About to buy a new laptop. Should which one I buy factor in to my drone hobby? I'm brand new to this......

[Johnmcl7]

I thought Gaming laptop would be a good choice too. Turns out, gaming laptops are for gaming. I ordered a 17 inch HP OMEN with all the bells and whistles. Beautiful laptop but it was a gaming laptop and had problems with it and my editing software. I was using Premier Pro but have switched to Davinci Resolve. I sent the OMEN back. It was a good laptop if you are into gaming. The specs in your link look good for editing. I would recommend 32GB memory and 1TB if you can spare the $$$. The 32GB memory is really nice. Also beware, if you have to order one rather than buying off the shelf be prepared for about a 4 to 6 month wait. That was my experience.

What was the problem with the software? Given video processing is now heavily reliant on the graphics cards, editing software should be able to render much faster on a gaming laptop compared to a Windows laptop without a decent GPU. It's not the case with all of them buy gaming laptops are usually better for expansion as well with non-soldered ram slots and more storage slots. It's better longterm to be able to upgrade the PC plus it gives more options when buying, I bought a machine with 8GB RAM and a 1TB hard drive as the upgrades with the vendor were pricey and limited so I could chuck in 32GB ram and 2TB SSD for less than it would have cost to get 16GB/512GB SSD from the vendor.

 

[FLDave]

I edit 4K videos with a 2016 Toshiba Satellite S75 laptop using Shotcut. You don't need a massive computer for 4K editing. My My laptop has 16 GB memory, Intel Core i7-4720HQ processor, 17.3" display (1080p), HDMI with 4K output. What helps is the 2GB AMD Radeon R9 M265x dedicated graphics.
My suggestion for a laptop is to have dedicated graphics. Using CPU for generating exported video is not good, but using hardware graphics is fine.

 

[VanP]

What was the problem with the software? Given video processing is now heavily reliant on the graphics cards, editing software should be able to render much faster on a gaming laptop compared to a Windows laptop without a decent GPU. It's not the case with all of them buy gaming laptops are usually better for expansion as well with non-soldered ram slots and more storage slots. It's better longterm to be able to upgrade the PC plus it gives more options when buying, I bought a machine with 8GB RAM and a 1TB hard drive as the upgrades with the vendor were pricey and limited so I could chuck in 32GB ram and 2TB SSD for less than it would have cost to get 16GB/512GB SSD from the vendor.

The problem I experienced with the HP OMEN was, it was a gaming laptop. It had dedicated key's that were for gaming use as well as all of the gaming settings and programs that were preinstalled that I had no use for. It took 4 months for it to arrive. I went thru setting it up, I liked the gaming theme even though I am not into that but figured I would make it work. I loaded Premiere Pro, everything was moving right along and then I tried to load some video off of my micro SD card and it wouldn't read it. Long story short, I ended up sending it for repair. It was diagnosed as poor assembly. They replaced the reader and a few other parts and sent it back. I decided poor assembly was not acceptable at that price and sent it back for a full refund. I ended up ordering a HP ENVY with i9 processor 32gb memory and 2TB along with the NVIDIA RTX 3060. At the time that was one of only a few laptops available to me. Everyone was feeling the pinch of the chip shortages and other supply chain delays. I waited another 4 months for it to arrive. I am extremely happy I sent the OMEN back and very much enjoy editing on my HP Envy. That's was my experience.

 

[Johnmcl7]

It sounds like your main issues were not the fact it was a gaming laptop but the fact it took a long time to arrive and had a fault with it. I'm certainly not keen on some of the over the top gaming aesthetic but it's not common to all gaming laptops.

 

[JustJeff]

There's a HUGE difference in the computing power required to edit 4k video as opposed to 1080p , and thus you need a very expensive and powerful pc that can edit 4k video . Problem is if you are only going to put your edited 4k videos on youtube , then its going to look no better than the 1080p videos due to you tubes aggressive compression . I spent 3500 euro on a X17 alienware gaming Laptop for this very purpose and I can tell you the results from my 4k online videos are very disappointing

I didn't realize that. Thank you for making me aware.

 

[hydrolift]

Quick tip. Uploading to Youtube in 1080p will compress the video worse/more than 4K videos. A Youtube tip that is pretty widely known is to edit in 1080p and render it to a 4K file before uploading to Youtube. It will of course not be a proper 4K video, but it will look much nicer on Youtube due to a different type of compression.