Budget laptop for Youtubing ?

Kent ronin

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Any ideas guys ? Budget would be about £400 (no idea if thats realistic tbh lol).

No interest on it being good enough to game on or anything like that, purely just want 1 for easier video editing from my gopro (hero 7 black)

Thanks everyone :smashin:
 
Any ideas guys ? Budget would be about £400 (no idea if thats realistic tbh lol).

No interest on it being good enough to game on or anything like that, purely just want 1 for easier video editing from my gopro (hero 7 black)

Thanks everyone :smashin:
I recommended this to my brother recently:


My understanding is the 4GB is soldered but that there is another slot you could add an extra 8GB of RAM into, which would make this a pretty good buy for around £400.
 
I recommended this to my brother recently:


My understanding is the 4GB is soldered but that there is another slot you could add an extra 8GB of RAM into, which would make this a pretty good buy for around £400.
Thanks for the reply mate !!

A couple of people in real life have mentioned the ideapad, been watching a few youtube videos and im starting to think £400 just isnt realistic and i should just chuck a better 1 on the credit card lol
 
'Video editing' covers a wide range of different demands. Everything from professional CGI on high resolution video down to doing a few simple cuts and trims for some FHD footage.

Bear in mind that hardware reviews and other professional commentators tend to be focused on the former, so don't take them seriously if your requirements are closer to the latter.
 
It depends on what software you are wanting to use for editing.

Some - Like Premiere Pro renders on the graphics card, so a gaming laptop is equally suited to editing in this respect while much of the consumer / free software renders on the processor, so processor speed and cores comes into play.

My daughter has a Lenovo very similar to that but with the i5 processor. We upgraded it to 12Gb ram and an SSD and it's fine for basic gaming, browsing and occasional video editing. Rendering is a little slow - about 0.5x real time dependant upon number of layers of video, titles and effects etc. It stays nice and cool and the fan is pretty quiet as well.
 
What resolution are the videos and how long? Main question. You can get quite far even on a sub £200, used laptop.
 
Thanks for the replies guys !! Makes me realise how little i know *** lol.

I started just using my galaxy s9 and editing on that which is a pain, so last week i got a gopro hero 7 black to shoot in 4k, so im not biased to any editing software as ive never used any lol.

noiseboy72 - Sounds like i need to look into Lenovo then mate !

myprecious - 4k now and sub 20mins id say (maybe even sub 10mins mostly)
 
It really depends on what you mean by editing. Heck a chrome book can do video editing or YouTubing. Just upload and edit in there. Or there are several online video editors as well.
 
Is your content really 4K? Is it really any good?
If so then you'd best look at studio quality equipment. Not a £200 or a £400 laptop. While the information in these forums helps you really don't want to come here from a point of ignorance seeking advice. I don't mean to be rude, just saying.
 
Learn to create content first. 1080p is more than sufficient. To do this you can get by with any fairly standard spec'd laptop. Laptop will definitely be easier than editing on a phone. Over time, do your research and learn about the different hardware available for both capturing content as well as also processing it later.
 
Is your content really 4K? Is it really any good?
If so then you'd best look at studio quality equipment. Not a £200 or a £400 laptop. While the information in these forums helps you really don't want to come here from a point of ignorance seeking advice. I don't mean to be rude, just saying.
He is using a GoPro Hero 7 black, what do you think it can record in?
 
It really depends on what you mean by editing. Heck a chrome book can do video editing or YouTubing. Just upload and edit in there. Or there are several online video editors as well.

Just standard youtube stuff mate, transitions and background music i suppose lol
 
Is your content really 4K? Is it really any good?
If so then you'd best look at studio quality equipment. Not a £200 or a £400 laptop. While the information in these forums helps you really don't want to come here from a point of ignorance seeking advice. I don't mean to be rude, just saying.

Im guessing its really 4k unless the gopro is lying lol, “is my content really any good ?.” I guess that depends on if your into outdoors/hiking/camping stuff mate, if not youll prob think its shit lol.
 
You really don't need "Studio Quality" gear to edit a GoPro for YouTube irrespective of resolution. It's really no different to editing 1080p, it just makes the system a bit laggy if you try and stack up too many layers or apply too many effects. Simple cutting together, a few speed changes and some graphics will be fine. The final render might take a bit longer, but still no major dramas.

The major thing people often needed to to with GoPro footage - and that took a fair amount of processing grunt was image stabilisation, but with the 7, you just don't need to worry, as the camera has already done it for you.

I am not suggesting that a mid point laptop is going to be anywhere near as smooth or quick to use as a quad processor, multi graphics card workstation, but that really is overkill unless you are working on commercial or broadcast productions. Hell, I started out editing on a Fast601 non linear editor - the first realtime full resolution (576i) system available. That had a Pentium III processor running at 500MHz!!
 
You really don't need "Studio Quality" gear to edit a GoPro for YouTube irrespective of resolution. It's really no different to editing 1080p, it just makes the system a bit laggy if you try and stack up too many layers or apply too many effects. Simple cutting together, a few speed changes and some graphics will be fine. The final render might take a bit longer, but still no major dramas.

