1. The list in brief
2. Best overall
3. Best budget
4. Best 2-in-1
5. Best Windows laptop
6. Best workstation
7. Benchmark comparisons
8. Recently reviewed
9. How to choose the best video editing laptop
10. FAQs
11. How we test laptops
12. Why trust Laptop Mag
The best video editing laptops hit at least two out of three must-have features: performance, battery life, and a bright and vivid display. (Some even have all three!) Those are important for any kind of laptop, but they are more-so for visual creatives. These are also often some of the best laptops for college, especially for majors working in media.
Apple's newest 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M4 Pro chip is one of those that hits all three, as have many of its MacBook Pros in the past. It's no secret they are a top choice among all kinds of creatives, especially video editors (who have the cash to spare).
For those who prefer Windows, there's no shortage of options, especially if price is a major concern. For the most budget-minded who don't edit enough to invest in a laptop with a discrete graphics card, there's the MSI Prestige 6 AI Evo. Thanks to its powerful Intel Arc integrated graphics, you don't necessarily need one — but its 4K OLED display is this laptop's headlining feature.
If you need something versatile and affordable and don't want to compromise performance or battery life, take a look at the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x. Don't let the size of this 2-in-1 laptop deceive you; it's a great option for anyone who needs more power than what the Prestige offers and a wider display color gamut than the MacBook Pro.
This page is constantly updated based on our latest reviews to reflect Laptop Mag's current picks for the best video editing laptops in 2024.
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Best overall
Fantastic performance combined a vibrant and bright display, and ridiculously good battery life, makes this laptop our top choice for video editors.
Best budget
An affordable, powerful, and thin and light laptop with a 4K display that rivals some of the other laptops on this list.
Best 2-in-1
For the video editor who also draws, this versatile laptop offers a wonderful combination of performance, battery life, and a color-accurate display with a incredibly wide color gamut — all in a teeny, tiny chassis.
Best Windows laptop
If you need the rendering performance of a discrete graphics card at a sub-MacBook Pro price, check out this laptop. It's powered by a new AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, a Nvidia RTX 4070, and is loaded with RAM and storage space.
Best workstation
With a discrete graphics card specfically designed for professional video editors — and an amazing 17 hours of battery life — this workstation is a gem of a laptop.
Joanna Nelius has reviewed laptops and computer hardware since 2018. Her work has appeared in The Verge, USA Today, Gizmodo, PC Gamer, and Maximum PC. She also holds an MFA from Chapman University and works as a creative writing instructor.
Best overall
The MacBook Pro 16 M4 Pro is an improvement over the M3 Max, our previous best overall pick, in nearly every way — at a less expensive price.
✔️ You skipped the M3 MacBook generation. The performance increase alone will feel like you're in a roller coaster shooting out of a loading bay.
✔️ You want discrete GPU power without the separate card. And to spare yourself the usual noise and heat that comes with those kinds of video editing laptops.
✖️ You already have an M3 Max. It's not worth spending thousands of dollars on a new laptop for a minor performance or battery life increase.
✖️ You don't need all the power it offers. Again, not worth spending thousands of dollars on a MacBook Pro if you occasionally edit videos.
If you're a professional video editor in need of a new laptop that can breeze through heavy video and 3D rendering workloads, we recommend the newest 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro with an M4 Pro processor.
Laptop Mag's managing editor, Sean Riley, describes it best in his review: "It's almost simultaneously the most powerful premium laptop we've reviewed while also offering the second-longest battery of any laptop we've tested." Our benchmark numbers mostly speak for themselves.
With 20 hours and 46 minutes of battery life, it lasts 7 hours longer than the average premium laptop and its main competitors, the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 Gen 9 and Asus ProArt PX16 (2024), between 10 and 11 hours, respectively. It also outlasts the MacBook Pro M3 Max by nearly 3 hours.
