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Aug 11, 2023

The Best Laptops for Video and Photo Editing 2023

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We’ve tested the 2023 MacBook Pro and made it our new top pick.

Videographers and photographers on the move need a laptop that can keep up with quick deadlines and handle any task from color grading to 4K video editing. For professionals who need a laptop that doesn't compromise on processing power, color accuracy, or battery life, the Apple MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2023) is our undisputed recommendation. But if you prefer Windows, or if you want a laptop that you can repair and upgrade in the future, the Dell XPS 15 9520 is the best option right now due to its processing power and OLED screen.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro is faster than any other laptop we’ve tested for photo or video editing, and it has truly impressive battery life, to boot.

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Recommended configuration

The Apple MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2023) pairs a color-accurate screen with the fastest laptop processor we’ve tested, and it delivered battery life of 14.5 hours in our testing. The large, 16.2-inch display offers bright images and has great contrast, so you’ll be able to see every detail in your photos or videos. And when it comes to editing, the MacBook Pro crunches through video with the power of a desktop computer. The laptop is a bit heavy at 4.7 pounds, however, and it lacks a USB-A port, so you may still need to carry a dongle for now.

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The Dell XPS 15 has a vivid 3.5K display and the processing power to edit any kind of footage on the go. It's also more repairable and upgradable than the MacBook Pro.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $2,401.

Recommended configuration

For people who want a Windows laptop, we recommend the Dell XPS 15 9520. Among the Windows laptops we tested, it's the one that makes the fewest compromises, giving you a nearly 4K screen, a speedy processor and graphics card, and a comfortable keyboard. The XPS 15's RAM and storage are upgradable, too, so you’re not stuck with the same specs if you want to upgrade your system down the line.

Apple's move to its own silicon has yielded impressive results, and the MacBook Air with its M1 processor is an easy recommendation for almost anyone.

The MacBook Air is a staple of many modern office desks (or home offices, these days), but it's a surprisingly capable video-editing laptop, especially for lighter loads and 1080p footage.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $1,249.

Recommended configuration

You might have an Apple MacBook Air on your desk already and not even know that it can edit videos admirably. In our tests, armed with an M1 processor, the 13-inch, 2020 version of Apple's office mainstay edited videos faster than many of the higher-priced Windows laptops we tried. The MacBook Air also has a sharp 2560×1600 screen, which is considered a 2K resolution. It's far lighter than any other laptop we tested, and it charges from a tiny 30 W charging brick. If you’re an occasional video editor, or if you work in 1080p, you don't need to look any further than the MacBook Air.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro is faster than any other laptop we’ve tested for photo or video editing, and it has truly impressive battery life, to boot.

Use code APINSIDER

The Dell XPS 15 has a vivid 3.5K display and the processing power to edit any kind of footage on the go. It's also more repairable and upgradable than the MacBook Pro.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $2,401.

The MacBook Air is a staple of many modern office desks (or home offices, these days), but it's a surprisingly capable video-editing laptop, especially for lighter loads and 1080p footage.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $1,249.

Dave Gershgorn has reviewed and covered technology since 2015 at publications such as Popular Science, Quartz, Medium, and now Wirecutter. He has also worked as a freelance photographer, with photos in outlets like The Wall Street Journal, The Journal News, and The Village Voice. Additionally, he was a news assistant in the New York Times photo department, mainly focusing on the Lens blog. He also took all the photos for this guide.

An editing laptop is essential for any videographer, photographer, or other media worker. These machines allow you to bring the power of a desktop computer (or most of it, at least) on-site to shoots, and they let you edit footage in any airport gate you might find yourself in.

For people who need as much power as they can possibly get on the road, we looked for laptops with features such as color-accurate displays, great battery life, the latest processors and graphics cards, and enough ports for you to plug in all your peripherals and SD cards.

Previous versions of this guide considered only Windows laptops, but in the past two years Apple has released laptops with its custom chips, which are faster and quieter and designed to support far better battery life than the competition.

If you edit photos or videos, or if you create illustrations that don't demand ridiculously high resolutions, such as on social media, you don't have to shell out for either of our top picks. The M1 MacBook Air, our budget pick, is powerful enough to handle any of those tasks (just a little slower) and can save you a bit of money. One of our favorite ultrabooks could also make for a tidy compromise if you prefer Windows and edit video only occasionally, or if you’re just getting started and don't need a full professional setup.

