Music brings solace to a tired and stressed mind. Music composition is, in fact, a serious business that requires the most efficient and dependable instrument and devices. All the music composers, professionals, and DIY musicians will vouch for the value of having a good laptop for music production and recording. Since it is not possible to afford the high-priced music studios or set up the recording and production space at home for music composition to keep that Hammond organ or an acoustically designed room to keep those Leslie speakers. So it is both cost-effective and easy to set up your own audio workstation at home. All you need is a laptop designed for music production, DAW software, and an effective VST ( virtual studio technology) interface. In this guide, I will be penning down the vital features required in a laptop to run music production and recording software and create wonderful melodies.
Features to Look for in a Best Music Production Laptop
Lightweight
For the musicians who like to work on the go, it is better to look for a lightweight laptop without compromising on the quality of construction. So I stressed to include those laptops in the top-ten list, which ranked higher on sturdiness, durability and at the same time fits easily in your backpack.
CPU
The central processing unit or the processor is the brain of the laptop. So it is imperative to buy a laptop with a CPU that offers optimum performance to run the heavy DAW software smoothly. The two things you need to look at in a CPU are its speed that is mentioned in GigaHertz and the number of cores. So for a music production laptop, it will be good to have an Intel i5 CPU with a minimum of 2.2 GHz speed and two (dual) cores.
RAM
The main memory or RAM ( random access memory) is the hardware component that stores the application while it is being executed. The music production process needs to run software together in multiple tabs, so the RAM should be enough for multitasking. So my recommendation is to have a minimum of 8 GB of RAM
Responsive Mousepad or Trackpads
This is again a vital feature to look for in a laptop designed for recording or music production. In logic pro or Cubase, you do a lot of scrolling so the trackpad must be super-responsive to run the task faster and it will also enhance your productivity.
Brighter Screens for Outdoor Working
If you love to create music in nature and prefer to work outdoors, you definitely need a brighter screen that will allow you to work even in sunlight. So I have given due consideration to the screen type while shortlisting the top laptops for music production.
Storage Space
Music files are quite huge in size in addition to the library of samples and projects underway. So it is important to have an adequate storage space say a minimum of 500 GB.
Battery Life
Good battery life is needed only for those music enthusiasts who like to travel a lot and may wish to show their work on their personal laptops to prevent any kind of copying or tampering with their compositions. So all the laptops mentioned in the list have a decent battery backup to help you select the best one.
Laptop Reviews
1. Acer Swift X Laptop
The first on our list of 10 best laptops for music production is Acer Swift Creator Laptop. This laptop is quite popular for its uninterrupted speed and performance in combination with long-lasting battery life which means no interference during the creation process.
The other most admired feature of this laptop is its optimized bass response as well as distortion prevention from DTS audio. One can carry it around easily as it is ridiculously lightweight with a sleek and thin metal body. With all the powerful specifications such as AMD Ryzen 7 5800U processor with zen 3 core architecture, latest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti laptop GPU, ray-tracing cores, tensor cores as well as streaming multiprocessor supported by Directx 12.
This laptop is decently priced considering all its features and efficiency to run music programs.
2 HP 15 Laptop
This laptop is one of the most reliable ones with powerful specifications and yet comes in quite a decent price range. Equipped with fast 11th generation intel core i-5 processor, Turbo boost technology, SSD fast Boot up, and 16 GB RAM. This laptop is also desired due to its long-lasting battery life and 15.6 inches diagonal HD SVA bright screen display with a WLED backlit touchscreen. The body of this laptop is lightweight which implies one can easily carry it around. Comes with a high-speed supporting processor that means no interference in the creative process and quick functioning of music programs and applications.
3 MacBook Pro
Next on our list of the 10 best laptops for music production is Apple MacBook Pro. This one comes on the pricier side but the specifications offered are worth the price. This laptop is equipped with loads of features desired by the music creators such as mind-blowing battery life of up to 21 hours and a six-speaker sound system with force-canceling woofers. Supports all the music applications quickly with ease with its 10-core CPU, 16-core Neural Engine, and 32-Core GPU. One can store any number of your music files as it comes with 64 GB unified memory and 512 GB hard disk. Overall, we think it’s a great investment with high customer ratings, one must go for it.
4 New HP Laptop
This one is getting popular day by day in this category of laptops. The reason is its ultimate specifications that maximize the entertainment and creation capabilities of this laptop. Starting from the display, it comes with 14 inches HD display with a WLED backlit, bright view as well as 1 million pixels that offers incredible picture quality. Next is its high-bandwidth RAM, AMD CPU, and 2 processors that offer its users to run multiple programs at one time without causing any delay in performance or slowing the speed of the application. With powerful specifications that offer multitasking, high-speed performance, long-lasting battery life, and heavy storage, we highly recommend this laptop for music production. This laptop is currently available in an affordable price range and in several colors in the market such as black, silver, pink, indigo blue, and white.