It outshines them all in the Geekbench 6 multicore benchmark, scoring 22,822. That's 47% faster than the Yoga Pro (12,141), 32% faster than the ProArt PX16 (15,286), and over 100% more than the average premium laptop (10,492). Compared to the M3 Max (21,182), that's an 8% speed increase; remember that the 16-inch Max configurations start at $3,499.
If you happen to be upgrading from an M2 Max, you might need help picking your jaw up off the floor: the M4 Pro was 45% faster in Laptop Mag's tests by comparison. My fiancé recently traded in his M2 Max for an M4 Pro, and while he didn't convey his excitement in words he did make happy grunting noises.
Everything else about this MacBook Pro is just as good or better than previous generations. It's still expensive, but it's our best overall pick for a reason.
See our full MacBook Pro 16 (M4 Pro) review.
Best budget
The MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo's fantastic balance of performance, battery life, portability, and glorious 4K OLED display make an easy laptop to recommend to budget-conscious video editors.
✔️ You need a great display. With a wide color gamut and a native 4K resolution, virtually anything you toss on its screen looks fantastic.
✔️ You're looking for a great value. For an "older" machine, this laptop's performance, features, and price are well-balanced — even up against newer laptops it's still impressive.
✖️ You want extremely long battery life. This laptop surpasses our 9-hour minimum, but it's becoming more common to find laptops that last between 15 and 20 hours on battery power.
✖️ You want a faster processor. Its performance is no tortoise, but it does have a last-gen chip. There are newer laptops that exceed what this one can do.
I've been writing buying guides for years, and I can't recall another laptop that has stood the test of time like the MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo. Laptop Mag originally reviewed it at the end of 2023, and it was our previous pick for best Windows video editing laptop — now it's our best budget!
The Prestige 16 AI Evo is still a MacBook Pro M3 challenger "PC laptop enthusiasts have longed for," as Mark Anthony Ramirez wrote in his review for Laptop Mag. Its performance hasn't lost its luster, even compared to Intel's new Lunar Lake chips. It still has one of the most color-rich and sharpest 4K OLED displays we've ever tested. Its battery life still fares well against its rivals — and for the price conscious it's often a couple of hundred dollars less than when it released.
Performance-wise, this laptop earns high marks for its multicore performance. In our Geekbench 6 test, the Prestige 16 AI Evo scored 13,310, higher than the mainstream laptop average of 10,435, and surpasses the 15-inch MacBook Air M3 by 10% (12,052). It also surpasses the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Ultra with a more powerful, Intel Core Ultra 9 185H chip by 2% (13,061) — and just pushes past the Asus Zenbook S 16 with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 by 1% (13,282).
Its 4K OLED display is still one of the best you'll find in a budget video editing laptop. It covers 137.9% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, well beyond the mainstream laptop average (81.5%) and its main rivals: the Air M3 (77.5%), Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i (105.7%), Galaxy Book 4 Ultra (81.8%), and Zenbook S 16 (79.7%).
It gets great battery life, too: 13 hours and 4 minutes, about 2 hours longer than the average mainstream laptop. It's not the longest we've tested — the MacBook Air gets over 15 hours, and the Galaxy Book 4 Ultra lasts 9 minutes longer — but its battery lasts longer than the Zenbook S 16 (11 hours) and Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i (9 hours, 51 minutes).
See our full MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo review.
Best 2-in-1
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x's bright, OLED display covers an overly generous portion of the DCI-P3 color gamut. It also gets fantastic performance and battery life, yet stays cool to the touch.
✔️ You want one device for video editing and drawing — especially for creating storyboards. No need to have a separate tablet for that when this laptop can literally transform into one!
✔️ You are on a budget. The Yoga Slim 7x offers the main features of a great video editing laptop without the high price normally associated with them.
✖️ Windows on ARM doesn't support your editing software. While this is less of an issue now than when this laptop was first released, it's still best to check for native ARM64 versions or that the x86 version can run fine via emulation.
✖️ You need more storage space, and you're not interested in buying an external drive; this laptop's SSD capacity is smaller than we recommend (even for hobbyists), and maxes out at 1TB.
