I love photography (still a beginner), got an R7 with 70-200 and usually rent the 100-400 or the 50mm. So i have lots of pics and videos.
My main goal is Lightroom + Photoshop but no Video Editing (color grading etc.) Batch Editing is preferred but that’s not a hard case.
Secondary use case is typical web surfing(Movies, Music, Photos), simple games like Fall Guys, Among us (no AAA or heavy ones).
I will be travelling a lot so i prefer the 14" ones, 512GB SSD and at least 16GB RAM. Good After-sales service and a known brand.
Can you please share something, i am flying out in a week. will try to buy if the offer is good.
Note : Checked Apple Mac Offers (BTS + Store + Cashback discounts) but my worry is about the After sales service. The additional fee for each repair is kind of deterring me from Mac.
Secondly, Lenovo has the worst after sales service IMO. i do not wish to deal with them again.
Mac rarely gets into issues. I’ve had my Mac for 8 years. Dropped it a few times. No issues. Never had to visit a service centre.
Also, you may also get service issues with windows as well
Also, would suggest having an external SSD instead of getting mac with more memory.
Also, have you looked into different discounts?
i would vouch for mac again. as said it rarely gets issues. if at all it does the after sales service is hefty sure. but it’s trusted. apple is a premium, you pay a premium, you have to keep it like premium. dont throw it around and you’ll be good for years.
as for storage. get the base on a mac and buy a secondary ssd, might be handy if you shoot in RAW, you can just dump the files in ssd for editing later.
I can tell you this, unless your windows laptop has 3 years total warranty incl ADP (accidental damage protection) you will be taking much more risk even if that laptop cost 2 lakh. Also, I wouldn’t bet on that 2 lakh windows laptop to survive more than 4-5 years unless really lucky.
Me or my friends have had poor after sales experience with Dell, Lenovo & HP. IMO all offer below average services in a country like India where consumers are exploited. Apple - their repair costs will be so high that you can buy a new laptop, so is useless even if they provide a good experience.
Currently in India, generally Lenovo, HP, Asus & Acer offer value for money laptops & for your case, will likely be one of them.
Do not buy a 16GB RAM laptop, it won’t be enough if you plan to use your laptop for more than 2-3 years. Macs are very powerful & have good hardware in general, but 16GB RAM is a major con. For me, OS is another con, but not an issue for some.
Do mention a budget, need to spend like 70k for a Windows 32GB RAM laptop.
I recently dumped Windows and Linux after 19 years of use, for Mac. I had the same confusion but after my 1 year old ( in warranty) laptop ( Acer) started giving me issues, I thought this is it. Even if you have warranty, it is just too much effort for someone beyond ’ experiment ’ phase.
So, my suggestion is this: if you have professional commitment (I think you do), go for Mac. I purchased base variant MBA-m4.
Get a Mac , now that I don’t game a lot on my windows laptop I realize what a waste of money it is . Some feature breaks with every windows updates , Build Quality is bad and the battery life is even worse .
Isn’t that depending on usage? I mean I feel even 32GB ram is less when I end up with 100+ tabs opened in chrome on my desktop but on my laptop 16GB feel like a lot as there I rarely open more than a dozen tabs in chrome.
Obviously but RAM usage of apps & websites in general will continue going up. You get soldered RAM in many laptops now. For 50k laptop, I’m fine recommending 16GB RAM, but say when spending 70k+, 16GB RAM will be classified as a deal breaker by me, if laptop has soldered RAM (I have purchased a Lenovo Ideapad 14" with Ultra 5 125H, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD & 100% sRGB panel for ~70k a year ago, so not putting unrealistic expectations).
I mean, i dont really have a fixed budget, i was planning to get a M4 Pro 24/512 at around 1.75L. and the AC+ at additional costs. Portability is the another aspect of it. I dont want a gaming Laptop (heavy and bulky for travel)
My only problem or fear is with the After-Sales service. I have had the worst experience with Lenovo.
With Apple you don’t have to worry about after sales service, as they just have replacement parts costing as much as laptops itself.
People say Apple laptops last long, I have cases of very old Windows laptops still working fine w/o issues as well. Sure a 50-60k laptop might be more prone to develop issues like hinge issues or KB dying or speakers dying, etc, but those are relatively cheap fixes as well.
If you have money and can keep the device safe, get a mac. M4 one. repair or replacement cost is almost same as new one so make sure to handle them carefully.
I have seen those too & the common thing I have noticed among them is that they were all manufactured before 2016-2017 or at least before corona lockdown.
While I was in the US, I tried comparing their Apple Offering, and the cost difference wasn’t really a lot (unless I had a BTS offer with a valid student ID). So, I had to drop the plan to buy in the US. and I Agree, RAM above or equal to 32GB.
What Lineups would you personally recommend from HP or Dell ?
Hey which model? Is there screen OLED?
Hijacking the thread a bit as I’m also interested in a laptop with OLED screen.. I wanna use linux but so far the best option I’m seeing is M4 air 24 gig model.. but that costs like 1.2 so any alternative?
Just go for Mac. Both PS and LR are optimized better on apple silicon and things like battery life and portability are superior as well. Repair won’t be exactly cheap for a similarly specced Windows laptop as well.