If you’re a graphic designer, then you might be wondering what the best laptop for graphic design is. This is a question that can be easily answered when you take a look at the laptops hardware, rather than the software installed. The hardware will influence how well the laptop performs when running software programs.

Plenty of people tend to choose either Apple or Dell when it comes to notebooks, due to strong brand awareness. They usually employ a lot of marketing strategies which make it clear that you won’t ever regret choosing one of their products. These two brands are known pretty much anywhere you look as the top manufacturers for all things laptop related.

If we’re talking about laptops for graphic design, then we shouldn’t ignore these two brands either since their products usually integrate the best in the tech world, and the models they bring out on a regular basis will have the latest processor model, along with more RAM than the previous model and a better graphics card.

Let’s take a look at a few of the things that actually matter for graphic designers:

Screen Size and Resolution

When you choose a laptop, make sure you understand this spec. The screen resolution if the amount of actual pixels the laptop can output on the screen, and it won’t necessarily have to do with the actual screen size itself. There are certain ultra-portable laptop models with small screens but high resolutions. This doesn’t mean you should settle for a small screen laptop for your design work. A 13 inch laptop might be attractive at first sight, and it might bring a lot of portability to the table, but it gets rather difficult to do any editing on such a small screen.

Your aim should be at a laptop which carries a screen that’s at least 15.4 inches in diagonal screen size. Also, the pixel density, or DPI should be high. There are new laptop models which can output Full HD resolutions even on a standard 15.4inch screen.

Before you buy the thing, make sure you test it out. This means doing an actual resolution test and see which resolution works best for you. These newer notebooks are capable of decent resolutions and it would be wise to take your time and go through them.

You should open up several programs, like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator and see how the overall layout of the software fits into the screen, how large the editing space really is and if the edited image is sharp enough for you to work with. After several tries, you should come to a point where you find a laptop that’s just perfect for the work you intend to do.

If there’s a laptop you might like, like one of those MacBook Air which are rather small both in resolution output and the screen size itself, it’s a good idea to get a monitor which you can use to extend the current laptop desktop, so you can store all the toolbars and dockers on your laptop screen and do the editing work on the big monitor where you can see it better.

System memory or RAM

The system memory is another crucial factor to look for when you’re picking a laptop for graphic design work. Graphic design programs tend to use a lot of RAM and that can lead to poor system performance if the laptop is not prepared for such a task. The more RAM your laptop has, the better it will run in the grand scheme of things. A lot of RAM means the added ability to run several design programs at once and easily switch between them. The amount of system memory installed will also impact pretty much anything else you might be running on your computer, from movies, games, browsing or actual office work.

hp pavilion ryzen 5 Now I know a lot of graphic designers and they tend to run a lot of programs all at once. Of course, their computers are configured with a ton of system memory which makes it easier for the computer to handle running Photoshop, Illustrator and other vector graphic design programs all at once. The thing to remember here is that the amount of system memory directly impacts overall system performance.