Content is our everything: TOP 5 laptops for photo and video processing

With the Legion line, Lenovo designers have managed an interesting trick: in fact, they have made a powerful and stylish premium laptop that carefully disguises itself as a gaming laptop. However, a powerful filling, an excellent screen and a strict appearance allow us to recommend it to people who are looking for an excellent work laptop, but they are very far from games.

The model has thin bezels, strict lines, unusual symmetry (look at the hinge that holds the screen), soft unobtrusive backlighting of the keyboard and a strict plain cover, which is covered with a pattern resembling either wood fiber or a fingerprint. To be honest, we'd be surprised if this model doesn't win a couple of statuettes for best design.

The production capacity of the Lenovo Legion Y530 is provided by a ninth-generation six-core Core i7 chip (supports multithreading, operates at frequencies from 2.6 to 4.5 GHz) and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 video accelerator with 4 GB of video memory. Complementing the picture are 16 GB of RAM, running at a frequency of 2666 MHz, and a 512 GB SSD drive. Without any reservations, this is a laptop with very serious characteristics, which can handle work of any complexity and any modern games.

In terms of additional functions, everything is modest. There is not even a pre-installed operating system. Otherwise, they would not have met the required amount of $1200. Of the original, only Harman speakers and an unusually comfortable keyboard come to mind. According to representatives of Lenovo, this is their reason for pride. The keys here are large, soft and quiet - and it is very comfortable to play and work on them. The increase in the size of the keys affected the location of the arrows and the number block. At first, it is unusual to use them, but after half an hour you completely forget about this feature.

If you look for this handsome man to work with multimedia content, then be sure to check with the seller about the display. The fact is that in different modifications there are several display options: a pair with a color gamut of 99% sRGB, but a different refresh rate, and one very simple one with not so good color reproduction. For working with graphics and video, the latter is not very suitable.

Laptops based on the new Intel 10th generation Comet Lake processors are gradually starting to go on sale. One of the first companies that presented a pack of new Comet Lake laptops was Asus. One of the most interesting models in the list of new products was the updated ZenBook 15, which stands out with powerful hardware, a protected case (complies with the military standard MIL-STD-810G) and an unusual touchpad that acts as a second screen.

The local touchpad is called the ScreenPad and is actually a second 5.65-inch screen that doubles as a touchpad and allows you to launch and multitask various applications. For example, here you can launch a calculator, create handwritten notes, hang a pack of macros on the touchpad to perform long key combinations with one click. In addition, it can be used as an additional display. Of course, only time will judge the success of this idea, but, in our opinion, its prospects are more interesting than those of the same Touch Bar. There is much more useful space here, and integration with third-party software allows us to hope that over time such things will occur more often. Indeed, in some ways it is even more convenient than a third-party controller for controlling a DAW or a separate keyboard with macros in Photoshop.

In terms of hardware, this is almost a flagship laptop with an excellent IPS display (100% sRGB color gamut), an accelerated Core i5 (4 cores, 8 threads, turbo boost up to 4.2 GHz), a fast 512 GB M.2 SSD and an optimal GTX graphics card 1650 Max-Q. In general, by the standards of 2020, this combination will not set performance records, but in most cases it is enough for toys, everyday tasks and professional activities. For example, relatively new games work without problems in FullHD resolution at medium graphics settings. In Destiny 2, the frame rate is kept at 60-70 FPS. In Metro Exodus and The Outer Worlds - 50 FPS. With all this in mind, I would like to scold the memory of the outdated DDR3 format. Yes, the difference in speed between it and DDR4 is not very big, but in the event of a memory failure or if you need to add another bar, it will be difficult to find one.

An 8-cell battery with 71 Wh is responsible for autonomy, a full charge takes just over 2 hours. They promise a record autonomy - almost 15 hours of work. In real conditions, it turns out, of course, less. In the "office" mode with a Wi-Fi connection, using a browser, mail, instant messengers and a relatively low screen brightness (about 50%), the laptop can withstand about 8 hours without recharging. At the same time, ScreenPad 2.0 was used as a regular touchpad. Against this background, the only thing that is somewhat frustrating is that, for all its modern filling, the updated Zenbook has not acquired Thunderbolt support and the ability to charge via USB-C. Although this is more of a Wishlist than a minus, because many laptops for the same money do not have either another.

The Asus ZenBook Pro 15 UX550GD is one of the best laptops on the market in terms of size and performance. With a case thickness of 18.9 mm and a weight of 1.8 kg, a powerful stuffing is hidden inside, which equally makes it both a productive work laptop and a full-fledged gaming station.

I am glad that this lightness of the laptop did not affect the structural strength in any way: the case is made of a single billet of aluminium and assembled to last. Also, the frameless design has a positive effect on the dimensions. The 15-inch display is surrounded by a very thin bezel on the top and sides, while a wider band with the Asus logo sits on the bottom. Because of this, the sleek ZenBook is often compared to a MacBook in reviews. The display itself looks great and displays 100% of the Adobe sRGB color space.

