The Absolute Best Video Editing Laptops (2021)

The holiday season is upon us, but even more

importantly: it might be time for a new laptop.

Whether you’re an experienced video editor or videographer, having a capable laptop that can process the gigabytes of footage you’ll be down, rendering, and uploading during your time you’ll be recording is essential. An ideal video editing laptop has plenty of RAM (8GB or more, 16GB+ ideally), a large solid state drive to hold all of your files in a secure place, a color accurate high-resolution display, plenty of ports, and to top off this lofty spec sheet, decent battery life.

We’ve rounded up a few of the best laptops we found worthy of your next YouTube debut. Just don’t ask us how to go viral.

Input may receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article. We only include products that have been independently selected by Input's editorial team.

MACBOOK PRO (LATE-2021)

After years of creators leaving their Macs behind for an ever-evolving market of Windows laptops with powerful mobile GPUs, Apple finally gave enthusiasts and professional users what they wanted: an SD card slot. Add to that a new ProMotion display, revamped keyboard, and the powerful Apple M1 Pro chip that supports up to 64GB RAM. With specs like that, you can handle 4K (and even 8K) video on a laptop.

MSI GS76 STEALTH

If you want a gaming laptop with the ability to do all sorts of video editing with an excellent set of ports, look no further than the MSI GS76 Stealth. It’s more like a slim desktop replacement laptop with a 17-inch screen. You can output 8K content over the HDMI port, load up images and videos with the SD card slot, and crunch through big videos in editing apps with Nvidia RTX 30xx series graphics cards. Plus, MSI offers 1080p, 1440p, and 4K display options. There’s basically a spec of the GS76 Stealth for every creator's need.

AORUS 15P (INTEL 11TH GEN)

If for whatever reason you want to stand out for having a laptop brand that not too many outside of the PC enthusiasts community know about, then go ahead with the Aorus 15P. It has an awesome 15.6” FHD 360Hz IPS display with Thunderbolt 4 ports, RTX 30 series graphics cards, and supports PCIe Gen4 SSDs for the latest in fast storage. Although it’s a gaming laptop, it has a muted appearance with a nearly bezel-less screen, so it’s aesthetically tame while also having an excellent cooling system that helps it perform under load. You know, when you’re rendering videos.

RAZER BLADE 15 ADVANCED

The current generation of the Blade resolves some of its cooling issues due to its slim frame and high-end specs. Besides having access to Intel chips and Nvidia RTX 30 series GPUs like the rest of the Windows laptops in this list, the Razer Blade has several screen options, all with sRGB color display certification. You can opt for a 100% sRGB color accurate 360Hz full HD display, a 165Hz QHD display, a 240Hz qHD, a 4K display, and finally a 4K touch OLED display.

RAZER BLADE 17

Just like the Blade 15 Advanced, the bigger Blade 17 has high-end graphics and processor options, along with QHD, full HD, and 4K touch displays. How does it stand out? It’s got an SD card slot. I think you can notice the trend here — a good creator laptop needs a seamless way to read creator files, straight from the camera. While the Blade 15 Advanced doesn’t have a secure digital slot, it makes up for it in weight and footprint. So, take your pick!

ASUS ROG ZEPHYRUS G15

The Zephyrus G14 is rather clean, but has some of the gaming elements, like high-end discrete RTX graphics, a QHD screen for a better-than-HD experience, but this time around it uses an AMD Ryzen 9 chip for processing power.

MICROSOFT SURFACE LAPTOP STUDIO

The Surface Laptop Studio has an interesting, easel-like hinge that makes it ideal for up-close work on the touchscreen. It has SD card slot, Surface Slim Pen 2 support for drawing and retouching, and 11th-gen Intel processors, Iris Xe graphics or an RTX 3050 Ti discrete GPU. So basically; it’s fast.

DELL XPS 15

Dell has been making the XPS 15 for years and it’s sort of a staple of Windows ultrabooks at this point. It also has the suddenly ubiquitous SD card slot, but has a muted, corporate appearance. The keyboard is comfortable and accurate to use for those late-nights and long hours of video editing that you plan on doing. On top of that, Dell moved the webcam back to the top of the display, despite having a nearly bezel-less appearance.

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