It takes time to create a stunning video. From the first brainstorming session to scriptwriting, to actually filming – it's a lot of work. The last thing you want to do at the end of an edit session is to wait for your work to be rendered and ready to share with the world.
A speedy laptop for video editing is about more than just the latest processor. You'll also want a powerful GPU to speed up exporting, but often that means you'll give up some portability. Although, that's not always the case, as you'll see below.
The spec sheet of most video editing laptops reads a lot like a gaming laptop, with color tuned displays, RTX 20-series GPUs, and cooling systems to ensure everything keeps running. But that's necessarily a bad thing. You'll save yourself some time, and when you're done working, you can open your favorite game and escape for a couple of hours.
These are the Best Laptops For Video Editing
- Gigabyte Aero 15
- Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch
- HP ZBook Studio G7
- Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition R5
- MSI Stealth 15M
- Alienware Area-51m R2
- Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro X
- Razer Blade Stealth
- Apple MacBook Air
- Asus ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582
1. Gigabyte Aero 15
Best Laptop For Video Editing
What’s better than powerful internals for video editing on the go? How about a brilliant display that’s expertly tuned to let you see your finished product? The Gigabyte Aero 15 provides a 15.6-inch UHD display for sharp visuals, so you won’t miss details in your video project. Better still, the display is using a Samsung OLED panel for vibrant colors and rich black levels. You don’t have to worry about your edits on this machine looking off elsewhere, as the display comes X-Rite Certified and Pantone Validated for color accuracy with a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut.
Now, we look at the power under the hood that makes the video editing a breeze on that display. Inside, there’s an Intel Core i7-11800H with 16GB of RAM for speedy processing and multitasking. You can push rendering work onto the graphics processor, which is an RTX 3060 in this case. And it’s all coming in a delightfully portable form factor that weighs just 4.4 pounds.
2. Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch
Best MacBook For Video Editing
Apple's 16-inch MacBook Pro is the most powerful MacBook Apple makes. It combines Apple's typical minimal approach to design, with a high-resolution Retina display, an AMD Radeon Pro 5000M GPU, and a beefy 64GB of memory.
It was also the first laptop Apple shipped with the new Magic Keyboard scissor mechanism that, so far, hasn't experienced the same issues Apple's keyboards had been plagued with. For anyone who lives inside Final Cut Pro X while on the go, the 16-inch MacBook Pro was made for you.
3. HP ZBook Studio G7
Best 15-inch Laptop For Video Editing
Who said you couldn't get a compact workstation? The HP ZBook Studio G7 packs all the powerful components you need for video editing into a form factor that's ready for your backpack. It's thin enough and light enough that you're not likely to find your back hurting from toting it around.
Inside, the HP ZBook Studio G7 comes packing a six-core Intel Core i7-10850H alongside a professional-grade Nvidia Quadro T2000 graphics processor. That'll help you handle your video editing, but that's only part of the workstation. You wouldn't want to do much beyond editing timelines if your display wasn't up to the task. Fortunately, this laptop includes a UHD display with 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space and a peak brightness of 600 nits. An anti-glare finish on the display will even help you do some work out in the sun.
4. Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition R5
Best Laptop for 4K Video Editing
Editing 4K video takes a beast of a machine, but that's just what you get from the Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition R5. This gaming laptop has the muscle you'll want. It pairs an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX octa-core processor with an Nvidia RTX 3070, giving you a bunch of powerful CPU cores and ample graphics power for hardware acceleration.
The system will be able to hold some large projects in memory with its 32GB of DDR4 memory, and you can load up projects quickly from the 1TB NVMe SSD inside. If the 15.6-inch display isn't going to cut it, you'll have an easy time setting this system up with an external monitor using its rear HDMI 2.1 port to support 4K or even 8K video output. But, when you're done editing for the day and want to game, you'll likely want to switch back to the built-in monitor because it has a blazing 360Hz refresh rate.
5. MSI Stealth 15M
Best Ultraportable Gaming Laptop for Video Editing
For an ultraportable laptop that can do just a little bit of everything well, you'll want the MSI Stealth 15M (read our review). MSI has packed an Intel Core i7-11375H processor and Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics processor into a chic little laptop that weighs less than four pounds and measures just a bit over a half-inch thick. That definitely ticks the boxes for portability and performance.
Those are tight confines for the powerful internals though, so MSI has built-in ports on each side and two out the rear to allow plenty of air to flow through the system and keep it cool. The laptop offers a 15.6-inch, Full HD display that'll let you do some editing on the go as well as gaming thanks to its 144Hz refresh rate. And, with a Wi-Fi 6 connection, you can enjoy fast Internet speeds without having to depend on an Ethernet connection.
6. Alienware Area-51m R2
Best Desktop Replacement For Video Editing
The Alienware Area-51m R2 may have the shape of a laptop, but it's more akin to a desktop in some ways. This laptop is bulked up enough to offer the cooling needed by a desktop-class processor. Why is that? Because this laptop actually uses a desktop-class Intel Core i9-10900K. Combine that with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super and you've got a serious machine on your hands.
