Whether digital art is your job or just a hobby, you need a laptop that can keep up with your creative interests. The best laptops for digital art provide a combination of computing power with high-quality displays. Programs and applications used for digital art such as the Adobe Suite and ZBrush are highly resource-intensive. They require laptops with a lot of computing power to run efficiently.
Editing and rendering media is a complex process. There are thousands of steps behind the scenes that we don’t see when interacting with editing software. An average laptop will spend hours upon hours attempting to render files. That’s why you need devices with a high-powered CPU, GPU, and a steady amount of RAM.
Digital artists need the best laptops for content creation to display high-resolution content. When applying edits to a large media file, your device must make millions of calculations per frame to ensure every pixel is as the artist intended. Without a laptop designed for these complex processes, you’ll have to deal with slow speeds constantly. These interruptions are frustrating and will likely hinder your creativity. If you decide to outsource graphic design, you’ll want to look for a quality vendor.
Let’s look at the six best laptops for digital art:
1. ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED W7600
The ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED is a high-quality laptop that professional digital artists will appreciate. The device uses a highly color-accurate 16-inch 4K OLED display with a 16:10 aspect ratio. The display is rated to cover 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, essential for artists to prioritize color accuracy. You’ll have no issues rendering 3D content using a mighty processor that goes up to Intel® Xeon® W-11955M. The laptop also supports NVIDIA RTX™ A5000 graphics and up to 64 GB of RAM.
The Xeon Intel processor features 8-cores to increase your ability to process high-quality images and videos. The RTX A5000 GPU uses AI-augmented optimization to enhance performance further when processing 3D designs or high-resolution video edits. The powerful GPU also uses real-time ray tracing technology, which helps render the final products with cinematic quality.
2. Lenovo Chromebook C330
The Lenovo Chromebook C330 is a great laptop for digital art, especially for artists that enjoy the flexibility of a 2-in-1 design. The Chromebook C330 is equipped with the MediaTek MTK CPU, an integrated PowerVR GPU, and 4GB of LPDDR3 RAM. This laptop also comes with an 11.6-inch HD display that uses IPS technology to enhance images.
The Chromebook C330 is touchscreen compatible, excellent for artists who enjoy drawing on their computers. This laptop is designed to promote portability weighing just 2.6 pounds, with an impressive battery that provides up to 10 hours of power.
3. ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo
The ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo uses a unique dual-screen design that allows artists to customize their workflow. You can feel confident creating any media on the Zenbook Pro Duo thanks to the 8-core Intel i9 CPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, and up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM. With the CPU capable of a blazing 5.3 GHz Turbo Boost, you can render 3D animations efficiently with this laptop.
Both the main display and the ScreenPad Plus display images in 4K quality with touchscreen capabilities. While working on your art on the main 15.6-inch OLED screen, you can move your secondary applications to the ScreenPad Plus. The ScreenPad Plus is a valuable tool to help artists manage the other applications and resources for creating art.
4. Apple MacBook Pro
The MacBook Pro is an excellent option for artists with professional needs. Instead of separate CPU and GPU units, the MacBook Pro uses the M1 chip, which combines both components into a single chip. The MacBook Pro comes with an 8-core CPU and 14-core GPU, all contained within the M1 chip.
With this laptop, you can easily handle animation work and render large, high-resolution files. The MacBook Pro comes with a highly colour-accurate Liquid Retina XDR display which is excellent for confirming the visual quality of your work. The 14-inch display is rated at a dazzling 1000 nits of brightness, keeping your display visible even in direct sunlight.
5. Microsoft Surface Pro 8
The Microsoft Surface Pro 8 is an ideal option for artists that enjoy working with a stylus. The Surface Pro 8 comes with a 13-inch display with a fast 120Hz refresh rate and a vivid 2880 by 1920 resolution. This laptop covers 100% of the sRGB colour gamut, which will help you feel confident in the colour accuracy of your work.
Since the Surface Pro 8 uses Windows 10, you can interact with traditional programs like the Adobe suite using your stylus. You can also run 3D software such as ZBrush on this laptop. The Surface Pro 8 comes with the Intel i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and the Intel Iris Xe GPU.
6. ASUS ROG Flow X13
Artists that need high-powered processing capabilities will enjoy using the ASUS ROG Flow X13. With the AMD Ryzen 9 CPU and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU, the ROG Flow X13 can deliver spectacular power without sacrificing portability. The laptop comes with an impressive 4K touchscreen display with a quick 120Hz refresh rate. The display is Pantone Validated to ensure color accuracy for professional work.
The ROG Flow X13 weighs just 2.8 pounds and comes with a 360-degree hinge. You can use this machine in laptop, tablet, tent, or stand mode. When rendering large 3D files, stand mode is an excellent option since it increases airflow. This position can reduce your laptop’s temperature by up to 8 degrees.