Are Gaming Laptops Good For Artwork?

Basically yes.

Better GPU's are the primary difference - Nvidia Gforce RTX cards, etc. This is the biggest pain-point on a gaming system.
SSD drives are usually used for primary storage for speed, instead of the usual HDDs. Usually NVMe storage. They actually look similar to RAM but have super fast read/write speeds.
I7's or better for CPU in general.
16 GB ram is usually the minimum you'll see in a gaming system.


Where as a regular laptop will probably have a generic built in OEM card, 5400 RPM HDD, i5 CPU and maybe 8 gigs of RAM.

Many graphic programs will opt to use the GPU to process images, which is why a gaming GPU is often better for image processing. It has it's own dedicated memory as well.

As far as recommendations, I would say to visit Newegg.com. They're my usual go-to when I'm PC or part shopping. They have a Gaming Laptop section.

Yes they are. Abbie recommended them a while back, and I told my husband what she said, so he went out and bought me a new gaming PC. Not a laptap, since I don't like working on laptops. When he bought me the new gaming PC he also got me two new monitors for it so I have double the working space. Love my new gaming PC!

It makes sense that gaming computers are better for graphic designing since games use lots of graphics.

My last several laptops have been gaming laptops. I'm in the process of shopping for a new one since my old one is about five years and starting to have some issues.

B&H has a category of what they call creative laptops, but I am still leaning toward the gaming ones since they have better graphics cards and more ram. Besides everything that Jason has mentioned, pay attention to the monitor.

You can get more into a PC, but if you need to be portable like I do, it's really your only option.

Yes. I use a gamers laptop.

Wow, thanks everyone! I was thinking they might be better due to speed and memory size. I like my Dell Laptop but it has been suddenly closing some of my Topaz software, especially if I have another program open and may want to update soon.

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I won't pretend to understand all the "stuff" that has been mentioned, lol....this from the daughter of the man who started the first ever Computer Programming curriculum in highschools in the US....but, then again, all this would be new to him too!

Video games contain an incredible amount of detailed graphics that have to be processed very quickly for the game to run smoothly. Should help speed up photo editing too.

I had an ASUS gaming laptop. It did great however I needed a bigger screen. I will say that the color of my ASUS got really off. I have since learned about calibrating. My ASUS had never been calibrated. Other then that it was fast and had no problems and I had 1000s of RAW files plus edited images on it.

Speed yes, accurate colors? Not so much usually. But if you have a good external monitor that's color callibrated to hook it up to
then no worries.

Thanks, y'all. Any good recommendations for any under $1000? I prefer laptops, btw.

Rose, that's going to be a tough one. Laptops have close to doubled in price since Covid because nobody can get the components.

Be sure to check the minimum requirements for the software you are using and make sure you buy better than that.

Thanks, Susan....I didn't know that about the price...my Dell was about $800 a few years ago.

"Thanks, y'all. Any good recommendations for any under $1000? I prefer laptops, by the way."

I suggest checking out the new Mac Minis. They've migrated to SSDs instead of spinning disks so they are quite fast and my experience with Macs is that you don't get as hung up in the hardware spec races. They have a new one out for about $699, with a SSD. I'm using an old Mini that's been on my desk since 2011, works every day and still accepts updates. It's not the one I use for photo editing, which is a Mac Pro laptop, but it's lived longer than any computer I had before. The new Mini will probably be my next computer since I can't imagine that an 11 year old computer won't give up at some point, and, with a good monitor the new Mini should be a great image editor.

For my laptop, I use a detachable SSD for photo storage. Plugged into a Thunderbolt port, it's as fast as the internal storage.

Thanks, Doug....I'm not really a Mac person (my husband is tho), but I won't rule them out either.

I have had great luck using high end gaming laptops from MSI.

I'll try to keep it simple.

"Most" gaming laptops/displays/monitors are based on VA or TN display panel technology. This makes them ideal for very fast moving subjects with high refresh rates in order to smooth out the action. DOWNSIDE is color accuracy. You also need to view the screen at 90 degrees to get best color accuracy.

On the other hand IPS display panels are best suited for color accuracy. You also can view accurate picture from almost any angle. This is important if you are trying to avoid glares and are moving your head to avoid them.

For simple photo editing, I would look for a laptop with IPS display, fast enough CPU and lots of memory (probably 32gb). Storage capacity is up to you to decide how much you need.

Laptops with newer technology like OLED will break you budget. For photo editing, don't waste money on a laptop with 4K display. 2K is more than plenty.

Good luck

Thank you all very much for your help! God bless!

For the most part I don't use laptops for photo editing unless I can't get to my desktop. When I bought my desktop a yar ago, I got a good HP gaming computer and then updated the specs on everything. I got 32 gigs of Ram. I added a have the SSD drive which is where my programs are stored. But I also have a D drive, which provides mor economical storage for image files.

An individual's needs are determined by what programs they run and how uch processing they have to do. I do high volume photography and may have to process hundreds of images from a shoot.. After editing it may take a while to save them all as Jpeg images. 18 months ago this may be 30 minutes for a big batch. I cut that down by 90%.
Another thing that takes a lot of time is AI programs. My Topaz Sharpe took a while and the upsizing program was not usable before. The denoise was slightly faster. After the up grade. ON my new HP I can batch process a hundred images in a reasonable time.
Files load instantly now. Before they took a few seconds. That meant a lot of time just to cull the out takes.
The HP with the upgrades was $1800 and I am ver pleased with it.

For a laptop I found Lenovo to be the best for the money. I bought mine in March and paid about $800 for it. I was able to process images with it while on vacation and for occasional editing use it is fine.

The graphics card in my gaming laptop doesn't always play nice with Photoshop. :(

Rose this is what I am using:


2020 Lenovo ThinkPad E15 15.6” FHD Business Laptop Computer, 10th gen Intel i5-10210U (up to 4.20GHz), 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, ...
2020 Lenovo ThinkPad E15 15.6” FHD Business Laptop Computer, 10th gen Intel i5-10210U (up to 4.20GHz), 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, WiFi HDMI

Lenovo has a good warranty check to see if you have a warranty repair center near you but I don't think you would need it.


Wow I noticed this deal:

https://www.amazon.com/HP-i5-1135G7-Quad-Core-Processor-Microfiber/dp/B0B4KLSFD9/ref=sr_1_14?crid=3I7M6YH0NCQL5&keywords=laptop+computer&qid=1664211262&sprefix=laptop+computer%2Caps%2C189&sr=8-14&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.08f69ac3-fd3d-4b88-bca2-8997e41410bb

Thank you all, and thanks for the link, Cathy! I'll check it out!

I actually use a gaming laptop, they have the best performance.

Gaming stuff will run photoshop. But its not the ram, its how good the screen shows colors and brightness in the shadows etc. Almost every monitor I looked at was rated by how well it did in games. And not how well it did photographically. That's what I would be looking at. Most laptops should be OK to edit on. I would base it all on screen and then go backwards from there. You want a good viewing angle, IPS if possible.


----Mike Savad

Thanks, everyone.

Also need to calibrate your screen. I use Spyder device. Use it about every 6 months.

Thanx for this info. I always suspected the gaming computer is better at art due to it's graphics capabilities.