For a 2-in-1 laptop, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x has all the makings of a great video editing machine. Laptop Mag's reviewer, Stevie Bonifield, said it "balances price and performance with a stylish design and strong battery life," on top of a sharp OLED display that produces vivid colors and inky blacks. Oh, and if you need to sketch some storyboard frames, it transforms into a tablet. No need to transfer files from a separate device!
This laptop's DCI-P3 color gamut coverage is one of the widest Laptop Mag has seen in the last year. At 155%, that's more than the LG Gram Pro 16 2-in-1 (133.5%), the Microsoft Surface Pro 11th Edition (115%), and way more than HP Spectre x360 (87%). It also gets bright, hitting a max of 464 nits in SDR and 785 nits in HDR. 431 nits is also the average SDR brightness for a premium laptop, so the Yoga Slim 7x is right on the money here. It's brighter than the Spectre (366 nits) and Gram Pro (392 nits), but falls behind the Surface Pro (564 nits).
creativeIt's essential for any creativity laptop to have fast multicore performance, as many creativity programs make full use of all the CPU's cores simultaneously. The Yoga Slim 7x has speed in spades. With a Snapdragon X Elite processor, it cranked out a benchmark score of 13,750 in Geekbench 6 — 11% faster than the Spectre (12,370) with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, 14% than the Gram Pro (11,897) with the same chip, but 5% slower than the Surface Pro (14,432) with a Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100.
However, that 5% difference didn't show up in Laptop Mag's HandBrake video transcoding benchmark; the Yoga Slim 7x converted a 4K video to 1080p a tad faster (5:16) than the Surface Pro (5:21). It performed the same test noticeably faster than the Spectre (7:30) and Gram Pro (8:52).
The Yoga Slim 7x has two potential downsides as a video editing laptop: app compatibility and its reflective OLED display. You might need to max out the display brightness to get rid of any lighting glare (which, of course, will shorten the battery life; the brighter the display, the more power it needs).
You'll also want to ensure your favorite editing app has a native ARM64 version since this laptop runs Windows on ARM. For most people, this shouldn't be an issue as popular programs like Premiere Pro, After Effects, Blender, and DaVinci Resolve, are compatible. But it's always good to double check!
See our full Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x review.
Best Windows laptop
The Asus ProArt P16 offers nearly everything you'd expect out of a MacBook Pro — for a lot less.
✔️ You want a discrete GPU. Between multitasking, rendering, transcoding, and everything else you needed done yesterday, this laptop's graphics card will help speed up your workflow.
✔️ You work with a wide color spectrum. This laptop covers a large portion of the DCI-P3 color gamut, making is a good choice for video editors.
✖️ The apps you need are only on macOS. Used to working in Final Cut Pro? Sorry, there isn't Windows version for that.
✖️ Long battery life is a necessity. With under 10 hours of battery life, this one major area where the Asus ProArt P16 falls behind many of its competitors.
For the video editor loyal to Windows, "The Asus ProArt P16 is a stellar example of what a creator laptop should be: powerful, reliable, and stylish," as our reviewer Stevie Bonifield said. You don't have to pay MacBook Pro prices to get suburb performance in a thin and light chassis with a beautiful design that's just as easy on your eyes as it is on your wallet.
The ProArt's AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, 32GB of RAM, and Nvidia RTX 4070 power it to a Geekbench 6 multicore score of 15,286, way beyond the average premium laptop. Compared to its rivals: it's 21% faster than the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i (12,141) with an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H and Nvidia RTX 4050; 15% than the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Ultra (13,061) with a Core Ultra 9 185H and RTX 4070; 15% than Acer Swift X 14 (13,114) with a Core Ultra 7 155H and RTX 4070.
That stellar performance also played out in Laptop Mag's Handbrake benchmark, transcoding a 4K video to 1080p in 3 minutes and 15 seconds, much faster than the average premium laptop (7:58). It also outpaced the Galaxy Book 4 Ultra (4:52), Yoga Pro 9i (3:53), and Swift X 14 (5:21).
