Bison Bud

I think this is good advice, especially if you do not plan to use an external monitor for your editing. To be totally portable, as it appears you wish, the laptop's monitor and amount of storage available would be my first priorities.

In-lightened Loc: Kansas City

To expand on both of these comments...if you plan to use Topaz, look carefully at the GPU capability. Photoshop is moving more into AI usage in their software as well. Sadly, if you stay only at the bare minimum of GPU capability, said laptop won't keep up a handful of years down the road. If Windows is you choice, you might want to consider a gamers laptop. These will have the graphics card you need. I like my Razer laptop for travel. Asus makes good stuff too. External hard drives for storage and backup. A small travel USB hub saves your ports and keeps things easily organized making backup easy.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

I would be careful what kind of gamer graphics card you get. Some have been known to sacrifice color accuracy for speed.

Wasabi

Agree with the Lenovo suggestions. Gamers video, lots of drive space, and 16Gb memory included at Costco.

Silverrails

I have a similar problem, that being I own a Chromebook 15 Laptop, and have been told that it is not a Good Laptop for Doing Photography editing and storage. I was advised to consider the Apple Macbook Pro, but also advised to use a "Window" based Laptop computer. As you mentioned a good Laptop is at leased $2,000.00, maybe less if you find a deal or a used one. I am not at all familiar with the Photo-Processing & Editing part of Digital Photography. I want to eventually learn how to Edit RAW, because I do understand the advantage in Processing of RAW Images in my Photography. So, I am interested in following this Thread here and see what other Photographers might recommend to Us. I love Digital Photography, but the lack of my Technology education is telling my age, as I am 69 years old and much of this Technology today is completely "Over My Head".!!

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

You put B&H on the list. That makes it easy. I have last years version of this when Costco had it. It works wonderfully for photography, videography and everything else.

5 pounds, an inch thick, good keyboard. Large, fast 512GB SSD for operating system and programs. 16GB RAM which is enough to run Photoshop and the Lighrooms at the same time. It has a 1TB HDD to store lots and lots of image files.

Less than $1500!

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1538197-REG/lenovo_81sx0005us_y540_i7_9750h_16gb_512gb.html/specs

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

Costco has been running sales on Apple. I love the Apple and particularly for its screen.

RonMe Loc: San Antonio

I bought a 13" Lenovo X1 Carbon on sale for $1299 from Costco in November and I liked it a lot until it completely failed (wouldn't turn on) after about 3 weeks. Although I don't remember all of the specs, I believe it had 16 GB of ram and either a 512 GB or 1 TB SSD. Costco was more than happy to take the computer back and I purchased a Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 Touchscreen with 10th Gen Intel Core i7-1065G7, 4K ultra HD on sale for $2199 on sale through Costco's online store. The Dell I bought has a 13.4" screen with narrow bezel, 32 GB of ram and 1 TB SSD.

I also experienced issues with the Dell with very fast battery drain when turned off. With the help of Dell's tech support, they were able to remotely troubleshoot the problem and made an adjustment in the bios that disabled a "new feature" that was causing the problem.

The point I'm trying to make here is that I really liked both laptops a lot and both gave me problems. As suggested by others, I think it is important to address your buying decision with the following in mind:

1). Decide on PC or Mac
2). Decide on design (i.e. 2-in-1 versus traditional laptop or some variation thereof)
3). Decide on size (I opted for a light-weight 13 inch laptop as I wanted to use it while traveling).
4). Other technical specifications such as Ram and HDD sizes

I believe your budget is reasonable and good sales are out there to be had if you watch for them. I'm a big believer of buying computers from Costco (or similar) that offer extended warranties and generous return policies.

Finally, it is my experience that a current PC tower will work better than most laptops for photo processing, so it is best to manage expectations to avoid disappointment. Again, I really liked the form and function of both the Lenovo and Dell, so either way, I don't think you can go wrong! I'm not a Mac person, so I will leave that discussion up to others. Good luck!

John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN

Either a PC or a Mac will be able to do the heavy lifting. I would suggest you do all the image file storing on solid state drives - no moving parts so nothing to wear out plus there are terrabyte sizes at reasonable prices. But your main job will be folder and file naming which brings your way of thinking into play as the primary force. Some options are date & time, place & event, people & event. The possibilities are endless. Good luck, your best counsel will come from within.

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

Solid state has one drawback if (when) it fail (all drives do) you can't retrieve any of it. I would duplicate all your files anyway.

Opsafari Loc: Roodepoort South Africa

A friend recently contacted me regarding some advice regarding photography and computers. He recently retired and has a big interest in birds and insects and finance is also a bit tight. He wants a camera that is better than his cellular to take photos of birds and insects so that he can go back to his home to view and identify the said photos.

