Looking to upgrade your laptop? Maybe you're heading to college and not kitted out yet. Either way, if you're in the market for a new machine, our pick of the best laptops for graphic design will help you select the right option.
When choosing a laptop for your daily design work, there are many things to consider. One is power versus portability: you need something that’s thin and light enough to throw in your backpack, but also powerful enough to run your suite of creative tools.
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And you need to decide whether macOS or Windows is right for you. The former used to be the staple of creative professionals, but it really doesn’t matter what platform you use these days.
Whatever your preferences, each of the three machines here will give you all the power and performance you need to hit the ground running with your studies. Read on for our pick of the best laptops for graphic design.
Microsoft's Surface Book is an incredible machine – even in its lowest spec option. That's why we're highlighting it as our overall best laptop for graphic design.
The fact that you can use it as both a tablet and laptop makes it the ultimate digital sketchbook. Just detach the screen and draw using the included Surface Pen, or buy the innovative Surface Dial for £90 and get an intuitive way of controlling your creative tools.
Even better, flip the screen around, reattach it and you can use it to draw at a more natural angle. It’s on offer at £1,299 for the lowest spec at the moment – which is a bargain for such a versatile, powerful creative machine.
Read: Our review of Microsoft Surface Book.
If you’re looking for all-out power and price isn’t too much of a consideration, check out the rip-roaring HP ZBook Studio G4 – the latest in HP’s line of mobile workstations.
The top-end model isn’t cheap, but it packs incredible specs including a 15.6-inch 4K DreamColor display that can easily be colour calibrated, a blazing-fast Core Intel Xeon CPU, 32GB RAM, a 512GB SSD and NVIDIA Quadro M1200 dedicated graphics with 4GB VRAM. There’s also a healthy range of ports for peripherals and Bang & Olufsen speakers.
At just over 2kg (4.6lbs), it won’t break your back carrying it around, and it’s pretty thin at 18mm.
Read: Our sister site TechRadar’s HP ZBook 15 G4 review
It might be expensive, but the MacBook Pro has long been the staple of creative professionals wanting the perfect blend of power and portability. Fast, light, thin and with a fantastic screen, the machine is bolstered by the new Touch Bar – which enables you to perform quick tasks in apps (as long as they’re supported) with a flick of a finger.
Specs are, as you would expect, pretty damn good, with the latest i7 CPU and 16GB RAM. Most impressive of all is the build quality – this really is a beautiful laptop.
Read: TechRadar’s MacBook Pro with Touch review
The XPS 15 is a truly stunning laptop – and starting at £1,399 it’s pretty affordable, too. For that price, you get the virtually borderless ‘InfiniteEdge’ display at Full HD resolution, a Core i5 CPU, 8GB RAM and a 1TB HD and 32GB SSD.
Spec it up a little (or a lot, actually) and you can get a 4K display with multi-touch, turning it – with the help of the Dell stylus – into a portable sketchbook. If you don’t need a 15-incher, look to the XPS 13, which is perhaps the perfect blend of power and portability.
Read: TechRadar's review of the Dell XPS 15
The MacBook perfectly balances power and portability – and looks fantastic to boot. It might not have a lot of ports (one USB-C to be precise). And it might not have the power or screen size of the MacBook Pro. But for £1,249 it’s a great option for designing on the go – and a brilliant laptop for graphic design students.
A 12-inch screen is at the heart of the MacBook, but you can of course plug it into an external display using an adaptor (via USB-C). And at 2304 x 1440 pixels there’s plenty of real estate.
If you’re feeling a little flush, you can configure it with up to 16GB RAM – plenty for all but the most demanding tasks. Light, powerful and utterly stylish, the MacBook is a fantastic option for design students.
Read: TechRadar's MacBook review
The Surface Laptop is one of the best laptops for graphic design students. Even the lowest-end model at £949 is powerful enough to run Photoshop and Illustrator on a daily basis, and the fact you can use the optional Surface Pen to draw directly on screen makes it even more appealing.
Bear in mind that if you want to run Creative Cloud apps, you’ll need to switch to Windows 10 which is free until early 2018. (The Surface Laptop comes with Windows 10 S – which only enables software from the Windows Store to be installed.)
Still, with its sleek looks and fabric keyboard, the Surface Laptop looks great and performs excellently.
Read: Our review of the Surface Laptop
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- Top alternatives to the MacBook Pro
- Best laptops for Photoshop
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