cool right you hit the turbo button to get that nas
yeah it provides a slight overclock but then what it does is kicks the fans into
maximum high gear these fans get loud as do a lot of gaming laptops one of the
selling points that acer has on the concept d7 is silent fans you know
they've been engineered with this owl technology diet you know that's
definitely marketing speak they say during that it's in the same body what
really can they do that you know yeah yeah I think so under normal
you know I've had some slight things going on here and there like I said the
actual internals are a little different but like in under normal loads the fans
seem to get the same amount or just get just as loud yeah it's just that this
one has the ability to go even louder to get something better where this one
doesn't which I don't know I I would say you know I I would want that ability if
I'm really editing or really exporting something really heavy to be like I
don't care how loud it gets I want it to maintain performance I could see that I
mean I guess the question is how much more performance are you getting because
you know if you're doing games you're probably wearing headphones you know so
like that kind of loudness doesn't really matter you I mean I guess if you
are doing editing you probably are but maybe not but I think in general you
know dropping frames while you're playing a video game is different than
you know a render taking an extra minute you know like you know it's like you
know it ruins the experience if you're dropping frames right but having an
export that takes 20 minutes take 21 or 22 minutes is that does that really
change much you're like so you know yeah and it's definitely one of the things I
haven't had a chance to get really deep into the testing with but I do want to
check that out because for me I think that's that somewhere where I would like
to have that option that's available here
you know I the the the idea of having it you know be as quiet as a library is not
necessarily a selling point for me and can that turrible how long can that
turbo last can just go yeah you hit the button and it stays on into each other I
would say if you get at least a 10% increase in performance with that then
that would be a worthwhile but if it's you know five or less then I don't think
it's a big deal yeah yeah definitely something to look into and I will also
say that these laptops come pre-installed with the Nvidia studio
drivers uh-huh but if you get GeForce experience you can change those on the
fly it doesn't matter you can get the same drivers here is there so like the
the last point maybe I want to get on is for for creative professionals I think
one of the things they liked about getting gaming laptops is then when work
is over they get to play a little bit yeah right it's like you can play fine
exactly yeah so you know but with the added benefit so I so I think when
you're gam then the trade-off is that you don't get that turbo mode and you
don't you don't get the the high refresh rate screen when you're gaming you have
to you have to take that 4k and kind of you know render at a lower resolution
because the internals can't really push that hard so you know if you're gaming
on the side and having fun with it it'll still game don't get me wrong you know
but it won't game as good as the gaming life I mean where is that like when
we're looking at the you know the mobile workstations yeah you kind of can't game
yeah I mean this has got quad rose yeah I not really made not many that at all
it's not meant for that so it is a nice benefit but I think what I think that is
the trade-off in its its it's actually a pretty smart way to say hey you know
what this is better at content creation and this is better at gaming but both
can still do vice-versa te' but they're gonna be lacking in certain ways so I
I'm interested to test these further to get more laptops in like the gigabyte
air of 15 and test those because I really like this trend and it's cool to
see content creators like us have options that are up in the workstation
class for what we do definitely more affordable so what's the kind of price
difference so that that is the last thing which you know you would you would
think if they were configured the same they should probably be pretty similar
and actually they are pretty close so this with if you get it with a 97 58 and
a 20 80 is $2,700 in the u.s. this if with that same exact configuration is
3000 so you know I think the 4k panel is probably gonna cost a little more at the
Pantone certification that's probably costing a little more but who knows I'm
not quite sure why that little discrepancy yeah
but I mean you're in the ballpark yeah you're in the ballpark but either way
you're definitely pay more for the content I'm curious which
one would you go with I you know if you had to choose one with my limited time
that I've had so far I'm leaning towards this yeah I'd probably choose this one
tael yeah I think you know without doing more in-depth testing you know to make a
final judgement but from what I've used of this one so far and the like I
definitely did use this one a lot over the past couple months this one's
looking pretty nice is it worth that extra three hundred dollars I would say
if I'm gonna plunk down this kind of change anyway you know like it that
that's not a huge amount of like up charge for it and I'm gonna plunk down
this much money it's probably because this is for my work the work that I do
except it's not for gaming and pleasure and then it's like oh I'm this is
primarily you know for video production for content creation and that needs to
be the primary role yeah so I'll finish this off by saying we're gonna continue
to look at the best laptop options for video editing because that's something
that we are actually actively looking at yeah and we'll continue to kind of
update us as the year goes on thank thank you Dan for for coming to join me
and we will see you later