Looking to kickstart your YouTube or Twitch career? Check out some of the best laptops for video editing.

It takes time to create a stunning video. From the first brainstorming session to scriptwriting, to actually filming it’s a lot of work. The last thing you want to do at the end of an edit session is to wait for your work to be rendered and ready to share with the world.A speedy laptop for video editing is about more than just the latest processor. You’ll also want a powerful GPU to speed up exporting, but often that means you’ll give up some portability. Although, that’s not always the case, as you’ll see below.The spec sheet of most video editing laptops reads a lot like a gaming laptop, with color tuned displays, RTX 20-series GPUs, and cooling systems to ensure everything keeps running. But that’s necessarily a bad thing. You’ll save yourself some time, and when you’re done working, you can open your favorite game and escape for a couple of hours.
These are the Best Laptops For Video Editing
1. Gigabyte Aero 15
Best Laptop For Video Editing
Display: 15.6-inch UHD (3,840 x 2,160) AMOLED CPU: Intel Core i7-10875H GPU: Nvidia RTX 2060 (6GB GDDR6 VRAM) RAM: 16GB DDR4 (2,666MHz) Storage: 512GB NVMe SSD Weight: 4.4 pounds Size: 14 x 9.8 x 0.8
To edit video, you need to have a lot of power and a great monitor to preview your content. That’s just what the Gigabyte Aero 15 has to offer. This laptop features a Samsung AMOLED display that comes X-Rite Pantone color calibrated, so you’ll be getting accurate colors and astounding contrast. Let’s not forget that this is an Ultra HD display either, so it will have incredibly crisp detail.Your editing will get a helpful boost from the performance offered by the Intel Core i7-10875H processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 with 6GB of VRAM packed inside. When you need to process effects and edit quickly on the go, you don’t want to have to sit around waiting forever to see your changes take effect. So, this kind of power will help ensure your edits are quick. This may not be the most powerful pick, but it makes up for that in portability by weighing in at just 4.4 pounds and measuring less than an inch thick.
2. Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch
Best MacBook For Video Editing
Display: 16-inch (3,072 x 1,920) Retina Display CPU: Intel Core i9 GPU: AMD Radeon Pro 5500M (4GB GDDR6 VRAM) RAM: 64GB Storage: 1TB SSD Weight: 4.3 pounds Size: 14.09 x 9.68 x 0.64
Apple’s 16-inch MacBook Pro is the most powerful MacBook Apple makes. It combines Apple’s typical minimal approach to design, with a high-resolution Retina display, an AMD Radeon Pro 5000M GPU, and a beefy 64GB of memory.It was also the first laptop Apple shipped with the new Magic Keyboard scissor mechanism that, so far, hasn’t experienced the same issues Apple’s keyboards had been plagued with. For anyone who lives inside Final Cut Pro X while on the go, the 16-inch MacBook Pro was made for you.
3. HP ZBook Studio x360 G5
Best 15-inch Laptop For Video Editing
Display: 15.6-inch FHD touchscreen (1,920x 1,080) CPU: Intel Xeon E-2176M GPU: Quadro P1000 (4GB GDDR4 VRAM) RAM: 16GB DDR4 (2,666MHz) Storage: 1TB NVMe SSD Weight: 4.99 pounds Size: 14.7 x 9.65 x 0.8
HP’s ZBook Studio base configuration may start with just an Intel Core i5 and integrated graphics, but HP offers configuration options to switch that out for an Intel Xeon E-2176M processor and the Nvidia Quadro P1000 GPU. Unlike the RTX or GTX lines which are primarily for gaming, the Quadro is designed and marketed for professional applications like CAD or video editing and support 10-bit color.The ZBook Studio x360 has a unique form factor with a screen that rotates nearly 360-degrees, a touchscreen, and stylus support. So you can flip around the display and use the included ZBook Pen to make edits, sketch graphics, or take notes. There are multiple configurations, doubling the memory or storage or both.
4. MSI GT76 Titan DT
Best 17-inch Laptop For Video Editing
Display: 17.3″ UHD (3,840 x 2,160) 60Hz CPU: Intel Core i9-10900K GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super (8GB GDDR6 VRAM) RAM: 64GB DDR4 (2,666MHz) Storage: 2TB NVMe SSD Weight: 9.26 pounds Size: 15.63″ x 12.99″ x 1.3″
If you want to do some serious video editing, you should plan on getting a beast of a laptop, and they don’t get much beastlier than 17-inch behemoths like the MSI GT76 Titan DT. This computer comes fully loaded with the power to chew through video editing workloads thanks to its combination of an Intel Core i9-10900K and Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super. That gives you ten processor cores to work with and 8GB of VRAM.You’re also getting 64GB of RAM, so you can work on large projects. And, the inclusion of 2TB of PCIe storage will make opening up projects and loading media a breeze.This laptop also makes good use of its 17-inch display by going with a 4K resolution, so you’ll be able to check your work in higher fidelity than you would get to on the 1080p displays more often found on laptops.