If you already have a laptop or desktop, take a look at how long these machines took to export videos in our tests (we’ve added some notes on how we tested) to gauge if you really need to upgrade. If your existing system's times come within a minute of our results, upgrading is probably not worth it.

Office-bound editors are likely to get better performance for the same price by buying or building a desktop PC. Such computers don't need to manage battery life and can feed components far more power, and they also have more room for fans and heatsinks to keep components cool. And down the road, when your desktop computer ages, you’ll be able to upgrade it for less than it would cost to buy an entire new computer.

We have a high bar for video-editing laptops, since these machines need to contend with some of the most demanding professional workloads. Here's how we choose which laptops to consider and test.

Performance:

Displays: For this round of testing, we looked for laptops with 15-inch or larger displays that specifically advertised their color accuracy, with a minimum resolution of 1440p; however, after testing we realized that we preferred displays with a 4K resolution (or close to it), especially since our tests relied on working with and exporting 4K video. For our budget picks, we consider smaller, 13-inch displays, as well. Displays in contention need not only produce accurate colors but also offer the ability to cover the entire sRGB color space, with bonus points for a monitor's ability to work with the wider DCI-P3 color gamut.

Noise and heat: The more powerful a laptop is, the more heat its components typically generate. Some laptops we’ve tested have become so hot that they’ve literally burned our thighs when we’ve used them on our laps, so we prioritize those that stay cool under pressure. To deal with this heat, many laptops use fans, which in turn makes them noisy. We pay special attention to how loud each laptop gets under a heavy workload, but every Windows laptop we’ve tried generates some kind of fan noise.

Ports: We look for laptops with a variety of ports, but we also confirm that the connections are fast enough to handle huge media files. Thunderbolt 4 is the latest standard for USB-C ports and supports transfer speeds as high as 40 Gbps. We also check for SD card slots that support UHS-II, the modern standard. Port placement is key, as good editing laptops have ports on both sides, limiting the scenarios in which a port is blocked.

Battery: Great battery life on a laptop feels like a superpower, and bad battery life feels like a curse. Many of the Windows laptops we’ve tested prioritize capable components and power-hungry displays at the expense of battery life. In contrast, this is where Apple laptops shine.

Size and weight: Photographers and videographers carry around enough weight in gear. We make sure to consider how heavy these laptops are, and we also check that they fit in a few different backpacks, testing the laptops in bags from Aer, Chrome Industries, Evergoods, Fjällräven, and Osprey, as well as a trusty Manfrotto camera backpack.

Although all of our testing criteria are important, even the best Windows laptops we’ve tested make significant compromises in one or more areas; this issue is further compounded by a lack of availability of some laptop models. In making our picks, we’ve placed the highest priority on performance and display quality, along with what we hope is consistent availability for purchase at this writing.

We run each laptop through a series of benchmarks and functional tests. After we run those benchmarks and functional tests three times, we calculate an average value for the final result. We also use each laptop for a few days to understand each machine's strengths, shortcomings, and nuances.

To get a baseline understanding of each computer's processing power, we first run the PCMark 10 and Geekbench 5 benchmarks on each laptop. Then we graduate to functional tests, which include exporting 4K and 1080p video in Adobe Premiere Pro. (For video pros: We export using the H.264 video standard, with two-pass variable bit rate encoding at a 50 Mbps target and maximum.) We also run graphics-intensive games on the laptops while we have them on our laps to get a sense of how much heat they would produce over long periods of time, and we take surface-temperature readings on our top picks with an infrared thermometer.

Our test for photo-editing performance relies on Photoshop's Image Processor tool to measure how fast the CPU can rip through image transformations and color-space changes. To ensure realistic results, we use a set of 330 images that were taken on a Canon EOS 5D Mark III camera and include both JPEG and Canon RAW files.

We also transcode the movie Night of the Living Dead, which is in the public domain, using Handbrake's default Fast 1080p30 preset. This is a small video file, but it gives us another data point to illustrate how each laptop deals with video encoding.

