# Anyone recently bought a good laptop for music production?



## camerhil (Apr 2, 2018)

My main music production rig is a PC running Cubase, but I'm travelling a lot this summer and I'm looking for a laptop that's able to run Cubase and NI Komplete without falling to its knees. My budget is $1500, which I know won't get me a powerhouse, but if I'm able to do the lighter work on the laptop and then finish when I get home, that should work fine.

Has anyone bought a laptop in that general range (up to $2k I guess) recently that they can recommend? There are a ton of options out there, so a recommendation would help to narrow things down.

Thanks in advance!


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## chimuelo (Apr 2, 2018)

If you don’t mind using portable components the new Intel NUC uses an SoC with the 128NB eDRAM CPUs calling themselves i7 8700G.
I use a slower version called the i7 5775C and it’s a great Audio CPU.
HP Workstation laptops are getting great Cinebench scores.
But ADK Pros are still pretty sweet too.


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## camerhil (Apr 3, 2018)

That's a great starting point - thanks for the recommendations. Looks like there are a couple of HP Workstations right in my price range.


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## Tyll (Apr 3, 2018)

If you k ow what to look for, you'll get a really great laptop for that price.
I'd recommend the HP Probook 450 G3 with an 8250U processor.
It has an m.2 slot, one 2" drive slot and two memory slots which allows to have 32GB of RAM. Also it has a good display, decent battery life (1.5h on full load - which is quite a lot nowadays) and most importantly is pretty quiet. Well at least for me it is important to have a quiet laptop when making music on it .

You could go up to an 7700HQ, which will offer about 30% more power compared to the 8250U, but you'll also have a louder system. Acer Aspire 7 would be a good choice here. You'll also get a GTX 1050 GPU here, but that's not really needed for any composition tasks. Volume-wise the fans will go into the mid-40s decibels on the Acer 7700HQ and only low 30s on the HP Probook 8250u. That should be about twice the perceived volume.

In any case get whatever the lowest harddrive and RAM configuration is and upgrade yourself. Usually that's still cheaper and you can resell whatever came with the laptop. The Probook has maintenance lids as well. On the Acer you might have to break the warranty, but replacing memory here is not a hard task either.

If you have any other model in mind check out notebookcheck.com. They do very good reviews on a ton of laptops.

One honorable mention should be the ThinkPad L380 Yoga with an 8250U processor (I hope that's the correct name, it's the one with an 8250U and pen support). You'd sacrifice the 2" drive for a touch and pen display. Personally I'd love to have a pen display again because it's just such a good experience compared to a mouse pad. Also I'd love to use Staffpad again. You might also be eligible for an educational discount on the L380 Yoga - at least in Germany they do offer those.

Edit: You could also look into the real powerhorse computers with 64GB memory support and multiple harddrive slots. MSI for example makes those and you can sometimes get a year old model (6700Hq) on Amazone warehouse deals or eBay for around $1000. You'd still have to buy memory and drives though. I think the latest models offer 3 or 4 drive slots. However they are loud, have horrible battery lives and weight about a ton. So yeah...


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## camerhil (Apr 3, 2018)

I actually went ahead and ordered https://www.adkproaudio.com/adk-1qkl-15-inch-laptop (a model from ADK pro), which came to $1670 for a 16gb RAM, 500GB SSD, i7 7700HQ model. It seems very decent based on specs alone. I'll give an update once I've put it through its paces.


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## Tyll (Apr 3, 2018)

camerhil said:


> I actually went ahead and ordered https://www.adkproaudio.com/adk-1qkl-15-inch-laptop (a model from ADK pro), which came to $1670 for a 16gb RAM, 500GB SSD, i7 7700HQ model. It seems very decent based on specs alone. I'll give an update once I've put it through its paces.



Not sure if knowing makes you happy or not, but that reseller is pretty close to a scammer. The same laptop is available for $1098 at sager for example: https://www.sagernotebook.com/customize.php?productid=1218 ($799 + $99 RAM Upgrade + $150 SSD Upgrade).
You can go even cheaper just by buying the components (RAM+SSD) yourself.

Edit: Or on amazon for $1049: http://www.amazon.com/N855HJ-1920x1080-i7-7700HQ-Bluetooth-Warranty/dp/B071RY5YL2 (www.amazon.com/N855HJ-1920x1080-i7-7700HQ-Bluetooth-Warranty/dp/B071RY5YL2) )

These notebooks are made by Clevo and sold under many different names. Selling them as a pro audio laptop "perfect for mobile audio recording" is just a joke though. If anything they are just as good as any other latop with an 7700HP processor, some RAM and an SSD. Clevo systems are - with a very, very few exceptions - known to be on the cheap side of the spectrum. They work just like any other manufacturer, but on average safe costs by using cheaper displays, smaller batteries and worse cooling systems. Again, there are some good Clevo models, but I have yet to see any that is top notch.

So yeah, if I was in your shoes, I'd cancel the order if still possible. In Germany you usually can return for free for the first 30 days, I have read somewhere on that adk site that you might have to pay 15% return fee plus the windows licence (that would be a bad joke! You can get a windows licence legally for $20 on eBay by the way). If you want to, just use it, be happy with it and forget this post. I was not sure if I should write it in the first place since maybe you are just happy with what you bought, but oh well, I would be quite a bit angry if I fell for those guys.

Good luck and most importantly: Don't be too upset about this. Have fun making music


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## camerhil (Apr 3, 2018)

Ok, that is very good to know. I'll try to cancel my order. Thank you for the tip off.


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## chrisphan (Apr 3, 2018)

Your budget is actually not as limited as you may think. For $1300 or less I'm sure you'll find a lot of gaming laptops that have the specs you're looking for, if not higher


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