5. Asus ROG Zephyrus G14
Best Ultrabook For Video Editing
Display: 14″ FHD (1920×1080) 120Hz CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q RAM: 16GB DDR4 (3,200MHz) Storage: 1TB NVMe SSD Weight: 3.64 pounds Size: 12.8″ x 8.7″ x 0.7″
Believe it or not, there are ultrabooks that can handle video editing. That comes in large part thanks to AMD’s latest laptop processors. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (read our review) is the best option of the bunch with its AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS processor. That will give you eight processing cores and 16 threads with boost speeds up to 4.3GHz to speed through your workloads.The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 includes 16GB of RAM to keep your work running smoothly even when working on larger projects, and it has an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q for the CPU to hand over some of the rending to. Even with all that power, this ultrabook weighs less than four pounds and measures just 0.7 inches thick.
6. Alienware Area-51m R2
Best Desktop Replacement For Video Editing
Display: 17.3″ UHD (3,840 x 2,160) 60Hz CPU: Intel Core i9-10900K GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super (8GB GDDR6 VRAM) RAM: 32GB DDR4 (2,933MHz) Storage: 2TB (2x1TB) NVMe SSD RAID 0 Weight: 9.04 pounds Size: 15.85″ x 12.57″ x 1.7″
The Alienware Area-51m R2 may have the shape of a laptop, but it’s more akin to a desktop in some ways. This laptop is bulked up enough to offer the cooling needed by a desktop-class processor. Why is that? Because this laptop actually uses a desktop-class Intel Core i9-10900K. Combine that with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super and you’ve got a serious machine on your hands.The video editing capabilities of this machine are furthered along by the inclusion of 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage. If basic PCIe SSD storage wasn’t already fast enough for video editing, you’ll be pleased to hear that Dell configured this to use two 1TB drives in a RAID 0 configuration for extra bandwidth.
7. Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro X
Best High-End Video Editing Laptop
Display: 15.6-inch 4K UHD (3,840 x 2,160) NanoEdge Matte Display CPU: Intel Core i7-9750H GPU: NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 Max-Q (16GB GDDR6 VRAM) RAM: 48GB DDR4 (2,666MHz) Storage: 2TB M.2 PCIe 3.0 (2 x 1TB RAID 0) Weight: 4.4 pounds Size: 14.17 x 9.92 x 0.82
The Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro X may have a humble look to it, but even inside of its 4.4-pound chassis, it’s packing all the muscle it needs to handle some serious video work. The Intel Core i7-9750H isn’t the most powerful processor you’ll find for a laptop, but its got enough power to keep up. Where the real speed lies is in the Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 Max-Q graphics processor, which includes a whopping 16GB of VRAM.Though the Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro X has the ports you’d need to connect it to an external display for work, you don’t need to use them. The built-in display offers a 4K UHD resolution that well let you see everything in high detail. And, better still, it comes color calibrated to cover 100% of the Adobe RGB color space and is Pantone Validated for color accuracy with a Delta E below 1.5.
What to Look for in a laptop for video editing
In many ways, there’s a significant overlap between a great video editing laptop and a gaming laptop. You want something that’s powerful, while still being portable. Battery life is nice to have for everyday tasks, but when it comes to processing your latest shoot, you’ll want to keep your laptop plugged in.To help with processing, you’ll want a laptop with a powerful GPU. Nvidia’s latest RTX 20-series GPUs leverage Nvidia’s Max-Q design that trades a slight decrease in performance for a smaller overall size, and in turn, allowing for a light and portable laptop (just look at the Razer Stealth). But don’t get caught up on with having to have the latest 20-series GPU unless you’re dealing with 8K video, you should be able to get by just fine with something like the GTX 1650.
When looking at processors in a laptop, Intel’s 10th generation chips are becoming commonplace, and future proof your investment, but aren’t a requirement. Intel’s 9th generation processors are just as capable and will save you a little money when shopping. A quick way to identify which generation is being used in a build is to look at the numbers that follow the processor name. For example, an Intel Core i7-1065G7 denotes a 10th generation Ice Lake processor. Whereas an Intel Core i7-9750H represents a 9th generation Coffee Lake processor.
Its easy to get caught up in looking at flashy gaming laptops, most of which will do just fine as a video editing machine. But dont limit yourself to a gaming machine, laptops like the ZBook Studio x360 or Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro are proof that non-gaming laptops are just as powerful and versatile.
Jason Cipriani has covered technology full-time for the past 8 years. During that time he has freelanced for the likes of CNET, Fortune, Time, ZDNet, Macworld, Wired, and TechRadar.