To test the display of each laptop, we use an X-Rite i1Basic Pro and an X-Rite OEM i1 Display colorimeter. With these devices we measure each screen's color accuracy and contrast, as well as how many colors the screen can display, using customized tests in the Calman Ultimate 2021 color-calibration suite. This software was provided to Wirecutter by Portrait, the company that develops Calman.

Finally, to test battery life, we set each laptop to the same brightness (as measured by a Spyder 5 colorimeter) and run Wirecutter's standard laptop and pro-tablet battery test. This test employs a custom Chrome extension that simulates web browsing and video playback. However, video editing takes a bit more horsepower than surfing the net, so keep in mind that those numbers are best used to compare the battery life of laptops in this guide against one another, rather than as a measure of how these systems would perform under a heavy workload.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro is faster than any other laptop we’ve tested for photo or video editing, and it has truly impressive battery life, to boot.

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Recommended configuration

When it comes to editing video on a laptop, there's no competition for the Apple MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2023), unless you pay thousands more. In our tests, Apple's latest pro laptop was up to twice as fast as any Windows laptop we evaluated on editing, rendering, and exporting video. The MacBook Pro's large, color-accurate display and quick processor made it easy for us to precisely tune still images, too.

Because Apple's M2 Pro chips are custom built and integrated into the company's computers, MacBooks are difficult to compare directly with Windows laptops via specs on paper or benchmarks. So rather than looking at those kinds of numbers, we ran each laptop through tests replicating the types of work that photographers and video editors do on a day-to-day basis, such as batch-processing photos and exporting video.

The MacBook Pro was a top performer in every test, nearly 50% faster than the competition when exporting video. For instance, the MacBook Pro exported a one-minute 4K video in 2 minutes 9 seconds on average, in contrast to the Dell XPS 15's average of 3 minutes 55 seconds or the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4's 6 minutes. This result is also more than a minute faster than what we saw from the previous-generation MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro processor, which roughly translates to a 30% increase in exporting speed. We expect the 13th generation of Intel chips to close this gap when they start to ship in early 2023, but for now the MacBook Pro is undeniably the fastest editing laptop we’ve tested.

When converting a low-resolution movie with a run time of an hour and a half to another format (a process also known as transcoding), the MacBook Pro processed the file in 1 minute 29 seconds, finishing nearly a minute faster than any other machine. This is a pretty short test, so we didn't see as much improvement in this regard, but it's still nice to see faster performance in comparison with other, non-Apple machines.

We found the MacBook Pro's display to be sharp, with great contrast, and it was generally pleasant to look at for extended periods of time. It was also the most color-accurate display we tested for this guide; its colors are accurate to such a degree that any color inaccuracies the screen may produce are nearly imperceptible to the human eye. The table below shows how the MacBook Pro scored in our color-accuracy tests, including whether the grays it produced were tinted with color, and how true the colors were to real life. But as we note in the Flaws but not dealbreakers section below, we did have an issue with the color accuracy of the first 14-inch MacBook Pro review unit we received, and this table reflects the second, much more accurate machine that Apple sent us. The 16-inch version we tested also has less accurate grayscale performance than we usually see from Apple displays, which means that for color-critical uses you’ll probably want to calibrate this laptop's display. Apple has created a new tool to help with this process, but it's odd to us that these newer laptop displays show less-accurate whites. Grayscale inaccuracy doesn't affect the appearance of most colors, but the level of inaccuracy we found would be noticeable in comparison with a reference image.

Unlike previous iterations of the MacBook Pro, this model didn't allow us to reach 1,000 nits of brightness from the normal screen-brightness controls. On both the 14-inch and 16-inch versions, we could get only to about 500 nits. This restriction reflects the 500-nit standard-definition brightness that Apple lists on its website, but the limitation still makes this laptop's screen less bright than previous versions. The panel might hit 1,000 nits for HDR content, but we were unable to replicate that in our standard tests.

The MacBook Pro's webcam produced a sharp picture for video conferencing when we used it in good lighting situations—and even in lower-light situations, when we used only the light from the screen itself, the image quality was acceptable. The camera is housed in a black notch at the top of the display, a design that didn't interfere much with our day-to-day use of the laptop.

