In this video, I'm going to show you my thought process in choosing the right
laptop that suits my needs, both as an architect and as a content creator.
The goal of this video is to pass on all of the knowledge that I learned
about choosing a laptop so that you can choose the right laptop for you.
Whether you're a student or an architect or a creative professional,
at the end of this video, I'm going to go through some of my recommendations
and give you a list of models that I think you should take into consideration.
This is going to be another long video, so grab a cup of tea and let's get started.
A portion of this video is sponsored by Aura.
More on them later in this video.
The first question you should
ask yourself is, why do you need a laptop and not a workstation?
Help me make my decision.
Is the following statement.
A laptop can be a workstation, but a workstation cannot be a laptop.
Let that sink in.
Working as an architect, I currently outsource
most of my renderings, or I use cloud based services,
so I don't really need the full force of power that I can get from workstation.
And as a content creator, I need a device that's both portable and powerful.
And since laptops became much better at rendering tasks than even just
a couple of years ago, thanks to the GPU and software optimization.
Choosing a laptop over a workstation was a pretty obvious choice for me
at the beginning of your career.
You're not going to know anything.
You're going to be so brand new
and probably it's going to be a little bit shocking for you.
You're not going to know how to work
with clients or consultants or do construction,
and they're going to have to teach you all of that.
So when you started a firm, one of your superpowers
is going to be visualization and software skills, which is why you want to be able
to try out and learn a variety of different industry standard apps.
And as a young architect, your software knowledge is going
to give you that competitive advantage and it's going to increase your chances
of getting hired at a firm.
And when you start at the firm, companies are either going to give you a laptop,
which in most cases means they're going to outsource
the final renderings or use a cloud based rendering service, or
they're going to give you a desk with a workstation,
which means some of the renderings will probably be done internally.
Or they're going to give you both a laptop and a workstation.
And this is becoming more and more common, especially after the pandemic,
where offices are getting more and more lax about remote work.
Another thing to consider is if you plan on moonlighting
or working on side projects while working at your firm,
having a powerful personal laptop will come in
really handy.
These are the three most common form factors for laptops.
Mobility isn't always the only reason why you need a laptop.
In fact, a lot of people use laptops because they live in small apartments
where having a workstation or a dedicated computer could be an issue.
If you're a student, chances are you're spending most of your day in studio
or at the library or working from home
with reliable access to power outlets.
So having a small laptop with a really good
battery life might not really be a priority for you.
What is probably more important is a good screen and good processing power.
The market just has so many options right now that if you're willing to put up
with a slightly thicker laptop, you can get a huge boost in performance
and just a lot more options that you can choose from.
And in some cases, you can even save some money.
As an architect.
I need to be able to work in different locations and have something
that's easy to take around.
So portability is definitely a factor for me.
I have an M1 air and a M1 pro
and honestly, I'm so impressed with the overall build
and quality and the battery life has been just incredible.
MacBooks have aluminum bodies that always feel solid and look very professional.
Thanks to my YouTube gig.
I also have an HP X360 Transformable
laptop that I use for sketching and note taking.
This one's probably the most versatile laptop that I have and I'll go through
some of the features later on in this video.
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And this was something that I actually never consciously thought of before,
but since getting the MacBook Air M1, which of course at the time
was one of the first laptops with great processing power
and no active cooling, I think this makes a pretty big difference
when I'm presenting in small rooms
or when I'm working in a space with other noisy laptops.
And I wouldn't say it's a serious issue, but it's definitely noticeable
and it can get kind of annoying over time.
If this is something you're concerned about,
you should consider a laptop with a passive cooling system,
which are typically thinner and more portable,
but they're not as powerful, or they cost
a little bit more money.
In terms of screen size, you might think bigger is better,
but in my case, even though having a big screen with a large
resolution is nice, when I'm sitting down for work, I mostly use my laptop
with an external monitor, both at work and at my home office.
Gaming laptops are more focused on performance, and in most cases,
the resolution and quality of the screen don't really go beyond full HD,
especially if you're on a budget for color reproduction.
These are some of the standards you can look at.
The coverage of the standard is measured in percentage
and the higher the percentage, the better the ability of the display
to reproduce these standards.
If you're looking for a laptop with a really good display,
I would recommend the last generation of MacBooks
and you can just feel more confident about the color reproduction.
If you're not going to rely on the laptop display for the color accuracy,
it is relatively easy to find an affordable, color calibrated
external monitor these days.
As an external monitor, I use the LG Dual Up
, which is definitely unconventional in terms of resolution,
but it packs a lot of features for the price.
If you want to know more about it, I'm going to leave the link right here.
I tried Sander laptops and transformable laptops
and I realized that I definitely prefer having a dedicated device
for specific functions rather than having
a multi-functional laptop, for example, for sketching.
I almost always use my iPad pro because I found the size
of a transformable laptop a little bit too big to carry around,
especially if you're not working on a desk or a working surface.
I also really like the ability to sketch while multitasking or doing other work,
and sometimes I just need to be able to draw things really quickly
and pull them out on the spot to show people.
So having an independent device, it just makes more sense for me.
But if you're a student and you're on a budget
and you want to hit two birds with one stone,
you should probably take the two in one device into account.
I actually created a video that shows my procreate workflow
with the iPad Pro and I also did an in-depth
review of the HP Specter X360.
I'll leave the links to both right here.