Inside the laptop is a quad-core Core i5 processor (2.3 GHz - 4 GHz) with multi-threading support, 8 GB of RAM, a fast and capacious 512 SSD drive and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 gaming graphics card with 4 GB of video memory. Such a filling allows you to play voracious toys at high graphics settings, work in Photoshop, Cubase and other professional software. Although we personally would like to see 16 GB of RAM and a more powerful 6-core Core i7 in a modern workstation. But given the $1,400 price tag, this combo seems to be justified, as there are plenty of more expensive premium laptops with less powerful hardware on the market.

For the Asus ZenBook Pro 15 UX550GD, the devil is in the details. This includes a well-thought-out cooling system, a four-speaker stereo system from Harman Kardon, a battery that can last about 9 hours, a built-in fingerprint scanner, an excellent glass touchpad, fast charging, modern USB-C ports and much more. Perhaps the only fly in the ointment in this barrel of honey is a not very convenient keyboard layout with a flattened block of arrows and a power button, which for some reason is located next to Backspace.

In recent years, the MSI catalog has accumulated a pack of interesting and not quite format laptops that blur the lines between ultrabooks, gaming laptops and powerful mobile stations designed for professional use. For example, the hero of this review, the MSI GS65 Stealth 8SE, is listed as a gaming laptop according to the passport, but very often it is bought specifically for working with multimedia content, because the combination of such powerful hardware, an excellent screen and pumped functionality is not often found in the segment of premium laptops.

On the one hand, we have a six-core Intel Core i7 processor of the latest generation (operating frequencies 2.2 - 4.1 GHz), a 256 GB SSD, 16 GB of DDR4 RAM and one of the most powerful mobile video cards on the market, RXT 2060 with 6 GB of video memory. That is, here we can safely talk about both high-quality video decoding and comfortable FPS in voracious games like RDR2 and Metro Exodus. On the other hand, we have an excellent IPS display with 100% sRGB color gamut, a high frame rate of 144 Hz and a low response time. The screen is excellent in all respects, even with the immodest price tag. And again, it is equally suitable for games and for working with visual content.

Considering the price tag of almost $2000, the rest of the laptop's components are not far behind. Firstly, all the iron is soldered into a very thin and strong aluminium case. If that's what you like about Macbooks, then you'll love the GS65 Stealth. A good picture is complemented by excellent sound: the laptop has a high-quality sound card with a good DAC and a pair of speakers from the eminent Danish manufacturer Dynaudio. The power is only a couple of watts, but they play very cleanly and pleasantly. The battery holds a charge for a decent 7 hours at an average display brightness and normal surfing mode.

Oh yeah, MSI also did a great job with the keyboard. It is a pleasure to play and type on it, and the large touchpad with gesture control is quickly addictive. In addition, the keyboard has a non-trivial backlight, which really distinguishes this model from other fancy laptops. The keys here are highlighted not from below, but from the inside, which is why only the symbol highlighted on the key glows. Moreover, each key can be individually backlit - the space bar glows blue, the function keys are blue, the numbers are green, etc. And for the keyboard itself, there are 8 different lighting effects.

Since the 2012 revamp of the Macbook lineup, Apple has pretty clearly marked the watershed—small Airs for ultrabook connoisseurs, regular Macs for everyone, powerful Pros for those who need a no-compromise work tool. The 2019 update mainly touched on the filling. So, according to the company, the updated laptops are 40% more powerful compared to the 6-core models of the previous generation and 100% more powerful than the 2018 models with quad-core chips.

In this particular case, we are talking about a bundle of a 12-thread Core i7 processor (maximum frequency 4.5 GHz), 16 GB of RAM, a 256 GB SSD and a simple Radeon Pro 555X discrete graphics card, which is not designed for games, but for basic work with graphics. With this boost in power, developers can compile code in Xcode up to 65% faster than previous generation Macs, and editors can edit up to 11 4K tracks simultaneously in Final Cut Pro.

The 15-inch Retina display is rightfully considered one of the best in consumer laptops. It uses an IPS-matrix with support for the DCI-P3 color space, excellent viewing angles, accurate calibration, a polarizing layer, a glossy finish and a chic margin of brightness of 500 cd / m2. And don't forget about True Tone support, which adjusts the color temperature depending on the ambient light. All in all, the Mac's display stands up to the rigors of graphic designers, which in itself says a lot.

In other pluses of the model, we traditionally write down a thin and stylish aluminium case, good autonomy (lasts up to 10 hours), Touch Bar (although the benefits of it are a matter of debate) and a fast fingerprint scanner. Peripherals traditionally go to the minuses: there are 4 USB-C ports with Thunderbolt integration - that's all, so if you want to connect a printer, an old smartphone, a tablet and any other gadget without USB-C to your laptop, you will have to get the appropriate adapter. Well, it’s worth remembering the low maintainability traditional for Apple: everything is soldered immediately on the motherboard, and it won’t work to replace any individual element.