It excelled in our 3DMark FireStrike synthetic graphics benchmark, too, scoring 24,284 — 29% higher than the Galaxy Book 4 Ultra (17,255), 12% than the Yoga Pro 9i (19,016), and 32% than the Swift X 14 (16,596).
While I'd normally recommend a laptop with a wider color gamut for creatives, the ProArt P16 covers enough of the DCI-P3 gamut (85.5%) to be serviceable for most people. That said, it covers more than the MacBook Pro M3 Max (81.8%), Galaxy Book 4 Ultra (81.8%), and Swift X 14 (79.6%), but much less than the Yoga Pro 9i (105.7%). It also has an SDR screen brightness of 356 nits, which is good, but the Yoga Pro 9i (737 nits) and M3 Max (560 nits) get much brighter.
The ProArt P16's battery life is a bigger letdown, though: 9 hours and 32 minutes. That's noticeably less than Galaxy Book 4 Ultra (13:15), way less than the MacBook Pro M3 Max (18:05), and just shy of the Yoga Pro 9i (9:51).
See our full Asus ProArt P16 review.
Best workstation
The Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 boasts an Ada Generation Nvidia RTX 1000 processor for professionals looking for stability and reliability. That along with long battery life in a portable design, you might forget this is a workstation instead of an average laptop.
✔️ Your setup has a lot of accessories. This laptop has ports-a-plenty for that: USB Type-A, USB Type-C, HDMI, an SD card reader, and 3.5mm audio.
✔️ You need long battery life. This laptop lasted over 17 hours in our web surfing battery test — and while that number will be less if you're running power-intensive tasks, it'll still get longer battery life than the average workstation.
✖️ You need a higher display resolution. You can upgrade this configuration with an optional 4K OLED panel, but that's adding on to the price tag of an already expensive laptop.
✖️ You need a more vibrant or brighter display. It covers an average portion of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and its peak brightness doesn't break 400 nits — both significantly less than some of it competitors.
For the video editor who is extra cautious about maintaining the integrity of their files' data, the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 is aimed directly at that kind of professional use. "While it may not be the most powerful workstation we’ve ever seen here at Laptop Mag," our staff writer Madeline Ricchiuto said in her review, it has enough "performance to handle photo and video editing, 3D rendering, or heavy data analysis you’d want out of a workstation machine." It isn't impractically expensive, either (at least when it's on sale).
With a Geekbench 6 multicore benchmark average of 12,974, it's outpaced by the likes of HP's ZBook Studio 16 G10 and Apple's MacBook Pro 16 M4 Pro by 11% to 44%, respectively — and even some less expensive competitors like the Asus ProArt P16 (15,286, or 16%).
However, it did transcode a 4K video 1080p in a swift 4 minutes and 21 seconds in our Handbrake benchmark test. That's a little faster than the ZBook Studio (4:37), though shy of the ProArt P16 (3:15). Keep in mind this laptop is designed for stable and reliable workloads — slower performance is the norm when you compare this kind of workstation to any laptop with a discrete gaming graphics card, like the ProArt P16.
I don't know about you, but I'd be willing to sacrifice a little performance for this ThinkPad's battery life: an outstanding 17 hours and 23 minutes. That's as long or longer than some productivity laptops and definitely much longer than the average workstation's 5 or 6 hours! The ZBook Studio (6:01) and ProArt P16 (9:32) can't compare here.
We do wish this laptop had a better display for its price. The $4,584 configuration we reviewed is outfitted with only a 1920 X 1200 IPS panel, covering just 78.6% of the DCI-P3 color gamut (much lower than the ZBook Studio's 117%). Its max brightness is 386 nits — bright enough for an IPS display to ward off glare, though if you are looking for retina-searing levels of brightness, the MacBook Pro M4 Pro reaches a peak of 565 nits.
See our full Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 review.