I'm always
pushing for more ports on laptops, and since I work with a ton of hard drives
and monitors and other devices,
I really, really need to rely on the usb-c hubs for connectivity.
And that's why I'm a really big fan of the LG dual up
because it takes full advantage of the Usb-C connection with one cable.
You can do like three things at the same time and you can power
a laptop up to 90 watts and connected to a monitor
and have access to two USB devices at the same time.
I actually don't even need to bring a charger
and I can save space in my backpack.
I just log into my laptop and voila you get a fully functional workstation.
I just got so used to the fast wake up time and the long battery life of my M1
and also having the fingerprint scanner integrated into the laptop.
It just makes it really easy to just log in from session to session.
The architecture industry
is still heavily based on Windows and so far
none of the offices that I've worked at have used Apple computers.
And I think this is especially true with medium to large firms.
But the arm processor by Apple
are really great in terms of performance per watt.
The list of native apps is always growing and for content creation,
I honestly feel like they already have a pretty solid list of apps.
Revit, which is one of the industry standard BIM software
still works only on Windows platforms.
You can use parallels or other Windows emulation apps to run it on a mac,
but most firms they tend to stick with Windows
because they don't really want to deal
with the compatibility issues or having lower performance.
I've seen some companies use Archicad and Vector works on Macs,
especially if you're doing smaller buildings like houses or rentals
because smaller size projects, they don't require as much coordination
with your team or between different disciplines.
So, you know, I'm not going to do any benchmarks in my videos
since you can find plenty online by just doing a quick Google search.
Having said that, most of the architecture software still
relies heavily on the CPU for a lot of tasks.
And in terms of pure performance, Intel is leading
the way for now.
I'd say 16 gigabytes of RAM is the bare minimum
for architectural design or content creation work.
But with 32 gigabytes you will be working comfortably without too many compromises.
When I got my M1 Air laptop two years ago, I was a little bit disappointed
that the Mac's Ram size was only 16 gigabytes.
But with the new M2 processor, Apple's finally added
a 24 gigabyte option, as well as a dedicated charging port.
So yeah, with Macs you can upgrade the RAM,
so you just need to know what size you want when you're buying it.
But with a lot of gaming laptops, they let you upgrade the ram size
and they also give you really easy access to
an additional SSD slot on my gaming laptop.
Yes, I had a gaming laptop.
I had two very fast internal SSDs, one for the OS
and one as a scratch disk architecture and creative software.
They need to generate a lot of temporary files or cache files
to work properly, which is why your system disk space shrinks over time.
So you do need to do some routine cleaning for it to function well.
A scratch disk is an internal SSD drive that solves a lot of these issues.
Instead of letting the apps save all of their cash in the system drive,
I redirect all of them to go into the scratch drive
and this can really speed up your rendering time.
It can also avoid bandwidth bottlenecks and it makes the previews more responsive
and it saves a ton of space on your main drive.
The only drawback is that it will consume more power
so it can affect the battery life of your laptop.
Architecture, software and visualization software
have a really symbiotic relationship with the CPU.
Real time renderers like Enscape , Lumion and Unreal Engine five
can now generate global illumination and photo realism
via real time ray tracing and the architecture industry's
also really taken advantage of these new tools today.
Rendering a full quality frame could only take a couple of seconds.
And you can do it directly in the viewport window.
And also Adobe Creative Cloud Resolve
and some of the other apps can also get a performance boost from modern GPUs.
For all of these reasons.
A dedicated graphics card is highly recommended
in architecture and rendering work to see which one performs better.
There are plenty of benchmarks around.
I'm going to leave some of the links in the description
if you want to take a look.
But I think for architecture and rendering work,
getting a laptop with a dedicated graphics card is the way to go
for architecture work.
My company gave me the latest version of the Dell XPS 15
and with an Intel processor and a GeForce 3050,
this machine is really a jack of all trades and it performs really
well in rendering tasks as well as video editing tasks.
I have the version with a 4K display and it retails for around $2400
for my personal content creation work, which is mostly writing
some video editing and photo editing.
I use a MacBook Pro M1 and as I mentioned before, MacBooks with the M1
or M2 processors have amazing display, incredible battery life and build,
and they really excel when the apps take full advantage of the arm architecture.
However, I do know that these are really expensive
and if you're a student, you're probably looking for the best bang for your buck.
So you should also consider gaming laptops
like the latest Asus TUF 15 or 17.
I use a tough gaming laptop for a really long time and you can see
from the specs these really are ticking all of the boxes in terms of performance.
As long as you can sacrifice the portability and the battery life.
And of course, it is pretty loud in the active cooling department.
These are the ones that I've had personally experience with.
But of course there is a lot of options you can choose from.
Some brands are even starting to come up
with some really cool and unconventional designs,
like adding multiple displays or transformative features.
And some of them are really pushing the boundaries of what a laptop could be.
Like the New Asus Zen Fold 17, which can literally fold into a tablet.
So trying not to get tricked by flashy marketing.
Understanding who you are and how you work
is the most important factor in making the right purchase.
All right, that's it, guys.
I hope that was helpful.
And good luck finding your laptop and let me know in the comments.
What's your favorite laptop?
If you want to explore outside of tech and if you're interested in architecture
and design and creativity, I'll leave a playlist at the end of this video.
If you found this video helpful, please like and subscribe.
It really helps out the channel.
And with that I'll see you guys on the next one.