best laptop for video editing under $1000

2021 is here, and you want to know what the best laptop for video editing under $1000, well you’re in the right place because we have hands-on experience with most of the laptops.

Let’s get rocking, let’s dive into what you can expect, and then we’ll go through these laptops. First, these are gonna be great for 1080p solid for 4k. Now one concern that you might find is they’re not going to be the most color-accurate laptops at this price point they’re usually going to be gaming laptops and then we’re going to answer the question of why around a thousand dollars?

Best Laptop For Video Editing Under $1000

What can you expect on most laptops around a thousand dollar price point? Some negatives, some positives answer some of those questions there, because we going to explain the specs of each of these laptops. What makes them good for 1080p, what makes them good for 4k what you should be considering, if you don’t necessarily see a laptop that you’re considering in our lineup, and if that laptop, that you’re considering is just as good as one of the ones we are recommending.

So we’re going to talk through all those different elements now remember these are our top favorite picks. So please don’t be offended if the laptop that you’re considering is not on there. It may, in fact, be a good laptop, and make sure you wait till the end to verify that here with the information.

Best Laptop For Video Editing Under $1000

Let’s dive right into the recommendations, first and foremost, coming up at the lowest end of the price point is the Acer Swift 3.

Acer Swift 3

This laptop, we actually use as our on-the-go daily driver for 1080p video editing, photoshop, work, writing scripts, and all of the like it’s around a 670 650 laptop depending on when you purchase it different pricing sales that are going on. It comes with the Ryzen 7 4700u, AMD Radeon 7 graphics, 8 gigs of ram 512 gigs of storage. It comes with a 14 inch 16 by 9 corning glass display now the one downside to this laptop. It disappoints us because if this was not the case, this would be a rocket ship of a laptop that we would literally recommend to anybody and everybody everywhere and that’s the color gamut range 64 sRGB and 47 adobe RGB.

What the hang-up with this is here is, if you’re, trying to deliver a project to a client that expects their skin tones to look like this and the mountains in the video to look like that, and they get them the video, and it does not. Look like chances are it’s because you edited it on a non-color gamut range, good quality, color accuracy laptop that really hit all those colors in the right range. So what we’d recommend is perhaps, starting with this laptop for your 1080p video editing projects and then, when your budget can allow grabbing a color, accurate external monitor, such as the concept d, um cm2 from Acer. It’s about a 300 color accurate, monitor, we’ll link that in the description below, but that’s the big downside to the Acer. Swift 3 is the color accuracy. We said this would be a great laptop for 1080p video editing.

Lenovo V14

It is another fantastic laptop for 1080p video editing comes with the AMD Ryzen 5 4500u AMD Radeon, 6 graphics, 12 gigs of ram 1 terabyte of a hard disk drive, storage 14 inches, full HD display, and 50 sRGB and 40 adobe RGB again we’ll link that same statement about The color accuracy to this laptop – we won’t repeat it for the brevity of this video but a great laptop for 1080p, not the best color accuracy, and that is what you’ll find with these more budget-friendly computers.

 Lenovo ideapad gaming 3

This laptop is a great laptop for light 4k video editing with that i5 10 300h you’re gon \na have four cores and eight threads with a solid 2.5 gigahertz base clock and a 4.5 turbo clock with the GTX 1650. That’s a dedicated graphics, processing unit. That’s going to really help you out with doing some of that 4k video editing you’re, going to have some drop frames at full quality in the timeline, but around half or fourth quality, you’re going to have no problems busting through that 4k video editing footage. Now, what we’re seeing here is eight gigs of ram we’d personally recommend 16 gigs of ram upgrade as soon as your budget allows. Personally, we are a big fan of 16 gigs on video, editing, and other creative tasks, but you can get away with eight gigs getting started. You’re just going to have a better multitasking experience with the 16

It comes with 256 gigs of solid-state storage, you’re, going to have a 15.6-inch full HD display, but again we’re struggling a little bit with that color accuracy. Again, that’s what you run into with these more budget-friendly computers.

MSI GF75

 Now one thing we love about this laptop is we’re starting to get some better color accuracy with 89 sRGB and 58 adobe RGB we’re going to again have the i5 10 300 h really solid base 4k video editing machine with GTX 1650.  You’re gonna have eight gigs of ram, which again we’d upgrade to 16 512 gig SSD and a 17.3-inch full HD display if you’re somebody who wants a little bit more space for your workflow. A little bit bigger screen. Give you a little less leaning over on your desk to see what you’re doing.

