Software.Your editing experience depends on matching the software you need to the hardware it requires. You have to make sure your choice has the right kind-e.g., HDMI-and number of inputs. If you're constantly on the road, you may find weight and battery life to be more important.Įxternal gear.External gear, such as a monitor, input device, or extra storage, has to plug into your video editing laptop. How you plan to work. Will you be working under time pressures? Then speed matters most. Art projects, on the other hand, place a premium on accurate color representation at high resolution. Sophisticated audio editing capabilities and good speakers will make a big difference when editing footage from your band's latest gig. For example, if you're making social videos to promote your business, you'll want the ability to create text overlay on some clips. Your content. Your laptop choice will be heavily influenced by the video you want to produce. Here are some specific areas to consider: If you think ahead, you can buy what you need now and plan for future expansion. Higher-end specifications, such as high-resolution screens, fast processing speeds, and larger memory capacity may be preferable, but they are also more expensive. You should think about your upcoming video editing projects first for one simple reason: Cost. Documenting your daughter's first swimming lesson and editing out the bit where your thumb was the star of the show? Now, that leads to different prerequisites. If you're shooting a documentary for the Sundance Film Festival*, that's one set of requirements. What kind of video will you be editing? What finished product do you want? external memory, and all the other specifications with which you can compare one laptop to another.

Don't begin with the laptop, begin with you.īefore you even start looking into microprocessor clock speeds, internal vs. Diving into video editing for the first time? Trying to figure out which is the best laptop for video editing? Here's some advice.

Pc video editors