I'd suggest a Mac when it comes to creative types. You get a whole bunch of software with the laptop and I believe it's totally worth it!

For all the people considering a macbook (I know OP isn't, but this thread will attract others) whatever you do, do NOT get the macbook pro with the touch strip. Go refurbished with the latest model before the touchstrips - I think 2016. The touchstrip models have been plagued with issues for musicians.

You can go for Acer Nitro 7 if you spend a little extra than your limit. It should be good for now.

And if you want cheaper than this one then it has a smaller version of this which is Acer Nitro 5.

Take the model which do have SSD in it.

You can find very powerful PCs on Amazon A good production PC should have a processor above 3.0 gHz and above 8 GB ram

How much would a laptop like this cost?

That's valid! I hope you find something good for you for a good price!

An entry level gaming laptop has a number of features that makes it good at processing audio.

CPU and RAM usually generous, cooling usually enhanced, backlit keys for darkened rooms, hi res screen, usually a separate video card with its own CPU and RAM, freeing up the main CPU and RAM for audio processing

I recommend the laptop which comes with SSD plus fast HDD together. This allows the placement of DAW and plugins on SSD and project files on HDD. With an external HDD for sample library and backups.

On the subject of external, the number and speed of the USB ports is important.

As many as you can get, at least 3, plus plan to have Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to free up a USB port for more important instruments and interfaces

USB 2.0 is still prevalent in music hardware, but as USB 3.0 and 3.1 are all backwards compatible to USB 2.0, you should try to get a laptop with as many USB 3.0 as possible and at least one USB 3.1 as it's the future.

A laptop with at least one HDMI port for a full HD on a larger external monitor but ideally the port should be capable of 4k output, as a big screen DAW in 4k is truly awesome. If the laptop had the ability to output two screens that would be ideal.

Amount of ram and single clock freq are the parameters to consider. And the amount of noise the laptop does delivering cpu power. That's the fact.

Now my opinion: nowdays apple is ahead in terms of noise/power delivery but laptops are a bit expensive. If you can afford one I'd go for one of them.

I personally use or used linux, windows and macos both for hobby and work and I find apple stuff really good for music. But that's my 2 cents.

If you can afford the MacBook Pro, go for it!

I couldn't, best I could get for my budget was the Lenovo ThinkBook 14 G7 IML with the Core Ultra 7 155H processor. Still haven't found anything I can't throw at it, so anything comparable in power or better should serve you well. Note, I'm not recommending you to actually get this, the screen is meh, but that wasn't a priority for me. Just a reference point for performance. Your budget seems bigger, so you should have your picks.

I’m a windows guy but I recommend Mac for audio.

If you must get a laptop, the best laptops are by Apple.

MacBook Pro (M2 Pro / M3) is the best choice for Logic Pro users and great for any DAW. Top-tier performance, low noise, long battery, super stable. Dell XPS 15 can be a solid Windows option with excellent display and power, but watch for thermal issues under load.

We all do this in my band and know how frustrating it can be. I use a HP z book, fortunately supplied through my full-time work.

Our singer uses a Mackbook Pro M4. He can have 3 or 4 videos edited and bounced in the time I can do one. As much as I hate to say it, apple have nailed the market at the moment imo...

Of course cost comes into it but I'd recommend a macbook pro of some sort it not a gaming spec laptop.

Get the best Macbook Pro you can afford.

I'm mostly a Windows/Linux guy but honestly the Macs are specifically designed for this sort of thing.

I wasn't really convinced until I watched one of my friends in college for computer animation do a render on both his high end gaming laptop and on our buddy's 5 year old Mac with half the power. The Mac finished first in almost half the amount of time, which was nuts.

Get the one that meets or exceeds system requirements for the software you intend to use. If money is not an issue the highest spec MacBook pro would be my first choice.

Unless you need to actually drag your laptop around to record often in other locations, just buy a desktop and get substantially more power for your money.

You'll feel the difference when it comes to rendering your videos particularly.

MacBook Pro 14.

I had Lenovo ideapad 700 15 inch. I7 processor 16gb ram Nvidia Mx960 graphics 250 gb SSd + 1tb harddrive

$699

But i dont know if you can still find this laptop on sale in the internet. And i have no problem or whatsoever from using it for 4 years now. I even sometimes run 2 Daws at the same time for referencing purposes between my old projects. And run google chrome with 10 tabs open. Plus photoshop and illustrator at the same time! I haven’t encountered lagging on my DAW projects unless if you use 10 heavy plugins at the same time like Ozone 8 (this plug in is crazy).

Unless you want to load bloated sample libraries quickly or do video editing without using proxies (don't), any moderate laptop would suffice.

You do not need a gaming PC with a i7 CPU or GTX 960 or something fancy to do music production and even video editing. People on the internet loves assuming everyone has the same buying power as theirs.

If you really want to spend more money, I'd spend less on computer specs and more on audio hardware and software.

