Hey guys, I don't have a huge budget prob up to 600 bucks so thinking of getting 2nd hand. And for a bit of video editing I was wondering what websites have good laptops available. Using it mostly for everyday stuff, the worst I'll do is some video editing. I preciate the help!
Is something like this decent? https://nzpcclearance.co.nz/product/lenovo-thinkpad-t470-i7-…
No recommendations specifically, but for video editing you'll want minimum 16GB RAM, preferably 32GB. Get as big a disk as possible, preferably look for NVMe (it's much faster) but at the very least it should be SSD - don't get one with a HDD.
There are a few on the website above from @Drcspy which fit the bill, but $600 is probably a little on the light side. If it's just basic YT editing you're probably fine, anything more significant and you'll need more grunt. If you can stretch a bit to $700-800 you can get a much more suitable laptop.
U doubt theres much options for a 32gb in this price range haha. What would be an example 700 to 800, might be able to make it work in that range
There are several on TM, I'm not specifically recommending these (get your own advice), but at a glance they may be suitable:
https://www.trademe.co.nz/4640032523
https://www.trademe.co.nz/4643148251
Is there any compelling reason you need it to be a laptop?
You'll generally pay a lot more for a lot less in laptop format than if you buy a desktop.
Some options on TM right now - both $800 buy now. These are NOT recommendations for your use case, just examples of what might be interesting:
PC - Xeon E5-2680 v4 / 14 Core / GTX 970 4GB / 32GB RAM / 512Gb SSD
The desktop ($800) should significantly outperform the Lenovo you linked to above for $500. The Lenovo could be about the same performance as the Mac ($800) - always hard to be sure in terms of actual results.
As mentioned above, you'll get a lot more performance for your money from a desktop PC than from a Mac laptop.
Using a HDD will be slower than a standard SSD, and slower still than NVMe, but if you aren't in a hurry with the video editing, then that might not be a significant issue for you. I do some very basic video 'editing' on a machine with a HDD, and I often set it to run overnight - I don't care if it takes thirty mins for five hours as long as it is done in the morning, but your use case might be very different.
My current laptop is broken so replacing that would be nice. Desktop is interesting, especially the Mac Mini. Never used a mac tho always been a windows kid. SSD would be ideal for sure, and an upgrade from HDDs ive had to work with in the past.
If you go with the Mac Mini, you'll have to pay a lot more for less (only 8GB of RAM - that's a spec from 2014 or so, at least in the PC world), or pay the same for less (only 8GB of RAM compared to 32GB for the same dollars in the PC).
@Alan6984: The ram differential in this case isn't really an apples-to-apples comparison, to be fair.
@spren: I'm sure that many comparisons aren't 'apples-to-apples', but you have to compare them regardless in order to make a decision, and I think the PC is much better value if they are the same price.
@Alan6984: (Apple marketing / shilling time)
8gb in m1 macs is not really like 8gb in intel macs or pcs. Im running around with an m2/8gb mac and it isn't really much like my 32/3900x. desktop at all. There's all this fancy memory compression, nvme ssd paging and what not going on. I CAN bring it to a halt, but you have to be very very heavy on it. (my workflow does not include large projects that need to be in memory, but rather having many dozens of things open at a time, to be fair).
Macs arent magic, but the arm macs with the m1/m2/m3 chips are absurdly good. Storage is ridiculous with macs, however. It's almost the fastest you can buy … but apple… just let me have an nvme m.2 drive in there as well! Please
It's also worth noting that it's on package memory too, I doubt the physically bigger bus makes a big difference but hey, it's right there!
@Grandma: It's not only the hardware you need to compare. The OS matters as well. Mac has a really good memory management. Windows is kind of bloated.
So you are correct it's hard to compare 8gb m1 mac with 16gb windows.
8gb in m1 macs is not really like 8gb in intel macs or pcs. Im running around with an m2/8gb mac and it isn't really much like my 32/3900x. desktop at all. There's all this fancy memory compression, nvme ssd paging and what not going on. I CAN bring it to a halt, but you have to be very very heavy on it. (my workflow does not include large projects that need to be in memory, but rather having many dozens of things open at a time, to be fair).
Macs arent magic, but the arm macs with the m1/m2/m3 chips are absurdly good. Storage is ridiculous with macs, however. It's almost the fastest you can buy … but apple… just let me have an nvme m.2 drive in there as well! Please
It's also worth noting that it's on package memory too, I doubt the physically bigger bus makes a big difference but hey, it's right there!
Memory compression is not a good thing though - its a sticking plaster to try to compensate for being below spec on the actual memory, and it significantly slows down the throughput as all compression has to.
The Mac for $800 is sitting with specs that we were buying in or around ten years ago (I bought a Surface Pro 3 in Jul 2014 for example).
I'm not sure, but you might be able to upgrade the Mac by wiping it and installing Linux - I have never tried, so not sure if Apple allow you to do that on their machines or not. That might speed it up, and mitigate the memory / disk issues, but it would still be under-powered compared to the 32GB PC for $800.
If you bought the 32GB PC today, it would still be fine to run a contemporary OS in, say, five years time (probably much longer), but the Mac likely won't - if it can't be wiped and moved to Linux (say), Apple will probably have ensured you have to add to landfill before that.
@Alan6984: Oh yeah, im not gonna pretend at all that 8gb will cut it in 5 or 6 years, but its definitely miles better than 8 gb from 10 years ago.
You can run some linux on it but it's a waste of time unless you're involved in the project truthfully. RAM is on package so no hardware upgrades possible at all (without a …little bit.. of solder and writing to things you cant write to).
There's something to be said about the fluidity of these things as well. I've never used a windows computer as consistently fast 'feeling' as my m2 macbook air. It's a little profound tbh (as I said im sitting next to a desktop with a 24 thread AMD chonker, 32gbs memory, some decent ssd and a 3080 and it's nowhere near as fast as the macbook for day to day
Imo that desktop is not good value for money. Lga2011 and GTX 970 for $800 hell naw lol.
The cpu is legit $35ish nzd on AliExpress lmaoo
Personally, I would not go for it either, but I couldn't see much else in the $600 to $800 range that competes.
If you know what you're talking about, perhaps you could you post a link to something that is much better value for the OP.
at a stretch you could trademe an m1 mac mini with 8gb.
Storage will be the big bottleneck on that i'd imagine, but it will be a decent chunk faster than a $600 refurb windows laptop.
BYOKMM obviously
I've had good experiences with getting units from PTL Computers, if you're going for 32GB you'd probably either have to go a bit over budget, e.g. https://ptlcomputers.co.nz/e_store/commodity/get_by/e_store_… or plan on running unsupported Windows in the not too distant future with older gen hardware or running Linux, e.g. https://ubuntustudio.org/
As already pointed out - probably not. Anything in that range (and laptops in general) are likely to be too slow to achieve much beyond basic editing and short stuff. Once you have to try to render the footage you are going to run into problems.
A desktop is definitely the way to go. Find yourself a mini PC with the fastest processor possible and plenty of ram slots (realistically this is going to be two….), upgrade to the max ram it will accept, ideally two HDMI slots (and maybe an optical in/out).
A full sized PC will be even better if you have space.
Don't assume newer is better. My main Intel NUC I use is 8 years old and is still slightly faster (and better equipped) than the one I got two years ago to "replace" it (in theory it should have been faster)
*** And just to add, as the user of a leased laptop who works with a while bunch of other users of them - we don't exactly always treat them that well (I honestly don't think I turned my last laptop off more than once a month, and that would have only been when it went flat)
at ops price id be on facebook marketplace to be honest
https://regeneration.co.nz/
Have an excellent reputation.