Do I need a laptop, a tablet, or a phone?

Forums › Laptops and mobile computers › Do I need a laptop, a tablet, or a phone?

mudguard

656 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 127

Topic # 232205 4-Apr-2018 18:07

Ok, so this topic has been done ad nauseam but I want some help. My situation I suppose is a little unique. I'll list what I'd like to do and what I currently have.

First up. I travel for work. Quite a bit. I'm away from home seven weeks out of eight but I'm usually home for weekends.

What I want to do, I have several GoPros, a phone that records in 4K, and a Sony RX100 that records in 4K also. I'd like to be able to edit small clips into movies and chuck them on YouTube and share them. I record my friends playing golf and riding mountainbikes so the finished product is never more than a few minutes long, and I'll upload so we can watch. And laugh.

However, I don't have a laptop capable of editing 4K content, so I'm trying to decide to just simply replace my existing laptop (which is actually a Samsung hybrid tablet that I never use as a tablet, Windows), my actual tablet or my phone.

I generally take the following away with me.

Work laptop. Locked down, cannot be used for anything else.

Work iPhone. Locked down, cannot be used for anything else.

Nexus 7 2013 LTE. I love this dearly, fits in my pocket, walk to dinner, peruse news and I have the odd app I don't like having on my phone (Instagram, Facebook, which is just a Chrome bookmark) etc. But the touch screen is becoming glitchy and the battery is giving up. I also like having it in the glovebox as I'm able to check some non locked down work stuff as well.

LG G4, works well. I use it for music and photos etc. Has a new battery

Samsung ATIV something hybrid laptop, absolutely basic, but boots fast and I just use Chrome really.

Various GoPros and my wee Sony Camera.

I rarely watch video on anything, I have Netflix and YouTube obviously, but spend little time on it when I'm away.

Should I get a grunty laptop (Dell XPS 13/15 something else?) to replace the existing hybrid, let my tablet die, or is there a do it all device?

I like the lightweight aspect of Ultrabooks and battery life would be useful, but not essential if a gaming laptop (which I know nothing about other than they have large screens and dedicated graphics cards) would do the job. Is there a grunty tablet that would do all this? Fewer chargers would be great, I already bring a 5 way Anker charger with me, laptop chargers tend to be a PIA. Or are the newer phones capable of this sort of thing? Bearing in mind getting stuff off the camera needs a physical connection for video.

What are your thoughts callers?

Edit. I'm leaning towards a six inch phone (Note or Pixel 2) and a grunty laptop or tablet? No Apple products at this stage.

Batman

Mad Scientist
19329 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 2531

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

Reply # 1988352 4-Apr-2018 19:59

Video editing on the go is very tough on a laptop. Your laptop will need a graphics card that is either GTX 1050 Ti or GTX 1060. Nothing else will do when you mention 4K. (1070 or 1080 is recommended but that will cost you upwards of 3-5 grand.)

There is a tablet that can easily do 4K video editing, and that's the latest ipad pro 10.5, the 12.9 is one gen behind and will also manage if you need a bigger screen (it's much bigger). The ONLY issue with the ipad is ... umm ... it doesn't like files that are not of a certain spec. So it may not be able to pull your video files.

Swype on iOS is detrimental to accurate typing. Apologies in advance.

mudguard

656 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 127

Reply # 1988353 4-Apr-2018 20:01

Budget for laptop is about right $3500 probably the limit. Definitely no Apple products.

timmmay

14284 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 2590

Trusted

Subscriber

Reply # 1988354 4-Apr-2018 20:03

I can edit QFHD (3840 x 2160) on my PC, which has an i7 2600K and no video card, just what's built into the CPU. I might not be able to appreciate it, but I can edit it.

So long as you're patient with your render times I think a decent spec modern laptop should be ok. There's probably a way to edit with proxies rather than full res 4K.

AWS Certified Solution Architect Professional, Sysop Administrator Associate, and Developer Associate
TOGAF certified enterprise architect
Professional photographer

gzt

10310 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1582

Reply # 1988356 4-Apr-2018 20:13

mudguard:
Budget for laptop is about right $3500 probably the limit. Definitely no Apple products.

