The Ultimate Production Laptop for 2013?

[keylight]

I'm heading overseas for several months and need to bring a computer for photo and video editing. I don't need much portability but my really going to miss my custom desktop, but it's just not going to be possible to bring it along.

I'll be using Avid, Premiere, AE, & PS. I'm wondering what people think of this setup in terms of quality, price, and performance.

CyberPower Fangbook X7-300 with:

• CPU: Quad Core i7-3840QM (2.80 GHz 8M Smart Cache, Max Turbo Freq. 3.80 GHz
• Memory: 32GB DDR3-1600 SODIMM (Corsair Vengeance Gaming)
• Video Card: NVIDIA GTX 680M 4GB
• Primary Drive: 250GB Samsung 840 SSD (or I could pull my older 256GB Samsung 830 from my desktop and re-use it to save some money)
• Storage Hard Drives: TWO 750GB 7200RPM SATA300

Price is approximately $2500.

This thing is shockingly large and heavy:

• 16.85" x 11.34" x 2.17" (W x D x H)
• 7.9 Lbs. (13.85 Lbs. with Battery)

Honestly, a 6lb battery? I'm guessing this is an error since other batteries of the same number of cells and capacity weigh about 1 lb. I'm waiting to hear back from CyberPower on this.

I don't know anything about the company and while I've seen some decent reviews online, any personal experience with the company from people here would carry more weight. And opinions more generally on this setup.

Oh, I'm also planning to do a Raid 0 or 1 on the Hard drives (not the SSD) but I'm not sure which yet.

EDIT: Since AE really benefits from a powerful card, I'd like to get something with the GTX 680M if possible. Also, I've been spoiled by a U2711 27" monitor with a resolution of 2560 x 1440. So a large screen is very important. The 17.3" 1920 x 1080 of the CyberPower will take some getting used to, but I probably won't want to go smaller/lower resolution.



Cheers!

 

[ASchear]

I'm not sure if you'll be interested in this route, but as it seems that you're not immediately going Mac I thought you might consider it. My recommendation is to use a Lenovo Thinkpad machine. I feel that this machine might be overpowered for your applications, unless you will be editing 4K footage.

I do all of my editing on Windows machines and bought a Lenovo T430 a few months back. It runs Media Composer 6 with no problems and edits AVCHD natively in Sony Vegas 12 with no problems at full resolution 1080p, and only cost me $700 on eBay. It is built very rugged so I feel it would be a great choice for travel. It feels much more solid than any of my previous laptops. My specs on it are:

i5 3220 processor
8GB ram
256GB SSD (main limitation, but I just use external storage)
nVidia 1GB video card (only one they offered at the time)

There are plenty of Lenovo machines on eBay (this one only took me about 3 weeks to find) and they also have a great refurbished section on their site. Brand new my machine would cost about $1100 from them I believe. I'm very happy with it. I really recommend the SSD as your main storage device. I was worried that with the i5 processor that it might have trouble, but the SSD and video card really pick up the slack. It can render 720p mpeg4 files from AVCHD footage in Vegas in real time.

 

[keylight]

I'm not sure if you'll be interested in this route, but as it seems that you're not immediately going Mac I thought you might consider it. My recommendation is to use a Lenovo Thinkpad machine. I feel that this machine might be overpowered for your applications, unless you will be editing 4K footage.

I do all of my editing on Windows machines and bought a Lenovo T430 a few months back. It runs Media Composer 6 with no problems and edits AVCHD natively in Sony Vegas 12 with no problems at full resolution 1080p, and only cost me $700 on eBay. It is built very rugged so I feel it would be a great choice for travel. It feels much more solid than any of my previous laptops. My specs on it are:

i5 3220 processor
8GB ram
256GB SSD (main limitation, but I just use external storage)
nVidia 1GB video card (only one they offered at the time)

There are plenty of Lenovo machines on eBay (this one only took me about 3 weeks to find) and they also have a great refurbished section on their site. Brand new my machine would cost about $1100 from them I believe. I'm very happy with it. I really recommend the SSD as your main storage device. I was worried that with the i5 processor that it might have trouble, but the SSD and video card really pick up the slack. It can render 720p mpeg4 files from AVCHD footage in Vegas in real time.

Thanks for the suggestion! I took a look at that Lenovo and I have 2 concerns, which I probably should have mentioned in my original post (and which I'll go back and edit in.

First, the graphics card. AE really benefits from a powerful card, and looking at the specs on the NVS 5400M compared to the GTX 680M... there's a big difference. (If I could get a dual GTX 680M, I probably would!)
Second, the screen size and resolution. I've been spoiled by a U2711 27" monitor with a resolution of 2560 x 1440. The 17.3" 1920 x 1080 of the CyberPower will take some getting used to. Not sure I could survive on a 14.0" 1600 x 900!

My last laptop for editing was the HP9440nw which considering it was purchased 6 years ago, was a great system with a 17" screen and a NVIDIA Quadro FX 1500M card. That card was half the $2800 price tag of the system! So these two specs are pretty important I think.

 

[ASchear]

Yeah the screen size might be difficult for you to adjust to. Most often when I'm working on it at home I hook it up to a second monitor just to add some real estate. I'm only working on 1680 x 1050 21" screens though so it wasn't such a huge change for me. I know the W530 has the option for a 1080p display, but on a 15.6" screen. They also have a 2GB Quadro card in that system. I was looking at it when buying mine but went for the lower price. Anyway, good luck on your purchase!