Benchmark comparisons
Click to view chart data in table format
| Apple MacBook Pro 16 M3 Max | MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo | Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x | Asus ProArt P16 | Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 | |
| Geekbench 6 (Higher is better) | 20,863 | 13,310 | 13,750 | 15,286 | 12,974 |
| Handbrake time ((MM.SS), lower is better) | 18.05 | 5.17 | 5.16 | 3.15 | 4.22 |
| Battery life - Web surfing (HH.MM) | 18.05 | 14.06 | 14.14 | 9.32 | 17.23 |
| SSD transfer speeds (MBps, higher is better) | 6272.5 | 1400 | Not tested | Not tested | 2071 |
| DCI-P3 Color Gamut (Higher is better) | 81.8 | 137 | 155 | 85.5 | 78.6 |
| Display Brightness (Nits, higher is better) | 560 | 368 | 464 | 356 | 386 |
| Hottest temperature (95 degree comfort threshold) | 82 | 98.5 | 86 | 87.6 | 84.2 |
Recently reviewed
Not every laptop can make the best video editing laptops page. (We wouldn't be doing you that much good if that were the case!) We review new laptops every week and over 100 laptops yearly, so here's a look at our most recently reviewed laptops that didn't make this page either due to a fault, battery life, performance, or something else.
How to choose the best video editing laptop
The best video editing laptop for one person probably won't be the same as the next. Everyone has different budgets and different projects; editing short, ASMR videos in 1080p isn't the same as editing a full-length feature film in 4K. If you know what you want to do with a video editing laptop, that will help narrow down your choices.
If you're a hobbyist, you can most likely get away with any laptop released in the last year or two for under $1,500. If you're a professional editor who needs a top-of-the-line laptop, it's even more important to have a budget in mind as these laptops can easily exceed $3,000. (We've seen them go as high as $8,000!)
In general, video editing leans heavily on the processor, so look for something with an Apple M3 Max or M4 (Pro or Max), AMD Ryzen AI 9, Intel Core Ultra, or Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip. If you need to step back a generation for the sake of affordability, that's fine too, though it may increase how long it takes to render or transcode your videos.
If you need speed, look for a video editing laptop with a discrete graphics card (usually an Nvidia GeForce RTX 40-series, RTX A-series, or RTX Ada Generation). A lot of intensive video-editing tasks can be processed by the GPU instead of the CPU, which can save you a lot of time.
But whether a hobbyist or professional, do not skimp on RAM! 16GB is the absolute floor for hobbyists and 24GB for professionals, though we recommend at least 32GB for the latter.
You'll also want enough storage space for all your videos and editing programs, at least 1TB to 2TB. Not all of the best video editing laptops are configurable with more than 2TB of storage space, though, and if they are their price usually goes up drastically; an external SSD is a great, cost-saving option to get around that. (Or if you're feeling spicy, build your own cloud storage.)
FAQs
Q: Does video editing require a discrete GPU?
Not necessarily! You can do encoding, transcoding, and other common video editing tasks with just the processor and its integrated graphics. Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips are particularly great at this; they're built on ARM architecture, like Apple's M-series, which generally process tasks more efficiently.
But running the same resource-heavy tasks with a discrete GPU lets you take advantage of Hardware Acceleration, a common feature in popular image and video editing programs. Instead of relying on the CPU and RAM to do all the work, Hardware Acceleration uses the GPU to perform the same tasks much faster.
Most of today's integrated graphics (Intel Arc, AMD Radeon, and Apple's M-series) are powerful enough to cut down on the time it takes to run all sorts of video editing-related tasks — not as much as a discrete GPU, but usually a couple of minutes. MacBooks' integrated graphics are especially great for video editing, which is a big part of why there are two of 'em on our list.
Q: What discrete graphics card do I need?
Most of the more-affordable video editing laptops use Nvidia GeForce RTX 40-series cards. These GPUs are primarily for gaming, but they also work with Nvidia Studio Drivers, which provide more stability and reliability for content creation.
Workstations usually come with Nvidia's RTX A-series or Ada Generation graphics cards, which are designed specfically for professional workstations and have better data integrity and stability. (They're more expensive, too!)
