What laptop to buy?

Go Dell referb Choose from the Video cards suggested above + get Dell precision laptop machine. Search their site then call in. The sales rep can see all the new product that has not gone online yet. + get the 2 year warranty. We use all Dell at Designengine and have for 20 years.

If you’re an ID student you’ll want to be sketching a lot - and digitally. Go with a Surface Pro 4 unless CAD is paramount, then maybe a Surface Book with the Nvidia GPU. Microsoft has student discounts available in their stores and online.

We use Wacom tablets at designengine. Does that Surface Pro work the same? If so defiantly Surface Pro 4

buy any laptop but don’t buy laptop with graphic card.

The Surface book from what I see will be a great machine for an ID student.
If you’re more on a budget consider the Toshiba Satellite Radius 15 P50W-C-10V.
Go for at least 8Gb RAM and a 256 SSD. Intel HD Graphics works fine, in fact I disabled my AMD card because the Intel card is more reliable particularly with Solidworks.
I always prefer to go for more performance and have a separate Wacom, it works for me as digital sketching is only a very small portion of the work that I do.
I have a Toshiba Satellite P50-B-10L for two years now and it is still a spectacular machine with 8 i7 processors, 16Gb RAM and a 256 SSD.

I think Dell or Samsung brand is enough for common use.
Macbook monitor is great for designers to work with PTS or Illustrator, After Effect.

Never buy HP. I say that as someone who has everything HP. Build quality is junk, they’re just cheap. But the cheapness has drawbacks. No proper heat dissipation on laptops for example.
What you want is an i7 6700 HQ, 16GB RAM, and an Nvidia 960/970/980. Ideally you want also an M2 SSD for your OS and an additional 2.5" SATA slot for a HDD so you can pick up a 1/2/3/4TB drive to stick in there depending on your needs.
For brands I would advise Lenovo or Asus and really nothing else.
For size I personally think the benefits of having 17.3" over 15.6" are massive. That 1.7" difference just makes the working experience so much mor enjoyable. There is also the added benefit of increased productivity through a larger screen size. The drawback is size/weight for carrying it around.

Highly recommend the Lenovo P50. You get a Quadro video card, up to 32gigs of RAM and a 2TB SSD is about $500. (buy the RAM and SSD separately). Spend as much as you can on the processor at least an i7 but the xeon can’t hurt either.

This will cover just about all of your needs for at least 3-5 years.

HP makes a wide range of laptops, and the Elitebook workstations are as well built (in the same factories) as half of the other high end laptops you’ll find. They have their entry level junk laptops, but the larger Zbooks are put together reasonably well. Not terribly elegant, but they get the job done.

what?

That is true, but being poor (possibly also stingy) I was addressing the “cheap as possible” option.
In which case I say avoid anything HP that is in the low price range. I can only speak for UK prices but for £800-900 what you can buy from Asus or Lenovo is significantly better than what you can get from HP in terms of build quality and hardware.

If it’s in your budget I recommend the Razer blade with 1060 chipset. You can get one for around $2100, it’s light, built like a MacBook, and is my favorite PC yet. It’ll run anything you throw at it and them some.

While the new Razer blade is not a cheap laptop I have been thinking about one of these lately to replace my desktop. Razer also has an external CORE that you can buy for putting a better GPU in. While the 1060 would be awesome for games I was thinking you could put a CAD card in the Core for the best of both worlds.

Glad to hear that, I recently took the plunge and ordered one.

I have been tempted by Maingear’s marketing videos for a laptop too, but not willing to pay the price they ask.

Agreed, my GF recently upgraded her 15" Macbook Pro to a Razer Blade for photography and video editing and she’s been very happy with her purchase. It’s a really well built machine and offers a lot of power in a small package. For a young company I’m impressed by their attention to detail. The triple serpent on the lid is kind of unfortunate. I think they may be surprised that a lot of creative professionals are interested in it and certainly not just gamers. An all black “sleeper” version would be really nice. Though I guess that’s just a vinyl wrap away…

You can prefer Lenovo company, this brand gives affordable, user-friendly, fast response and more services. I am also using last 4 year.

i think you should buy mac pro :wink:

The Dell XPS 13 is an excellent ultraportable laptop, the best 13-inch Windows model going for many. There’s also a mix of old and new connections, and a combo of a large battery and smart power management

I am using a MacBook with Quadro processor. I feel pretty good.