I'd consider trialing a surface book for those requirements. You are the target market. Screen is good but not 4k. I'm thinking go pro footage might be forgiving enough for that. 2/3.

Batman

Mad Scientist
19329 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 2531

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

Reply # 1988357 4-Apr-2018 20:18

Has anyone ever stress tested a surface book? editing videos will produce maximum heat on the CPU and GPU and ventilation is required, otherwise it will throttle and be running at snail pace within a minute. Macbooks all fail stress testing lol.

Swype on iOS is detrimental to accurate typing. Apologies in advance.

mudguard

656 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 127

Reply # 1988359 4-Apr-2018 20:24

timmmay:

So long as you're patient with your render times I think a decent spec modern laptop should be ok. There's probably a way to edit with proxies rather than full res 4K.

That's good to know. I'm not under any time constraints, IE needing to use a the device while it renders. I'm happy to leave it to do it's thing. I guess I'm a bit tired of lugging different things around.

gzt

10310 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1582

Reply # 1988540 5-Apr-2018 08:45

It's almost a case for rendering remotely.

mudguard

656 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 127

Reply # 1988828 5-Apr-2018 15:18

gzt: It's almost a case for rendering remotely.

I had to google that. I'm not sure that's ideal as I'm relying on hotel/motel wifi which can be awesome, or poor.

Batman

Mad Scientist
19329 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 2531

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

Reply # 1988873 5-Apr-2018 16:40

timmmay:

I can edit QFHD (3840 x 2160) on my PC, which has an i7 2600K and no video card, just what's built into the CPU. I might not be able to appreciate it, but I can edit it.

So long as you're patient with your render times I think a decent spec modern laptop should be ok. There's probably a way to edit with proxies rather than full res 4K.

the thing is ... a 3.4GHz quad core (2600K) is very powerful compared to anything mobile

anything 7th gen mobile intel is not even close when comparing with the 2600K.

8th gen yes, because they added 2 cores, but even then, the clock speeds ....

Swype on iOS is detrimental to accurate typing. Apologies in advance.

Batman

Mad Scientist
19329 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 2531

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

Reply # 1988877 5-Apr-2018 16:45

benchmark i7 7500U

2600K

now you're talking i7 7700HQ

now here's the real deal 8350u

Swype on iOS is detrimental to accurate typing. Apologies in advance.

mudguard

656 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 127

Reply # 2017335 17-May-2018 08:59

Quick update. I bought an XPS 15, i7, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD. It arrived on Monday but I'm away for work. So I'll give a run down once I've used it for a bit.

sidefx

3223 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 923

Trusted

Reply # 2017407 17-May-2018 09:38

Nice, looks like a pretty sweet setup

mudguard

656 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 127

Reply # 2075616 19-Aug-2018 10:26

That other thread reminded me to update this as I've had about three months on it.

First up, it seems built fairly solidly, sure the lid has no natural place to pry it apart from the base, but it is angled slightly and there is enough weight on the bottom of the laptop to lever it up. The charger connection feels a little cheap, and has an extremely bright light around it, so much so that I've wrapped black tape around it to stop it lighting up the room (I'm often in motel rooms). It is a heavy sucker, more so as I travel with two laptops, but I've almost completely stopped using my Nexus tablet, it's just so nice to use a full size laptop, webpages load so quickly.

The screen is gorgeous, I have the 4K touch enabled version, I almost never use the touch screen, the main reason I seem to have the most oily fingers, no idea why, phones, tablets, I just cover in finger prints. So I didn't buy it for touch, I wanted 4K. I've been editing 4K clips on it and haven't seen it struggle, the only real time I've heard the fans crank up, is when I render a video, they are off almost the rest of the time. I don't know enough about computers to test anything else, the clips I'm playing with are usually shorter than 20 minutes and I'm very much learning Premiere as I go.

I like the fingerprint unlock, it's very fast to boot into Windows, I still think I'd like to have tried the XPS 13 for a week or so, but went with the dedicated graphics card instead. I'm not sure if I needed something spec'd like I did, but there was an element of future proofing, plus I'd only ever had low end laptops which I would find slow at times.