Q: How much RAM do I need for video editing?
It depends! With a discrete GPU (which has its own on-board video RAM) and Hardware Acceleration, you can get away with at least 16GB if you're not working on anything resource-intensive. But if you edit videos for a living, we recommend a minimum of 24GB — though if you have the budget for 32GB or more, that would be ideal.
If the video editing laptop you have your eye on has unified memory (RAM that is built into the CPU itself), you probably want to configure it with at least 32GB of RAM. The RAM in these laptops is shared between the CPU and integrated graphics; if you don't have enough total RAM, then the integrated graphics might not have enough resources to render large video or 3D files.
Q: What is a Copilot+ PC?
A: Microsoft has specific requirements as to what it considers a Copilot+ PC. One of those requirements is that a laptop's processor must have an NPU capable of reaching at least 40 TOPS to run more advanced Windows AI features like Recall, Automatic super-resolution, and Live Captions.
Copilot+ PCs have a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite or Plus, an Intel Core Ultra 200V series, or AMD Ryzen AI 300 series processor. However, the advanced AI features are currently only available on Snapdragon laptops. A free update for Intel and AMD laptops should be available to Windows Insiders by December 2024.
Q: How is a Windows on ARM laptop different from a regular (x86) Windows laptop?
A: Windows on ARM laptops are configured with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite or Plus processor. Laptops with the x86 version of Windows are powered by an Intel or AMD processor. Each Windows version uses a different instruction set (ARM or x86), so it needs a processor that can run it.
For most people, using one version of Windows or the other shouldn't be an issue. But depending on what apps you use day to day, some might not be compatible with Windows on ARM. App compatibility is growing, but it's best to verify what you need will work before buying one of these laptops.
How we test video editing laptops
We put each laptop through extensive benchmark testing — both synthetic and real-world — before they end up in the hands of our reviewers. We evaluate each aspect of the laptop, including its performance, battery life, display, speakers and heat management.
In our benchmark testing, we use a Klein K10 colorimeter to detect the brightness and DCI-P3 color gamut of the laptop's display. For performance testing, we run the laptop through a gauntlet of benchmarks, including Geekbench 6, PugetBench for Adobe applications, and 3DMark professional graphics tests.
To determine real-world performance, we convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution and duplicate a 25GB file. Our real-world graphics test is Cid Meier's Civilization V: Gathering Storm benchmark at 1080p resolution and Medium graphics. We also run heat tests by playing a 15-minute full-screen video and measuring temperatures in different areas of the laptop.
For our battery test, we continuously web surfing over WiFi at 150 nits of brightness. For MacBooks and premium Windows 11 laptops, anything over 10 hours is a good result, whereas gaming laptops and workstations that can stay powered longer than 5 hours deserve praise.
We complement these tests with extensive hands-on testing from our reviewers, who critique everything from the laptop's materials to the feel of its touchpad.
See this page on How We Test Laptops for more details on our benchmarking procedures.
Why trust Laptop Mag
Laptop Mag reviews over a hundred different laptops every year, from paperweight ultralights to everyday workhorses to lumbering gaming notebooks that scorch the frame rates of even the hottest AAA games. We're not just experts in the laptop field, as we go one step further by meticulously testing smartphones, tablets, headphones, PC accessories, software, and even the latest in gaming.
We are 100% independent and have decades of experience to help you buy with confidence. In fact, Laptop Mag has been testing and reviewing products for three decades, and we continue to deliver trustworthy reviews you can rely on.
Our experienced team of writers and editors scour the available information about the laptop and put it through its paces to determine which is best for you. But before they start, the testing team subjects each system to a rigorous regimen of synthetic and real-world tests to see how a system handles the type of work and games you’re most likely to throw at it.
Our editorial trustworthiness is enforced by one of the world's largest technology publishers, Future Publishing. As a company, we have unrivaled experience across every tech sector — and we're the group's specialist for all things mobile tech.