We also don't have much to say about the MacBook Pro's noise and heat, mainly because we didn't notice much of either. The system stayed cool even during our export tests, making it easy for us to keep it on our laps even when the computer was doing heavy lifting. In this regard, the MacBook Pro had an advantage over every Windows laptop we tested, all of which became warm to the touch and turned on an audible fan when the processor was under a heavy editing load.

Like the 2021 MacBook Pro, the 2023 models have a MagSafe charging port, an SD card reader, an HDMI port, and three USB-C ports, in addition to retaining the headphone jack. We like that USB-C ports occupy both sides of the laptop, which limits the possibility of a chunky cable blocking valuable port space. All of the USB-C ports on the MacBook Pro are Thunderbolt 4 enabled, which means you can charge your laptop, hook it up to external displays, and transfer data at the fastest speed available on either side of the laptop. However, it has no USB-A ports.

In our battery test, which simulates web browsing and video playback at a standardized brightness across every device, the 16-inch MacBook Pro was again the top performer. It lasted about 14.5 hours, four hours longer than the Dell XPS 15 9520. Unfortunately, the 14-inch version lasted only about 10 hours. We recommend the 16-inch version anyway, but reduced battery life is something to keep in mind if you opt for the smaller, more portable 14-inch version.

The MacBook Pro is large, but it still fits inside backpacks with ease. The size has allowed Apple to cram a 16.2-inch display into the machine, as well as a 100-watt-hour battery, the largest allowed on domestic flights in the United States. However, the 14-inch version has a smaller, 70-watt-hour battery, which mostly accounts for its short battery life.

The 14-inch M2 MacBook Pro review unit that Apple initially provided to Wirecutter tested poorly, as we found that the display had a grayscale accuracy of 3.43, a color accuracy above 2.0 (these values are DeltaE 2000 scores, which means lower is better), and a battery life of less than eight hours. We reported these discrepancies to Apple, and the company provided a second review unit. That M2 MacBook Pro tested far better, with a grayscale score of 1.42 and color accuracy scores of 1.08, and it lasted two hours longer in our battery test than the first review sample. The 16-inch Pro model that Apple provided to us also tested well. The first M2 MacBook Pro review unit was unusually inaccurate in our tests compared with every other Mac display we’ve tried, so we’re noting it here, but we can venture to say that the problem was a manufacturing issue, as we couldn't replicate it on the other M2 MacBook Pro models we tested. If you see a similar issue, let us know in the comments and return the model you purchased to Apple for a replacement.

It's essentially impossible to repair or replace components in this MacBook Pro, as Apple has soldered the processor, RAM, and storage to the computer's motherboard. The inability to repair these parts shortens their lifespan.

Note that if an application has more than seven or eight menu tabs, the camera notch at the top of the display can block some of them. Apple has released a simple workaround, allowing you to switch certain apps to display their menu items below the menu bar.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro has no USB-A ports, which means older peripherals won't work without a dongle. USB-C has been around for a while, however, and although it's a little annoying to fiddle with a dongle, we’ve found that few of our accessories still require the older cable.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro is also fairly heavy at 4.7 pounds without the charger or any additional accessories. If you’re tucking it into a Pelican case with other gear, that might not be a big deal, but the weight adds up in a backpack or bag. (The laptop actually weighs about the same as a standard brick. If you’re unsure about whether you can tolerate the weight, carrying around a brick in your backpack could be a fun test.) We’re recommending the 16-inch version of the laptop over the 14-inch model because it provides more real estate for video editing. But if weight is a concern for you, consider the smaller laptop.

The Dell XPS 15 has a vivid 3.5K display and the processing power to edit any kind of footage on the go. It's also more repairable and upgradable than the MacBook Pro.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $2,401.

Recommended configuration

If you specifically need a Windows laptop for media editing right now, or if you just don't like Macs, we recommend the Dell XPS 15 9520. It has a sharp, bright OLED screen, and it allows you to upgrade the RAM and storage. Dell also has published guides on how to replace most of the laptop's components yourself.

We had previously urged caution on the XPS 15 9510, which is last year's model of this laptop, since it had terrible battery life of just over four hours. However, after testing the new XPS 15 9520 and its new 12th generation Intel processor, we can easily recommend it.