HP 14 Laptop

 HP 14 laptop we really like this laptop and for somebody who likes an Intel-based system. This is the i7 1065 g7. They should be coming out with the 1165 g7. With the 11th gen version of this processor, it gave a bit of a boost in performance with the new Evo. We were not like. It was not a massive improvement, but it did improve the performance by probably about 10 to 15 percent. If you’re considering the 11th gen version of this chip, you can find that in a handful of different laptops, now it has the intel iris plus graphics, g7, 12 gigs of ram one terabyte SSD a 14-inch screen, and 98 sRGB and 63 adobe RGB. So this is a great laptop with some more color accuracy and some solid performance for video editing. We  recommend this one for some light: 4k, definitely 1080p, but with 4k you’re going to drop down the quality in the playback whenever you’re editing

MSI GF75

This is a great 15-inch laptop for video editing. You are gonna have the i5 9300h. These i5s are going to be easy to snag at a good price point because now the 10th gens have come out. They will give you about what we would like to say: probably a 10 boost in performance, getting that i5 10th gen over the 9th, but nothing crazy. So you can really save a little money here to get the GTX 1050 ti 16 gigs of ram. But again, we’re going to have some lower color accuracy on that 15-inch model.

 Acer Nitro 5

You can get a variety of spec outs and get it with the Ryzen 5 4600h or the i5 10 300 h, depending on if you’re, a Ryzen or you’re an intel fan. As you can get, the base clock and the turbo clocks are quite similar. They are not exact, but you really can’t go wrong with either model. What you’ll notice is, you might get a little bit better multitasking out of the Ryzen version, because you got more cores and more threads, so if you’re a multitasking kind of guy or gal, we would lean you towards the Ryzen version.

Vivobook S512

What we have here is the i7 10510u, the mx250, the Nvidia GeForce mx250. This is going to be a good 1080p video, editing, laptop and the reason we are including this one is that it’d be a nice thin and light on-the-go laptop, something similar to say the swift 3. But this is an Asus version with an i7 processor.

Lenovo IdeaPad L340

 Another good, lower end of the price point. As far as you know, under that thousand dollar price point, we had the i5 9300h with the GTX 1650 16 gigs of ram 512 gig SSD, and we have the 63 sRGB and 40 adobe RGB we would say you’re sitting at this one, a little bit of 4K definitely some killer 1080p video editing and some motion graphics on those 1080p will. Do you quite well as we move up the line of the price point, we’re going to see the color accuracy slightly improved from laptop to laptop, but, like we’ve mentioned when it comes to these more under a thousand dollars around a thousand dollar price point, the big Area you’re going to struggle with is color accuracy you’re going to get the performance that you’re looking for most likely from that thousand dollar price point. But the color gamut range is something that your laptop’s going to struggle with, with under the thousand dollars or around the thousand dollars.

Lenovo legion models

Next up are the Lenovo legion models, so we have a variety of models here. One thing we’ll mention is: if you want to get color accuracy on any of these models, make sure you’re getting the 144hz version of the screen. That’s going to make the laptop a little bit more pricey, it’s going to bump up to around 1200. If we are not mistaken, but if you don’t care about color accuracy, any of these laptops here for around that around or under that thousand dollar price point is going to be a good buy. But if you get the 120-hertz screen variant, you’re going to have a low color accuracy, just like some of the laptops or most of the laptops, we’ve seen thus far.

HP Pavilion Gaming *Ryzen 5*

Next up, we have hp coming in hot, with the hp pavilion gaming laptop. We, like both of these laptops personally, would lean towards the i7 10 750, especially for the extra 100 you’re gonna get a better processor, faster performance, better playback and you’re still going to be good. With this 1660 ti max q. This is actually a less powerful GPU than this standard ti. The ti max q is a more mobile version, and what we like about these laptops is you got a much better color accuracy, you get a 94 sRGB and a 60 adobe RGB. So for the thousand dollar price point. This is one of our top picks, especially one that has a solid color accuracy.

What makes a good video editing laptop?

Answering your questions. So,  let’s talk through this. What makes a good video editing laptop? Should you pick laptop x? So let’s say you know a lot of people wondering hey. You didn’t see you mention our laptop. Is this laptop good so we’ll talk through that in a second here? What do you gain from spending more money? It doesn’t matter, should you spend more money and then the reasons that we personally spend more money on a laptop than that thousand dollar price point, and so we’re going to talk through these questions here and then we’re going to get into the specs and talk about.

