^ This. Also, if the Mac ecosystem feels too tight, look into a refurbished Dell XPS 15 9530 i7 32GB RAM 1TB SSD. People keep saying the Mac is king, but the XPS has plenty of ports and a killer screen for a fraction of the cost. I used one for years and it handled heavy layers without breaking a sweat. Just save that extra cash for a good external monitor honestly.

> Is the extra screen space on the ASUS worth skipping the Mac ecosystem? Honestly, no. I tried using the ASUS Vivobook Pro 16X OLED 16GB RAM 512GB SSD for design work and unfortunately the color shifts and thermal issues were a nightmare. For that budget, grab a Apple MacBook Air M3 13-inch 16GB RAM 512GB SSD. Just get a cheap hub for ports, honestly. The reliability for Adobe Suite is way better than dealing with Windows driver headaches.

Honestly, I had some rough experiences with those consumer-grade laptops. The color accuracy and thermal throttling on the ones I tried were unfortunately not as good as expected for professional Adobe workflows. My current setup taught me that consistent performance matters way more than just screen size or specs on paper. Just prioritize high sRGB coverage and reliable cooling, otherwise you'll be fighting your own hardware when deadlines start piling up.