If I have to choose one

I will go for

• at least up of 8GB RAM

• at least up for i7 4700

• u can use external hard drives for the storage

• forget about high end graphics but if you edit your videos u will need at least gtx 960

• for the portable long last battery is good option

• if laptop is to thin and there are no lot of usb slots look for other latops since u will have to connect ur mic / audio interfaces

U can simply google cpu benchmarks to compare with other cpus

Buy gaming laptop

Gaming laptops are works good as work station too since they usually has high end hardwares

I know you said not this, but Mac book pro's are widely used in the music making industry and can handle high end producing. Been using one for three years and it's never failed me

If you’re using Logic, pretty much any MacBook made after 2014 will do. If you’re using another program, you’ll be fine with almost any $500+ Windows laptop. Get a good CPU and 16+ gigs of RAM and you’ll be fine for the foreseeable future. If it's a laptop, you'll want at least 250gb of storage, as project files and sound libraries can easily take up a couple hundred gb. Might as well pay a little more and get around a terabyte of storage if you can.

Personally I use a MacBook and have a Windows partition so I can do both. You can pick up a Refurb macbook from a couple years back for a very reasonable price that will do the job fine.

While I really love the performance of my MBP, I gotta say the fact that you have to get it with the Touch Bar (would much rather save $$ and have function keys), only comes with 4 USB-C ports (one of which you have to use for power) and no dongles for USB-A/, Thunderbolt 2, etc is pretty fucking frustrating. Like on top of an almost $3k laptop, I was forced to buy dongles and a special USB-C powered hub for hundreds of dollars on top just to be able to plug in my only 1 year old (at the time) thunderbolt interface (and other peripherals)... that hurt me lol.

TL;DR If OP just wants to make trap beats then this Asus is a great laptop. The MacBook makes up for its frustrations in its consistency and performance, and I much prefer the OS fwiw having used both windows and Mac extensively

There isn't a "Best" Laptop. Some people like Mac. Some people like windows. What you should be concerned about is processing power and storage. 16GB RAM minimum. Half a TB of SSD storage at least. As some people have mentioned, new Macbooks only come with USB-C which really is a pain in the ass if you have external hardware that runs through USB or Thunderbolt.

My suggestion: Get a windows laptop with the minimum specs that I just listed, that would cost you half the price of a Macbook Pro. Use the money you saved for a decent interface and some good monitors.

The lite isn't very good for music production, invest in the normal DS

The nintendo 3ds/2ds are good for making music. I have a O2DS and use Rytmik Ultimate (I've been using that since July 2020 and have over 1000 hours, so I don't think I need to say if it's good or not)

You know, all jokes aside, 3DS has Rytmik studio on it, thats actually a shockingly competent DAW for something in its league. My buddy has been doing this for like 6 years and when he got serious, he just got the PC version off steam for more freedom with files and makes awesome shit with it.

yeah 16 gb of ram is fine, amd makes better bang for buck processors, and and external ssd is just unnecessary.

I’ve been rocking the 3600x since it came out and it’s been amazing. The 3900x has to be 100x better

hi I'm looking to buy a laptop for music production fl studio... don't know which one to go for asus rog strix or razer blade... I've heard razer blades don't last long?

I would buy another Legion without hesitation.

Used to be a windows laptop guy, MacBooks are just way better especially for ableton. The difference is significant

I’d go with an M1 MacBook Air, but if you can wait the newer 16” ones will be great. Ableton 11’s been iffy on Windows from what I’ve read, but not as much on Mac.

steam dock

Apple silicon MacBooks. The industry adapted super fast to the native ARM format and even if there is some software / plugins left not running natively you can always run your DAW with rosetta2 (which I actually do) and it is awesome

Also every other benefit of a MacBook (awesome build quality, awesome battery life, great screen, best trackpad of any laptop, quiet…)

Just bought an ASUS ProArt i9 22GB 16” Oled touchscreen. The ASUSdial is very useful and programmable. I upgraded from my 2013 ASUS i7 with 24GB ram, and my largest project that was running 800FX on 400 tracks at 95-100% CPU is now running under 1% amazingly. I know macs are extremely popular, but I’ve always loved ASUS build quality and windows.

The best options are high-end thinkpads (P or T) or new MacBooks

I just bought an M2 Pro MacBook Pro and it is incredible.

I've been using a Ryzen 7 laptop with Cubase 12 and a butt-ton of high CPU plugins like Omnisphere and Acustica. Been working well so far.

I think the new mac mini might be probably a better choice for you... Choose the m4 pro chip because logic pro XI runs significantly better with the m4 pro chip (comparing to m4). M4 max, sure is better but not really necessary for beginners.

I would recommend 1TB internal storage. If you start to produce more seriously you can move your liaberies to external hard drives.

I've heard great things about logic on mac, what sort of work do you do on it? Recording? Sound design? Mixing? Everything at once? Any m series pro/max chip that I've heard of should run well and storage is mostly a personal thing.

I use adobe and fl studio, and if I had a machine dedicated to only those two things I could operate on 512 gb storage. My total for both programs and related files, programs, and projects is about 350+ gb. I offload old projects onto onedrive cloud storage so the number doesn't get much higher for long.

Depending on what you're doing the base m4 chip options could very well be fine, but for what I do on fl studio I'd probably be looking at the pro/max chips starting at $2,000.

I'm not an expert but just saying what I've learned, I suggest you keep searching and asking questions. Good luck!

Your budget and technical level are important bits of information left out here

Macbooks are just way ahead currently for thin and light laptops. If you don't mind chunky, Lenovo is good. Stay away from dell, their QC is crap.

big windows vs mac debate incoming

New Lenovo