Laptop recommendation

Hello everyone!

Touch beginner here and falling in love with it (have been using it for over 2 month). My laptop is slowly dying and i have one chance to get this right. My budget is around 2K and i would like this new laptop to last me for a longtime. So can you guys please recommend a laptop that you know for sure is powerful and good enough? In my search i got so many contradicting opinions and debates that i’m kind of lost. I’m aware that desktops are better but my goal in the future is to get into installations and live performances. The three main programs i use are Touch,C4D and Blender.

Considering your favorite software, the most important is the graphic card, and for TD you would prefer a nVidia one. I recommend you to choose RTX 2060 for minimum and 2070 for the good choice (2080 are expansive and hard to cool).
intel i7 for CPU, the number of cores is not very important with TD, speed is more.
A good display but, if your goal is to have external displays and beamer, you need only HD/60hz screen, UHD/144hz is for hard gamer.
I own a MSI laptop and I am happy with it but with a decent SSD and 32Go Ram you will be closer to 3K.
TD people speak also of Razer and Gigabyte.

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Thank you for the detailed answer as always! Will look into MSI for sure

I love my Razer 15" 2070. Their latest generation is solid, I’ve had no issues with it (other than using Windows on a laptop, ha). It will run you a bit more than $2k but well worth it if you’ve a design eye. You mentioned C4D/Blender (I come from that world also), Razer is like the Apple of PCs, albeit a slightly better deal.

If design/chassis aren’t high priorities for you, I’d definitely scope out Gigabyte’s Aero lineup. Solid performance, specs and bargains. If it weren’t for their oddball design choices (like the lopsided trackpad), I would have gone with them instead.

Good luck!

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Thank you! Like you said and i read from many others that razer is a bit pricy and you can get the same performane for a better price. But you can see in the design why the charge extra, it’s really crisp! I was actually looking through the Aero linup the prices/performance seems really good! Do you have anything specific recommendation from that linup?

You could look at scan.co.uk 3XS laptops - they have really good customer service and will custom build a laptop to your specs, so if you specify touch designer they will help you get the right components for touch etc My audio lapop is with them and its been amazing - and the customer service was brilliant. You get a 2 year warranty as standard.

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Thank you! Reached out to them today.

So between Mac and Windows for TD, the advantage is in the favor of Windows pretty clearly? I’ve gone back and forth between the two for years but was focusing mainly on music production programs when I was on Macs. If price isn’t a big factor would everyone still go Windows? I’m currently in the midst of a new laptop/maybe even desktop search and its giving me a headache haha The previous thread replies have been very helpful

Yea windows is much better suited for this. I’m currently going with Lenovo legion YT with an 2070 RTX. Heard nothing but good stuff. If you had a bigger budget tho, check out some of the new MSI’s i9 and Quadro. My goal personally is to end up doing some smaller scale installations etc so desktop i guess isn’t even an option :confused: Good luck for your hunt

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Thanks for the thoughtful response and I’ll check out the models you suggest. It’s hard to swallow such a massive cost with how fast windows laptops depreciate. That’s really the only thing that’s holding me back right now. My goals are the same as yours in terms of projects. I’ve been thinking of getting a Mac Mini for home use and maybe something more portable for shows but I don’t know. That is starting to wade into dumb money for my income haha

If its’ not too late here’s a couple more ideas. I agree with all the above comments, you can’t go wrong with the recommendations.

The new Alienware R3 laptops are really slick, to me the design is the equivalent of the Razer, and just as thin and light now. Pretty much same price and performance. I’ve owned about 6 Alienware laptops that I’ve used with TD and liked the performance on all of them. Downsides have been size and design, but again that is not an issue with the new versions.

I’ve also owned several Blades, a number of MSI, Gigabyte, ASUS a Mac and a Surface, all of which got heavy TD use. The Mac is really nice as a machine, but as stated above just can’t compete with the others. The Asus, Gigabytes and MSI have all been great as show machines, solid performance and good cooling. The Blades are really nice, but in my experience with heavy use they tend to overheat and cook batteries. Even the new ones have this problem, at least according to my experience and others I know. Best advice is to replace the battery every year, likely good advice for any laptop used heavily at full performance.

It all really comes down to what variables are important . . . size, cost, performance, noise and style. Hands down the Alienware and Razers are the nicest designs and best built. Others perform just as well for less cost, but with maybe not quite as good of build quality and aesthetics.

For me, I look at how I’ll use it. If I’m on the road a lot, maybe touring, and need a light load and quick set up then I’ll opt for a Razer or AW. If it is for studio work or larger installation usage then one of the others.

Finally, my latest laptop is an ASUS G 14, which just came out. For me it hits a great sweet spot of size, price and performance. Small enough to use on most airline seats, great battery life, RTX 2060, upgradable disk and memory at a price of $1450.

Oh, and one more thing. Yes, laptops depreciate quickly. My strategy has been to get 0% financing (Dell, Bestbuy, etc) over 18-24 months. I treat it as a lease and then upgrade after a year and half or so. I can sell for 1/2-2/3 of what I paid, pay ~$125/month and always have the latest hardware

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Yeap, its a good machine, Does every y740 has screen compatible with g-sync?

Hey!

This is just a feedback after 2 month of working with the Lenovo legion y740. It is a great laptop, haven’t dropped frames and been able to pretty much do everything in Touchdesigner. However the laptop definetly has some heating issues, and i’m getting screen lags every now and then(Got some small white green squares once). that go away once i restart the laptop. If anyone is interested in getting it, make sure to read about its heating issues. Otherwise the laptop is great. The above mentioned problems happened three times but it might become worst. For other animation softwares the laptop can be a bit slower especially for Houdini.

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