The video editing capabilities of this machine are furthered along by the inclusion of 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage. If basic PCIe SSD storage wasn't already fast enough for video editing, you'll be pleased to hear that Dell configured this to use two 1TB drives in a RAID 0 configuration for extra bandwidth.
7. Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro
Best High-End Video Editing Laptop
The Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro may have a humble look to it, but even inside of its 4.4-pound chassis, it's packing all the muscle it needs to handle some serious video work. The Intel Core i7-9750H isn't the most powerful processor you'll find for a laptop, but its got enough power to keep up. Where the real speed lies is in the Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 Max-Q graphics processor, which includes a whopping 16GB of VRAM.
Though the Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro has the ports you'd need to connect it to an external display for work, you don't need to use them. The built-in display offers a 4K UHD resolution that well let you see everything in high detail. And, better still, it comes color calibrated to cover 100% of the Adobe RGB color space and is Pantone Validated for color accuracy with a Delta E below 1.5.
8. Razer Blade Stealth
Best 13-inch Laptop for Video Editing
Video editing demands some strong performance from your machine, but it can be hard to get that when you also need to consider the ability to travel light. The Razer Blade Stealth (read our review) has you covered though, thanks to its combination of high-power internals and a thin-and-light build.
The Razer Blade Stealth offers up an Intel Core i7-1165G7 paired with an Nvidia GTX 1650 Ti Max-Q, giving you some potent editing components even when you're away from home. With 16GB of memory, you shouldn't run into too much trouble opening up your favorite video editing software, and fast internal storage, as well as support for Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, will let you access your video files as quickly as ever. If you deal with a lot of files on network-attached storage, you'll also be able to enjoy fast networking speeds over Wi-Fi 6. Razer packs all that into a laptop that's just a foot wide, 0.6 inches thick, and weighs a little over three pounds.
9. Apple MacBook Air
Best Laptop for Final Cut
Apple's latest MacBook Air does some incredible things. It is a diminutive 2.6 pounds and only 0.63 inches thick at its thickest point. Interestingly enough, the new MacBook Air packs in Apple's own M1 system-on-a-chip with an octa-core processor and its own graphics processing. While that worried some at first, the new chip has shown considerable prowess.
The new MacBook Air runs apps with speed and efficiency, letting you enjoy the best of its productivity and portability at the same time. While the MacBook Air has a translation layer to let it run x86 programs without much fuss, it performs at its best with applications built for ARM, which just happens to include the latest Final Cut version.
10. Asus ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582
Best Dual Screen Laptop For Video Editing
When you’re editing a video, there’s a lot to pay attention to. A laptop’s screen isn’t always going to provide enough real estate to keep all of your tools easily accessible, but Asus has a workaround. The Asus Zenbook Pro Duo 15 OLED boasts a primary 15.6-inch display and a secondary 14-inch display underneath. The main display uses an HDR-capable OLED panel with an UHD resolution, letting you get an incredible look at the footage you’re working on. Meanwhile, the secondary display maintains that level of sharpness while providing a handy home for extra tools or your video timeline.
Of course, a video editing machine needs some might behind those screens, and this laptop has it. This model comes kitted out with an Intel Core i9-10980HK fed by 32GB of DDR4 memory. And anywhere your work can be accelerated by a dedicated graphics card, you’ll find the Nvidia RTX 3070 inside this rig plenty capable.
What to Look for in a laptop for video editing
In many ways, there's a significant overlap between a great video editing laptop and a gaming laptop. You want something that's powerful, while still being portable. Battery life is nice to have for everyday tasks, but when it comes to processing your latest shoot, you'll want to keep your laptop plugged in.
To help with processing, you'll want a laptop with a powerful GPU. Nvidia's latest RTX 20-series GPUs leverage Nvidia's Max-Q design that trades a slight decrease in performance for a smaller overall size, and in turn, allowing for a light and portable laptop (just look at the Razer Stealth). But don't get caught up on with having to have the latest 20-series GPU – unless you're dealing with 8K video, you should be able to get by just fine with something like the GTX 1650.
When looking at processors in a laptop, Intel's 10th generation chips are becoming commonplace, and future proof your investment, but aren't a requirement. Intel's 9th generation processors are just as capable and will save you a little money when shopping. A quick way to identify which generation is being used in a build is to look at the numbers that follow the processor name. For example, an Intel Core i7-1065G7 denotes a 10th generation Ice Lake processor. Whereas an Intel Core i7-9750H represents a 9th generation Coffee Lake processor.
It’s easy to get caught up in looking at flashy gaming laptops, most of which will do just fine as a video editing machine. But don’t limit yourself to a gaming machine, laptops like the ZBook Studio G7 or Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro are proof that non-gaming laptops are just as powerful and versatile.
Jason Cipriani has covered technology full-time for the past 8 years. During that time he has freelanced for the likes of CNET, Fortune, Time, ZDNet, Macworld, Wired, and TechRadar.