The XPS 15 performed well on all of our real-world tests. It exported our test 4K video in just under four minutes, the fastest export speed we saw among Windows laptops. When working with photos, its performance was above average, and it processed more than 300 images in just seven minutes. It took the other Windows laptops we tested about 13 minutes on average to complete the same task, and the previous version of this laptop 11 minutes.

We tested a version of the XPS 15 with an Intel Core i7-12700H processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics card, and 32 GB of RAM. The replaceable components, such as the memory and storage, become readily accessible once you take off the laptop's back plate. This kind of repairability, alongside Dell's published repair guides, is to be applauded for the long-term value it adds to a laptop like this.

The XPS 15's 3.5K display is sharp, and thanks to its OLED technology it has an infinite contrast ratio. OLED displays can individually turn off pixels, rather than just dimming them, so the screen's deepest blacks are created by a true absence of light. The display scored especially well on our grayscale test, as its white and gray tones weren't noticeably tinged with other colors.

However, the XPS 15's accuracy in reproducing colors was subpar. In our tests measuring the display's color accuracy and saturation, the XPS 15's Delta E 2000 score consistently reached above 4.0, which means color inaccuracies are noticeable to the human eye. This isn't a fatal flaw, as someone doing work that demands perfect color grading would be able to calibrate the display to correct these inaccuracies. Our tests confirmed that the XPS 15 can cover the entire sRGB color gamut and 99% of the DCI-P3 gamut, offering the most color-space coverage of any laptop we tested.

We noticed that the fans on the XPS 15 would start to turn on after a few minutes of our stressing the GPU, which is a capable Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti. When we ran a game with the computer positioned on our laps to tax the computer's CPU and GPU, we found the bottom of the laptop warm but not unbearable.

The XPS 15 9520 has two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4, as well as a third USB-C port on the other side of the laptop that supports USB 3.2 Gen 2. The only other ports are an SD card reader and a headphone jack. If you’ve fully moved to USB-C accessories and peripherals and require only an SD card slot, this laptop has all the ports you need. But if you use niche tools such as colorimeters to calibrate your display, or even if you just have a favorite wired mouse, you still need a dongle for those USB-A attachments.

Although the previous XPS 15 9510 lasted only for about 4.5 hours on battery, thankfully the updated XPS 15 9520 fares much better. The newer model lasted at least 10 hours on each battery test we ran, with an average tested battery life of 10.5. Wirecutter's battery test for laptops simulates browsing the web and watching videos online by using a custom Chrome extension. To test how long the laptop's battery might fare under heavy load, and also test the heat that the laptop produces, we used a tool called CPU-Z to max the laptop's processor to 100% usage until it ran out of battery. This is far more intensive than typical usage, where it might take from one to 20 minutes of sustained processing power to export a large video. But the test gives a good idea of how fast the battery dies when the laptop's CPU is heavily taxed. Under 100% load, the laptop still lasted about an hour and a half, which is an admirable result.

We like how slim the XPS 15 feels to carry around, and it weighs about 4.3 pounds. The laptop's keys have a nice, deep travel, and the trackpad is large and sensitive. These features, plus the display's slim bezel, make the XPS 15 a pleasure to use.

The XPS 15 9520 is a fantastic laptop, but its webcam could be better. The 9520's camera is embedded in its incredibly thin display bezels only has a resolution of 720p, while many laptops have upgraded to a 1080p camera. This isn't too noticeable in good lighting conditions, but in darker rooms or at night the image is blurry and grainy.

The MacBook Air is a staple of many modern office desks (or home offices, these days), but it's a surprisingly capable video-editing laptop, especially for lighter loads and 1080p footage.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $1,249.

Recommended configuration

If you’re surprised to see the MacBook Air as a video-editing laptop pick, we are, too. But when we pitted the M1-based, 2020 Air against Windows laptops twice its price, Apple's $1,250 machine performed exceptionally well, processing photos and videos more than 20% faster than $2,500 Windows systems.

Our main pick, the 16-inch MacBook Pro, is better for video and photo editors in almost every way, as it's significantly faster and has a larger screen, better battery life, and far more ports. But for students, occasional video editors, or anyone tasked with creating images and video for social media, the MacBook Air is up to the task.