We in South Africa is blessed with a large number of LBJ and other bird species and a large selection of insects! He currently lives in a small village surrounded with various habitats. This will keep him busy hoping that this will turn into an active hobby. My advice to him regarding a suitable camera is a hybrid with a good built-in telephoto lens as a DSLR setup will be to expensive, keep in mind we in South Africa pays a premium for cameras and related lenses!

There are many suitable cameras available. Regarding a pc, I told him to forget about a laptop other than a gaming one which is very expensive and don’t even think about Apple, apart being very expensive all the attached things are expensive like a stand-alone bigger monitor! My advice is to build his own desktop with a powerful video card, an i7 with ssd drive with external harddrives to store his photos. He also wants to do VHS transfers to video.

I also do a lot of photography and travel fairly a lot into the wilderness and take an old laptop with me to transfer data from my cameras to portable drives. I thought to do some editing in the bush but the laptop screen is not great. My desktop and laptop are abought the same age: about 15yrs! Bove were expensive new, bought to be able to do video and photography. The desktop I upgraded over the years trying to keep in step with chances in technology but the laptop I could only replace the current harddrive with a SSD but could not upgrade the current memory as the type of memory are no longer available for the laptop, but the desktop it was not a problem!

Over the years I upgraded my desktop monitor which you could not do for the laptop. I prefer to work with my desktop to do photography and at home and use the laptop when I travel with my vehicle into the bush. My 2 cents.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I tend to go the custom build route. Very few of the standard brands offer much in this area. With your budget, after you get done adding external drives, you won't be able to afford a Mac anything, unless you get a low end, entry level system. I have similar needs and habits (can't ever seem to find the delete key), though I need to support 2 external displays at my home office.

I am about to pull the trigger on this system for myself:

16.1" display
i7-9750H 6 core 12 thread
NVidia RTX2060 with 6 gb Vram
32 gb ram (user upgradeable to 64 gb)
1 TB m.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (boot drive)
1 TB m.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (second drive)
2 TB 2.5" SATA III SSD

Total price is $2317

A similarly configured 16" Macbook Pro would cost $4199. It would have 4 TB of storage, like the Windows machine, but it would be entirely on one drive, which is less desirable. For almost half the cost you get the same level of performance and storage, and you can stay within your budget.

Another way to look at this is what could you put together for the cost of this 16" Macbook Pro ($4200)

17.3" display 4K
i9-9750H 8 core 16 thread
NVidia RTX2070 with 8 gb Vram
32 gb ram (user upgradeable to 64 gb)
1 TB m.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (boot drive)
1 TB m.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (second drive)
4 TB 2.5" SATA III SSD (in Bay 1)
4 TB 2.5" SATA III SSD (in Bay 2)

Total price $4058. So, for the price of the Macbook Pro described above you can get a system with an 8 core, 16 thread CPU, a slightly larger display, and a whopping 10 TB of internal SSD storage. There is no economic or performance reason that could be used to justify an Apple purchase. But there are the emotional, status, aesthetic and other non-technical reasons that are perfectly valid for Mac fans, and are totally meaningless to people who are trying to get the most bang for their buck. I am not a fan of using external drives for everything. It makes the computer less portable.

Money is hard enough to come by these days - you can't go wrong with the Windows custom built system.

https://xoticpc.com/

I've been sending people to this custom integrator since 2012, and have had no complaints. My son spent a few $$$ on an engineering-class workstation to do 3D structural analysis and design, and to run his CNC routers for his design/fabrication business a couple of years ago and it is still doing fine - or was until the pandemic basically stopped his business in its tracks.

jackpinoh Loc: Kettering, OH 45419

We have had all types of PC laptops. They were all crap--screens delaminated, hinges broke power attachment to the motherboard broke. Now everyone in the family has Apple laptops. The only problem we have encountered is the trackpad on my daughters 2012 MacBook Air has started working poorly (we will have it replaced as soon as the Apple store reopens). I think the PC laptop companies cut corners because they compete directly with other PC laptop companies on price. Apple doesn't play that game.

captain ugly

You might look at some that are set up for gaming. The crowd that plays games on the computer demand all the features that make the lap top excellent for all you noted. Just about all the Brands have a group listed as gaming lap tops, any should meet your need.

Last year I purchased a "Omen" by HP at about $1,200. It has been excellent for all photo work. Note that "Omen" is available with various set up as to chip, graphic driver, etc.

captain ugly

I was just about to tell him the same thing. Solid state also has a limit as to how many read and writes before they fail. Yes it is why off into the future but they will fail.