Honestly, 800 bucks is a real tight squeeze for smooth 4k editing, so you gotta be careful not to buy a machine with just integrated graphics. You absolutely need a dedicated GPU or you're gonna be right back at that slideshow situation. I've seen too many people buy thin notebooks and wonder why they overheat the second they hit render... it's a nightmare. I would suggest looking for these specific hardware floors to keep it under budget:

• Look for an RTX 3050 or 4050. Dont settle for anything less.
• 16GB RAM is the bare minimum. If you find a deal with 8GB, make sure the slots arent soldered so you can upgrade it yourself later.
• Look for an H-series processor like a Ryzen 7 or Intel i5-13500H, avoid the U-series chips meant for office work. From my experience, the Lenovo LOQ 15 15.6 inch FHD Ryzen 7 7840HS RTX 4050 8GB RAM 512GB SSD is probably your best bet right now. Youll likely need to spend 40 bucks to add another 8GB of RAM, but the cooling and GPU are solid. Another option is the Acer Swift X SFX14-41G-R1S6 AMD Ryzen 7 5800U RTX 3050 Ti 16GB RAM which is more portable for your hiking trips, tho the screen is a bit small. Make sure to learn how to use proxies in your editing software too. Even on a decent laptop, editing 4k raw files directly is a recipe for lag. If you use proxies, the experience will be way better and you wont blow your budget.

@Reply #1 - good point! In my experience tho, thin laptops often throttle during 4k renders. Over the years I've found that budget gaming rigs handle the heat much better. I'd suggest the HP Victus 15 Gaming Laptop Intel Core i5-13420H RTX 3050 16GB RAM instead. It has way more thermal headroom than the Swift, which is basically essential if you dont want it to lag out.

Been using this for years, no complaints