The MacBook Air also has a fantastic screen for media work. It's nearly as color-accurate as the MacBook Pro, and in our tests it scored higher than every Windows laptop. We recommend the Air in our guide to the best MacBook; if you want to read more about it, check out that guide.

Samsung has announced the Galaxy Book3 Ultra, a high-end laptop targeted at creative professionals and other people who would otherwise buy a MacBook Pro. It will have a 16-inch OLED screen, an Intel i7 or i9 processor, and an Nvidia RTX 4050 or 4070 graphics processor. With all of those power-hungry components and the slim design of the laptop, we’re interested to see how hot it gets and what kind of battery life it will have. We’ll test it out and update this guide as soon as we can.

At the CES 2023 trade show, Asus announced two new laptops that might fit into this guide, the ProArt StudioBook 16 OLED and Zenbook Pro 16X OLED. Both laptops have been redesigned for better cooling, as well as updated with 13th-generation Intel processors and 4000-series Nvidia graphics cards. We previously liked the dial on the StudioBook but found it limited by Asus's software. Thankfully, Asus says it has overhauled the software to allow better functionality and custom control mapping, which we’re looking forward to testing out. One of Asus's biggest announcements at CES was a version of this StudioBook with a 3D display, but most people won't need to spend the extra money on that feature. Pricing and availability for these laptops are yet to be released.

We’re also still looking to test the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7620, which meets many of our criteria for a budget editing laptop. It has the same processor and graphics card as the XPS 15 but offers limited RAM and display options.

Acer Swift X: We like the power and battery life of the Acer Swift X, but we can't recommend it due to its 1080p screen. If you need a small and powerful laptop with the latest Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics but use only external monitors for your editing work, you might want to consider the Swift X. Note that the charging jack is flimsy, and we question how long it would last before breaking.

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE: In testing the Predator Triton 300 SE, we found that it was hotter and louder than the competition, with worse editing performance. Its screen also has a lower resolution than that of our similarly priced budget pick, the M1-based MacBook Air. It's a great budget gaming laptop, but it's not the best choice for media editors.

Asus ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED: The Studiobook is the largest laptop we tested, and it's designed for maximalists in every way. It has a huge OLED screen, tons of ports, and a big dial that can ostensibly work for video editing. But in our experience the Studiobook was too powerful for its own good: We literally burned our thighs when putting this laptop under a heavy workload while keeping it on our laps. Its display is also not especially color-accurate, and although we loved the physical design of the dial, the software to program the dial is half-baked. This system's battery life is also three hours shorter than that of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4.

Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED: If the MacBook Air weren't so good, this laptop would be our budget pick. The Vivobook offers a great OLED display, powerful components, and long battery life for just around $1,500. However, the scroll wheel on the trackpad is a similar gimmick to the one on the Studiobook, and in our tests it sometimes got in the way, which was disappointing.

Dell Latitude, Precision, and Alienware lines: Dell laptops outside the XPS line generally don't meet our minimum specifications for media-editing machines, especially when it comes to display resolution. Most of the laptops that Dell offers don't have resolutions higher than 1440p, which is low when you’re spending $2,000 or more for an editing laptop.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4: We were prepared to make the ThinkPad X1 Gen 4 an also-great pick earlier this year, but supply-chain issues caused 4-month-plus delays in shipment. Now, we think the updated XPS 15 9520 is a better laptop. But if you’re a Lenovo fan or the XPS 15 9520 is out of stock, the X1 Extreme Gen 4 is a fantastic laptop with a color-accurate display, tons of processing power, a wealth of ports, and nice battery life.

Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio: Microsoft nailed the fit and finish of this laptop, but it's not ideal for video or photo editors. It's too heavy, it's too expensive, and it has too few ports to be effective for video editing. If it had been a top performer and $1,000 cheaper, we might have been able to look past those flaws.

Razer Blade: We considered Razer's line of gaming laptops, which offer high-end components and a sleek design. But when we tried configuring one for media-editing tasks, certain upgrades such as a 4K display brought the total to more than $1,000 beyond the price of our top pick.

The latest version of this article was edited by Arthur Gies and Caitlin McGarry. This article was originally published in 2017.

Dave Gershgorn

Dave Gershgorn is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter. He's been covering consumer and enterprise technology since 2015, and he just can't stop buying computers. If this weren't his job, it would likely be a problem.

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