It can be a challenge to look for a laptop for graphic design.
Graphic designing is resource-intensive, and designers would want a laptop that is light enough to be carried everywhere but powerful enough to finish complicated work in a jiffy.
Of course, your budget will play a crucial role in the final decision. Nonetheless, you must know the important specs for a graphic design laptop so you can make intelligent concessions.
Let’s take a look at the main specifications for buying a laptop for graphic design.
The Operating System (OS)
The first decision you need to make is whether you want to buy a PC or a Mac.
Fortunately, most graphic designing software is available on both Microsoft Windows and macOS platforms.
Therefore, you shouldn’t have a hard time deciding what you want to buy.
It is crucial to point out here Mac monitors are great for high display quality and color quality while PCs have started to catch up.
Macs are sleeker and offer better portability, but PCs are more upgradable without replacing an entire laptop.
You need to carefully study the pros and cons of Mac and PC to make your decision.
Get Your RAM Right!
The worst experience in graphic designing is when your system constantly updates and lags.
It’s worse if your software crashes after every few minutes because your laptop isn’t equipped to carry the weight of multiple applications running at once.
For running multiple programs smoothly, you need as much RAM or memory as you can get.
This will allow switching between apps and scrolling through complex files without any system slowdown.
If you’re unsure how much RAM you’ll need for your graphic design requirements, you can check out the guide at https://setapp.com/.
The Processing Unit
Graphic designers want a processor or CPU (central processing unit) that is powerful and fast to run complicated and demanding design software.
Ideally, it would help if you looked at CPUs with as many cores as possible.
A powerful CPU will handle multiple tasks easily, but not graphically heavy ones. GPU (graphical processing unit) helps in rendering images and videos of high resolution.
It would be best if you ever considered the graphics ability of the laptop.
The graphic chip might be integrated into the processor, or you can get a separate graphics card.
The integrated graphics chips can do much more today than display web pages. But, if you work on many 3D designs, you would need to get a separate graphics card.
Storage
Nobody likes laptops that cannot store their graphic design work as the files are too heavy for their memory.
There’s the option of saving your designs in an external hard drive, but there will always be things you need within a click’s reach.
Obviously, you wouldn’t want a laptop that breaks with the load.
As technology is transforming rapidly, the same storage formulas don’t apply anymore.
For instance, the one thing people understood about storage was gigabytes.
The higher you go, the better storage you’ll get.
All that’s changed now, and today you have to know about HDD and SSD.
Both are types of storage devices, and they stand for Hard-Disk Drive and Solid State Drive.
HDD is an old-school storage device that utilizes mechanical platters and a moving read or writes head to access data.
It looks like a vintage vinyl record player.
An SSD is a newer addition to the storage device world, and it looks much smarter than an HDD. It even works faster, and there are no moving parts in the storage device.
Data is stored in non-volatile microchips, and it resembles a big USB. When you’re buying a laptop for graphic design, and you need speed and ample storage space, opt for an SSD.
It is much more powerful and dependable than an HDD.
Display Type And Size
When purchasing a laptop for graphic design, you would want to get the best display your money can afford.
You must not settle for anything under 15 inches.
While a 17-inch screen is perfect, it might be cumbersome to carry.
Moreover, it would help if you had a HiDPI screen that boasts a higher density of pixels, and it would allow you to see more detail.
For effective design, the lowest end screen would be 1920X1080 pixels.
Today, there’s a range of laptops that come with the option of using the monitor as a touchscreen. Some can even be used as a tablet.
If you want to draw, using a tablet might be effective.
So, these are a few of the specs your laptop for graphic design must have. You need to establish a budget and ensure you are getting the best.
If you are interested to learn more about graphic design, make sure you read our post that focuses on how much to charge for a logo design.