Topic: Help me choose the (insides of a) computer

[Twenty8]

About halfway through December, my trusty laptop died.  I had been using a refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad for years.  It lasted through running a podcast, becoming a taper, being on tour, processing the living heck out of recordings, and not processing the heck out of them.  RIP old ThinkPad.

The time has come to get a new laptop so I am asking fellow audio processors for some help.  Can you recommend me a laptop?  Sure you can, but I am not looking for specific models… though appreciated.  What do you use?

What I AM looking for is recommendations for the insides of the laptop.  What kind of processor do you have?  What do you think is important to have inside my laptop for speed and capability? 

While that is all Greek to me, I’ll be doing more research based on your recs. I will probably be buying a refurbished laptop from Newegg dot com.  I run a purchased/licensed copy of Reaper, will probably get Izotope (maybe), and other than cruising the interweb and making crosswords, I don’t use it for anything process heavy.

Budget… prob 1k-ish.  Will be staying under that.  My ThinkPad was like $400 or something and did just fine.  Willing to make the leap into gaming computers if justifiable.  Just looking to run smooth and fast.  Has to be a laptop though…. Phish, King Gizzard, tour life etc.

Edit: Windows operation, not an Apple fan (as I type that on my iPad…)

[if_then_else]

I bought a new Linux/Windows dual boot laptop back in August.

This might be overkill for you.

I'm a DevOps engineer in my day job, i.e. I use it for programming and system administration tasks, and obviously also for music production.

1 x TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 - Gen9 - AMD
Omnia Display | 3k (2880 x 1800) | 16:10 | max. 120Hz | 400nits
2x 16 GB Samsung 5600MHz DDR5 SO-DIMM
AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS (8 Core | 16 Threads | Max. 5,1 GHz | 24 MB Cache)
1 TB Samsung 980 (NVMe PCIe 3.0)
1 TB Crucial P3 Plus (NVMe PCIe 4.0)
ISO Keyboard Layout
Intel AX210
Windows 11 Home 64Bit
Manjaro Linux (Cinnamon Desktop)
EU power cable | F C6

[goodcooker]

I bought a new laptop for mobile multi tracking last year so I needed many of the same things you need but with a little different criteria - small and light but also reasonably fast and capable. You can get more speed and capability in your budget but what I have is a minimum of what I'd look for.

I ended up with a Dell -
11th gen i7
16 Gb ram Samsung DDR4
Windows 11 Pro
256 Gb SSD (this is where I saved some money - a larger SSD drives up the cost but I use several rugged portable Samsung 1 TB SSDs it helps me stay organized and they are pretty cheap now)

paid around $300 buying refurbed from Back Market with a 1 year warranty.

My only gripe is not enough USB ports - mine only has (1) USB A and (2) USB C one of which is Thunderbolt3 which I needed for my Presonus Quantum interface I use for live multi tracking I'm up to 18 tracks now with under 1ms latency - so if I need more USB for something more than charging,  a mouse, SSD and whatnot I have to use a hub but that's not a huge deal, just one more thing in my backpack when I'm traveling.

I have a dedicated desktop at home - a cheap Dell office tower at my mixing desk - and a Chromebook for web surfing and email so my laptop purchase was pretty mission specific. Takeaways - get as much RAM and SSD space as you can afford and make sure your peripherals are compatible with your newer Windows OS. Some older audio interface drivers aren't cooperating with Win 11 and aren't being updated they just want you to buy the new model.

[Scooter123]

Periphals make the difference.  My chief complaint about current laptops is a lack of USB ports.  Apple thinks one can get away with one or two, including using the port to power the machine.  Many do not have headphone jacks.  I work in airplanes, and a back lit keyboard is nice.  I really need a USB A port for many of my old recorders and such.  I'm less concerned with a processor and memory, and most of the decks only have a single choice for a processor anyway or maybe one upgrade.  Memory is soldered, so there is no way you can add it later. 

I ended up with a Lenovo which had everything I need.  Dell was a second choice.