If you’re looking for the best laptop for video editing, then finding the right machine can be tricky. After all, video editing is one of the most taxing tasks you can perform on any computer, let alone a laptop.

However, thanks to modern components being more powerful, and faster, than ever before, video editing on the go with a laptop is now a reality.

And while the appeal of standalone camcorders and video cameras have waned, the meteoric rise of YouTube, smartphones and digital cameras with video recording capabilities, action cameras, dashcams, drones and quality free video editors have produced a glut of videos in desperate need of editing. Fortunately, importing video no longer requires proprietary ports as was the case back in the day.

The good news is that unlike a few years ago, you can now tackle even the most challenging raw footage away from your desktop. The bad news? It will be expensive.

Well, it’s not all bad news, as we’ve put together a list of the best laptops for video editing, so you can shop in confidence. We also have a price comparison tool that will make sure you are getting the best deals for the best laptops for video editing.

Apple MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Touch Bar has plenty of potential

Up to four Thunderbolt 3 ports

Very expensive

Limited expansion capabilities

Once you go Apple, you are pretty much locked down when it comes to your hardware options. Fortunately, the newest MacBook Pro is hands-down the best Mac laptop ever designed for video editors.  The innovative Touch Bar makes it easier for videographers to intuitively access commands, while the Retina display on the 15-inch model offers more than enough pixels should you want to edit at native resolution in Full HD on the move.

We’d advise that you opt for a quad-core model rather than a dual-core one and choose as big a hard disk drive as your budget will allow. The laptop’s video subsystem is powerful enough to drive up to four 4K monitors if needs be, and with a 76Whr battery, it has enough oomph to last longer than most rivals. 

The cheapest model starts from AED 9,499, but with four Thunderbolt 3 ports and Radeon Pro 555 with 2GB memory graphics. A fully kitted model with 2TB SSD, a 3.1GHz Intel Core i7 CPU and 16GB memory will cost AED 16,699.

Start from: AED 7,999

Dell Precision 5500

Compact dimensions

Superb 4K display

Fast CPU and graphics

Shallow keyboard

Poor battery life

Dell’s XPS 15 was one of the true highlights in the 15-inch laptop space in 2016. It features the company’s space-saving InfinityEdge tech, which slims down the chassis size by shrinking the display’s bezels to mere millimetres.

It looks great and is practical to boot, allowing the machine to be slipped into a bag for easy transportation, so it was only a matter of time before Dell launched a version that’s geared towards businesses.

Step up the Precision 5510, which puts the ‘work’ into workstation. Essentially an XPS 15 that’s had a workstation-style makeover, it swaps Windows 10 Pro for the more business-friendly Windows 7 Pro – Free DOS and Ubuntu Linux 14.04 are also available as options.

And when it comes to specs, Dell has stripped away unnecessary features from the XPS 15 to bring the cost down: you won’t find gaming-grade graphics for example. Still, the basic system comes with a quad-core Intel Core i5 CPU, 16GB of RAM and an Nvidia Quadro M1000M GPU.

A tip: swap Windows 7 (the default OS) for Windows 10, choose Dell’s own Wi-Fi solution and remove the OS recovery DVD to save some money.

HP ZBook Studio G3

Quadro GPU, 4K display

Xeon CPU

No option for a more powerful battery

The HP ZBook Studio G3 laptop was announced back in November 2015 and competes with Dell’s Precision 15 5000 and Lenovo’s ThinkPad P50 series in terms of performance, features and also mobility.

The Studio G3 easily fits in the Ultrabook category with a weight of a tad under 2kg and a thickness of only 18mm, slightly heavier and a smidge thicker than the Precision 15 5000 but more portable and svelte than Lenovo’s laptop.

Where HP manages to score highly is when it comes to sheer value for money. The ZBook Studio G3 has a three-year warranty and the model we chose (T7W05ET) comes with an Intel Xeon E3 CPU with a massive 512GB SSD, a 4GB Nvidia Quadro M1000M GPU and a 4K display. 

Remember that unlike most of the laptops here, this one is designed to pass MIL-STD 810G testing. We just wished it had a bigger battery and more online configuration options like the rest of the competition. This is a fantastic piece of engineering, though, and one of the finest workstations on the market. 

Apple demonstrated that a laptop can be both powerful and elegant with its MacBook Pro, and also that a notebook doesn’t have to be a block of soulless anthracite plastic.

Price: AED 6,500

Lenovo ThinkPad P71

Expansion capabilities

Massive battery

Non-user replaceable battery

ExpressCard 34!

Lenovo’s ThinkPad P71 was one of the first notebooks featuring Intel’s Skylake processor, which should give it a boost in performance compared to Broadwell or Haswell chips. 

Equipped with ample storage and plenty of RAM, an excellent keyboard and a wide selection of ports for connectivity, Lenovo is positioning the ThinkPad P71 as the ultimate workstation that you can take on the go without missing your desktop.

As expected, it’s a superbly designed piece of engineering, having inherited the legendary ThinkPad keyboard with the equally iconic red pointing stick, the TrackPoint.

Like the ZBook Studio G3, it is designed to pass MIL-STD 810G testing and comes with a three-year onsite warranty, but it does have a much bigger 17-inch screen.

It is one of the more upgradable models here with four memory modules free plus the ability to have up to four storage drives. It is also the only laptop in this list to come with an LTE modem option, and has the largest battery at 96Whr.

Also worth mentioning is the X-Rite Pantone calibration tool, available as an option, which is great to keep your screen accurate for production work, as well as the Quadro GPU that comes with all the P70 SKUs. 

A tip: Shop around, popular online retailers like Ebuyer sell the P70 for far less than Lenovo does directly.