The major thing people often needed to to with GoPro footage - and that took a fair amount of processing grunt was image stabilisation, but with the 7, you just don't need to worry, as the camera has already done it for you.

I am not suggesting that a mid point laptop is going to be anywhere near as smooth or quick to use as a quad processor, multi graphics card workstation, but that really is overkill unless you are working on commercial or broadcast productions. Hell, I started out editing on a Fast601 non linear editor - the first realtime full resolution (576i) system available. That had a Pentium III processor running at 500MHz!!

Cheers mate thanks for your help !!!

My 4yr old watches other kids on youtube *** i never assumed it was this complicated lol, i assume the easy idiots quide answer is to just buy a macbook like 90% of youtubers lol
 
The difference in resolution matters. Considerably. He is shooting in 4K right? To be fair you could use any system but then it becomes a question of time, how quickly can the jobs be processed.

Unless you're just doing videos on the fly, the sort of system you have/need/get goes hand in hand with the camera you have. You have to think about your equipment in advance.
 
Macs are good, easy to use and relatively quick - until they get hot and chop processor speed, but a laptop contains almost the same hardware, just in a plastic case instead or some shiny aluminium...

The only thing you need to decide on is what software you want to use. I grew up using Adobe Premiere, starting out with 3.0 and now on Premiere Pro CC.

Premiere Elements is a good little product for less than £90 and automates lots of the workflow, supports the Hero7 and provides lots of the transitions, hyperlapse, variable speed and other effects that everybody seems to apply to every action video these days... You will be a 'Tube guru in literally minutes...

Ideally you want 16Gb ram and an i7 processor to edit 4K, but it will run on less, it just gets a bit laggy from time to time.

 
The difference in resolution matters. Considerably. He is shooting in 4K right? To be fair you could use any system but then it becomes a question of time, how quickly can the jobs be processed.

Unless you're just doing videos on the fly, the sort of system you have/need/get goes hand in hand with the camera you have. You have to think about your equipment in advance.
Yes mate its set to 4k, 60 fps for the hypersmooth.
 
Macs are good, easy to use and relatively quick - until they get hot and chop processor speed, but a laptop contains almost the same hardware, just in a plastic case instead or some shiny aluminium...

The only thing you need to decide on is what software you want to use. I grew up using Adobe Premiere, starting out with 3.0 and now on Premiere Pro CC.

Premiere Elements is a good little product for less than £90 and automates lots of the workflow, supports the Hero7 and provides lots of the transitions, hyperlapse, variable speed and other effects that everybody seems to apply to every action video these days... You will be a 'Tube guru in literally minutes...

Ideally you want 16Gb ram and an i7 processor to edit 4K, but it will run on less, it just gets a bit laggy from time to time.


Haha premiere elements it is then mate lol, i think the direction im going in is chucking a macbook air on my credit card
 
Depending o the length of your videos, I can suggest you look for this spec. Of-course you can work on smaller segments and then piece them together.

- Core i7-7000HQ based CPU minimum (this has integrated graphics with good improvements in H264/265 video encoding)
- 16GB+ DDR4 RAM (2666MHz)
- 512GB+ NVMe SSD with ample swap partition
- (Optional extra, dedicated video processing GPU) such as nVidia GTX model. Though if you are going for dedicated GPU be sure to shell out on this properly (ie, the max you can spend).

TBH looking at this you'd be better off getting a desktop with good amounts of power rather than a laptop. You won't get a laptop within £400 at this spec.
 
Depending o the length of your videos, I can suggest you look for this spec. Of-course you can work on smaller segments and then piece them together.

- Core i7-7000HQ based CPU minimum (this has integrated graphics with good improvements in H264/265 video encoding)
- 16GB+ DDR4 RAM (2666MHz)
- 512GB+ NVMe SSD with ample swap partition
- (Optional extra, dedicated video processing GPU) such as nVidia GTX model. Though if you are going for dedicated GPU be sure to shell out on this properly (ie, the max you can spend).

TBH looking at this you'd be better off getting a desktop with good amounts of power rather than a laptop. You won't get a laptop within £400 at this spec.

Thanks a lot mate, appreciate it !! Tbh ive realised 400 isnt a realistic amount to look at spending for what i want so ive prepared myself to go up to about a grand (been looking at macbooks as thats all i seem to see on youtube)
 
After you capture footage and apply filters and effcts to the video you'll need to re-encode the video back into a MKV or MP4 format. These are compressed formats.
 
For a grand you can get a really good desktop that will last years along with all the capacity you need to develop content over the years. Why do you need a laptop unless you're out in the field? If you care about the quality of the videos then it should be done properly.
 
For a grand you can get a really good desktop that will last years along with all the capacity you need to develop content over the years. Why do you need a laptop unless you're out in the field? If you care about the quality of the videos then it should be done properly.

Yeah never thought of just getting a desktop to be honest mate, you tend to just look at laptops nowadays i suppose lol
 
HP EliteDesk, Dell Optiplex, Lenovo ThinkCentre are all decent machines that you can get for well under 1000 and well suited for 4K/60fps work. These are Windows machines.
 

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