Why we recommend certain specs and what you can expect at each level? So you know why it’s important to have a GPU, why it’s important to have a certain amount of ram, but let’s go ahead and pop through these first questions, right off the get and that’s right here: okay, so what makes a good video editing laptop, a good video editing laptop has good playback in the timeline, and so what you’re going to see is, if you have a video any laptop that does not have a dedicated GPU. It’s going to lead to dropping frames in the timeline, so say, for instance, that swift 3

If you try and put that swift 3 at full quality playback at 4k, if our memory serves us right out of 16 177 frames, you’re going to drop over 15 000 frames, which means, as you click play on the timeline in your video editing in premiere pro. It’s going to be like this as you’re trying to the clip, and it’s going to be a terrible experience now bump that down to fourth put another half quality, you might get a little bit better play as it goes through the timeline and you’re going to be a little bit smoother, but it’s not going to be a smooth experience.

GPU

Okay, as you get into a more expensive, laptop we’ll, make sure we are still answering the right question about the GPU. So, as you get into a more expensive laptop we’re going to start having a dedicated GPU, the dedicated GPU is going to take some of that workload. So the CPU is going to say hey. These are some graphical processing tasks. We are going to push that off to the GPU and that’s what it does. Well, that’s what it does best and it’s going to process the graphics and give us a smooth timeline.

Playback

Playback! that’s what makes a good video editing laptop, having a good CPU paired with a good GPU, give you a smooth experience and fast export times next, color accuracy, color accuracy to us personally, is what makes a good video editing laptop if you are working for a client who expects the purple on the project to look. We want this purple, they tell us, we want this purple and my project and our laptop is not color accurate and we think that on our laptop look at that, we are cross-eyed now our laptop is not showing this purple. Our laptop is showing this purple and they take it to their computer, which possibly is color accurate.

Color accuracy

Let’s say it’s an iPhone or they’re on a mac and they have good color accuracy. They’re like wait, ben, that’s not the purple. We wanted color accuracy very important. Happy clients, as they say, happy, wife, happy life or happy clients, happy money, pocketbook, stuff. Okay, should we pick laptop x, so we have a lot of people? Sorry, our hair is crazy. we are trying to grow it out right now and it’s just fluffy. As we will get out soon we will be able to tie it back and it’ll be good anyway, should we pick laptop x, so here’s the thing if you are curious about a laptop and you’ve looked at the laptops, we have recommended taking the time to look at the specs of the laptop you’re considering compared to the specs of the laptops, we are considering because there are only so many combinations of specs. This is a great laptop for some light, 1080 light 4k, and some 1080p. Then you’ll know if your laptop matches those specs that okay, we are making a good decision now feel free to comment below and ask us, we more than happy, but coming up here in just a second, we’re going to talk more about the CPU, the GPU, the ram and the storage.

Maybe that’ll answer your question a little bit more. So hang tight! Okay! Next is what do you gain by spending more money, as mentioned earlier in answering the first question: what you gain by spending more money is a dedicated GPU. You get a more battery life, usually not always, but usually, you get better color accuracy and you get better build materials. So you’re gonna have a more durable laptop. It’s probably to be a little bit lighter it’s going to perform a little bit more and it’s going to have better color accuracy, that’s what you get by spending more money and then the reason we spend more money personally are usually build materials, battery life, color accuracy, and battery weight build materials, battery life, color, accuracy, and then of. Is it thin and light? we always enjoy a laptop being thin and light.

CPU & Processor

Okay. Next up is we’re going to talk about the CPU, the GPU, the ram, and the storage. So not all CPUs are created equally.  But if you don’t pay attention to what your computer has in it internally, you might get left of the computer that underperforms, for example, an i7 h650u versus an i7 10 versus an i7 9750h or an i710 750h.

Processor

That is a vastly different processor. The i710750his going to be a killer, video editing, computer, the i7 865 0u trash, as they say in toy story, all right. It’s just it’s not going to be good. It’s going to be a photoshop computer it’ll be you know, maybe some light 1080p video editing, but it’s just not. It wasn’t a great processor. It was a mobile processor. It was built for business and office, work and emailing, and excel spreadsheets. It was not built for high performance, video, editing, or motion graphics, whereas that i7, 9750, or 10750h that the processor was built very well. So CPU here’s my recommendations. If you’re somebody looking for a video editing computer, we would recommend to you an i7 1065 g7 or i7 1165 g7. Okay, that’s not a mobile processor, it’s kind of a hybrid between because it has the integrated, higher, improved, integrated, graphics. Okay, we would also recommend something like an i7 uh 10710u, but a lot of times that processor comes with a dedicated GPU, for instance, the MSI prestige, 15