5 Acer Swift 5
Next on our list is a laptop by Acer from series SF514-55TA-74EC. This laptop is currently available in the market in color mist green and comes in a pretty decent and affordable price range. Specially recommended to be used for multimedia, business, and personal purposes this laptop serves our category’s purpose quite well. This laptop comes with specifications that ensure faster performance and multi-tasking without even any minor inconvenience.
This laptop is so admired in the market due to its Intel Iris Xe Graphics, 340nit brightness, 16 GB onboard memory, intel core i-7 processor, 14-inch widescreen full HD display with LED-backlit IPS antimicrobial corning gorilla glass, and long battery life of up to 15 hrs. This laptop can provide non-stop multitasking without causing any reduction in the application performance or speed and hence is a great product to be used for music production. One can run any program with ease and we consider this option as a great investment.
6 Lenovo Chromebook 330 Laptop
The next one on our list of the 10 best laptops for music production is Lenovo Chromebook 330. This one is coming in a pocket-friendly price range and offers powerful specifications. This one we recommend for the beginners so that they get comfortable with the process and then go for a bigger investment in the same category. This laptop is equipped with features such as 100 GB cloud storage, MediaTek processor, Chrome OS, 64 GB memory, etc. This one comes with 2 in-built amazing speakers to enjoy your music and get the depth of sound one always wanted. This laptop is currently available in the market in color business black and considering its price we recommend you to go for it.
7 Lenovo ThinkPad P52
This is a capable digital audio workstation to unleash your music creativity. Lenovo Thinkpad is fully capable to run music production programs like FL Studio, Reason, Cubase or Acid Pro. The ThinkPad is packed with Intel’s eighth generation i7 four-core processor, 16 GB DDR4 RAM, and 512 GB SSD. The laptop comes with NVidia Quadro P500 (2GB memory) dedicated graphics processing unit. The display quality is further enhanced with IPS technology that ensures clarity, even at wider viewing angles. It has 15.6 inches of touchscreen and produces high definition resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. The laptop is equipped with a full numeric keyboard with comfortable and long-lasting keys. From a security point of view, it has a built-in fingerprint reader and pre-loaded with 64-bit Windows 10 OS. Available in graphite black, this laptop is highly recommended if you are looking for a durable and long lasting machine.
8 Asus ROG Strix GL703GM
Next in the list is this lightweight yet powerful laptop in the form of Asus ROG Strix. It is a gaming laptop and I firmly believe that gaming laptops comprise of robust body, efficient airflow and assembled with high-end hardware. Asus Strix scar is no exception when it comes to premium features and flagship specifications. It is powered by Intel eighth generation coffee lake hexa-core i7 processor and 16 GB RAM. The laptop gives you a plenty of storage area with a hybrid of 250GB SSD and 1 TB SATA Hard Disk Drive. Furthermore, it comes with NVIDIA GeForce 1060 with graphics memory of 6 GB for outstanding screen quality. This laptop has a screen of 17.3 inches with FHD resolution. The unique feature of this laptop is its RGB keyboard capable of producing multiple color options. It comes with a 3-year limited warranty and is one of the best laptops for music production.
9 Dell XPS 15 9650 Laptop
This is a real beast in performance and graphics quality. Although it is priced on the higher side, I believe that it is better to invest one time in a good laptop that will last for the next several years. It’s an all in one package when it comes to portability, speed, performance, battery life, and graphics. It is equipped with Ultra HD 4K touch-display that is capable to produce a resolution of 3840×2160 pixels. The graphics are further powered by NVidia GeForce 1050 with 4GB VRAM. Talking about the processing power, it is equipped with Intel i7 quad-core processor and a whopping 32 GB of RAM. Moreover, the laptop comes pre-loaded with Windows 10 professional OS with 64-bit architecture.
10 MSI GV62
This is a real value for money workstation for VST integration and running resource-hungry recording and music production software. Equipped with the 8th generation Intel i5 processor and 16 MB Intel optane memory, your day to day computing tasks are accelerated by 2.2x. Apart from its powerful CPU, the MSI workstation is powered by NVidia 1050Ti GPU with 4GB graphics memory. This high-performance laptop comes with 1TB of the hard disk drive and SteelSeries Keyboard with Red backlit keys. You can work for longer durations without feeling any heat on the trackpad area. The laptop is equipped with cooler boost technology, three numbers of dedicated heat pipes for GPU and CPU respectively. Furthermore, the laptop comes with 7.1 enhanced audio system and pre-loaded Windows 10 OS. Buy this for faster file access and quick loading of heavy apps like FL-studio or Cubase.
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Best Laptops for Music production, Recording Studio, and DJs
This list of 10 laptops contains the best laptops to run any DAW software in the market. I have tried my best to include the laptops of various brands, OS, and price range to meet the specific needs of the musically creative buyers. If you pick any of the laptops above, you will never regret your decision since all the laptops offer high performance and durability. If you still believe that there is some other model which needs a place in this top-rated music-production laptop, do share your opinion in the comments section.
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