What is the best laptop for professional video editing in 2024?

Question

What is the absolute best laptop for professional video editing in 2024 because I am honestly lost looking at all these specs. I am currently using an old Dell XPS that sounds like a jet engine and basically freezes every time I try to color grade in Premiere or DaVinci. I live in Chicago and I've got a massive wedding film project starting next month so I need to pull the trigger on a new machine like yesterday. My budget is sticking around $3000 to $3500 max.

I have been doing a ton of research and everyone keeps pointing towards the M3 Max MacBook Pro 14 or 16 inch models. People say the unified memory is magic but then I read other threads where people say for the same price I could get a Razer Blade or a high-end ASUS ProArt with an RTX 4080 that would crush it in rendering speeds. The thing that confuses me is the RAM... Apple makes it sound like 36GB of their memory is like 64GB on a PC but I dont know if that is just marketing hype or if I actually need to shell out for the 64GB or 96GB versions to handle 4K 10-bit footage without lag. It is kida overwhelming trying to compare apples to oranges and I dont want to make a huge mistake.

I usually work with:

4K 60fps footage from a Sony A7SIII

Lots of heavy color grading and some After Effects motion graphics

Long timelines sometimes 30-40 minutes

Is the Mac really that much smoother for the actual editing process or should I stick with a Windows machine for the raw power? I've heard the thermal throttling on the thinner laptops is a nightmare too so I'm worried about spending $3k on something that slows down after an hour of work. Does anyone have real-world experience with the new chips this year or am I just gonna be disappointed either way?

Gooome345 · Accepted Answer

I've been using the Apple MacBook Pro 16 M3 Max 16-core CPU 40-core GPU 48GB RAM for my wedding edits and it's been rock solid.

Unified memory handles 4K 10-bit Sony footage easily

It stays totally silent during heavy color grading

48GB is the sweet spot for After Effects work Zero complaints after the switch. It's much smoother for daily editing than my old PC setup ever was.

ldnwvspyyn · Answer

Honestly, if you're worried about the budget and need reliability for After Effects, the Apple marketing about RAM is a bit misleading. AE is a total memory hog regardless of the architecture. For 40-minute timelines and heavy motion graphics, you really want 64GB at a minimum to avoid those preview stutters and laggy renders. If you want to save some cash without sacrificing stability, the ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED H7604 is a solid technical choice. You can usually find the version with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 and 64GB of RAM for well under $3000. It has a physical dial that is actually pretty handy for scrubbing in Premiere or DaVinci. The cooling systems in these ProArt models are designed for long renders, so they dont throttle as hard as the thin-and-light gaming laptops usually do. If you're dead set on the Mac side tho, dont settle for the base 36GB if you're doing long wedding films. You'll hit a wall fast. But for the money you're talking about, you could get a fully spec'd Windows machine and still have $500 left over for a high-quality Samsung T9 Portable SSD 2TB or two. Just something to think about before spending the whole $3500 on a single machine.