Dedicated GPU

That laptop has a dedicated GPU. We think it’s the GTX 1650 complemented with the mobile processor. That rarely happens so, if you see a mobile processor without a dedicated GPU you’re going to have a laptop that doesn’t perform extremely well inside of video editing. Okay. So here let’s talk about it: real quick, i7, 9750h or 10750h; i7. 108758. I5. 10. 300H. These are great intel processors for video, editing on the Ryzen side, Ryzen 5, 4600h, great processor, Ryzen, 7, 4800h, 400hs, great processor, Ryzen, 9, 4900, hs, 4900h, great processors. You can also get away with something like the Ryzen 740 700u, if you’re doing 1080p video editing, for instance, in the Acer, swift, 3. But really do your research comparison, processors head to head, you can use a website called user benchmark. Some people complain about it. They’re, probably going to comment below and say: why would you recommend user benchmark, it’s so inaccurate? It gives you a gauge on what is app apples to apples or oranges to oranges. It’s not going to be vastly off. It might not be perfect, but at least tell you if you compare the i7 8650u versus a Ryzen 6 Ryzen 5 4600h, that clearly that Ryzen 6 Verizon 5 4600hr is better. That’s why we tell you to use a benchmark, so you can at least get yourself in the ballpark okay. That was a ton of time talking about CPUs.

Let’s talk about GPUs. Why is a GPU important, so GPU important is important because the CPU instructs the GPU to handle graphical tasks? Okay, so what it allows the CPU to do is free itself of graphical processing. So if you’re using motion, graphics, you’re, editing, 1080p, or 4k video editing, the GPU will offload from the CPU all of those graphical tasks. It will free up the CPU to operate your system to run kind of the background tasks to run, maybe whatever you’re multitasking and the GPU will handle that heavy lifting of the video processing of the motion. Graphics. Okay, so that’s why GPU is important. If not, your processor is having your CPU is having to handle all of that video compensation it’s having to handle all of the work that the GPU would normally help support it with, which is why, for instance, with something like the Acer Swift 3, when you have A really solid processor, like the Ryzen 7 4700u. It still drops 15 000 frames out of the 16 000 because it is trying to do all the heavy lifting it doesn’t have something to assist it.

RAM 

Next up is RAM, so why do we recommend 16 gigs is a minimum, but then we say: hey: you can get away with eight gigs of ram here’s. Why? So if you’re running video editing only you’re going to be using almost all of your ram you’re using almost all eight gigs, however, if you have 16 gigs of ram you’re gonna allow your computer to free up some of that ram. To do some of those background tasks, which means your system won’t be overloaded and you won’t create a bottleneck in your system. You don’t want to bottleneck your system because then it’ll curb your performance and you’ll get less performance. Can you get away with eight gigs of ram? Yes, eight gigs of ram are what really helps in multitasking. So say you have premiere pro-photoshop and google open. At the same time, say: google chrome, having 16 gigs of ram, will allow it to spread across each of those programs and give you a smoother experience. If you have eight gigs, you only have so much to go around. It has to kind of splice it down and divide it very selfishly so to speak. So that is why we recommend the 16GB ram.

SSD VS HDD

Next storage, so we have SSD versus HDD, solid-state drive versus hard disk drive. We recommend solid-state drive, there are no moving parts, they’re much faster, they’re, much more reliable, they’re, lighter they’re, much more lightweight and the technology is just improving more and more every year it’s been more affordable. Hard disk drives are great for something that sits on your computer. We mean sits on your desktop, maybe you use it as a backup. Maybe you don’t, you know, are not running anything off of it. When you have a slower, hard drive that often can bottleneck your computer because it’s not able to push out information as fast. It’s not able to read as to write, read and write is fast, so we always push people towards solid state because it’s more reliable and it’s higher-performing hardware. Okay. Next, we like to play a little game called, which should you pick so we have the AMD Ryzen. 5, 4600h, with the Nvidia GTX 1650, eight gigs of ram 500 SSD versus the Asus Vivobook 15, which has the AMD Ryzen, 5, 3500u. Vega, 8 8 gigs of ram 256 gigs of SSD, which one is a higher-performing machine this here, the Asus tuff a15 is gonna, be high performing. We have that h, series processor and we have a dedicated GPU. That’s gonna be your winner.

Final Words:

Okay and lastly, why would you buy a more expensive computer as we talked about you’re gonna get better color accuracy, better, build materials, thinner and lighter, and better battery life? That is what you’re gonna benefit from. As you spend more money, can you still video edit? Yes, you can absolutely still video edit. Can you do that? Do you know good quality projects for posting on youtube? Absolutely, but if you’re somebody who’s gonna get into production for clients, We really recommend people moving up towards more high-end computers. Only for the fact that you’re gonna get better color accuracy, you’re gonna get more durable, longer, more laptop. That has better longevity. Those are the things that we find important when spending more than a thousand dollars on a laptop. 

By Sameer

I'm Sameer Bille, a blogger from Mumbai, India. I started MuchTech as a passion.Here at Much Tech I write about Tech Tips,Tricks and how to guide.

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