What Laptops Are Best For Music Production – If you are here, you are looking for laptops for music production, either to replace your old one or to enter the music creation in 2023. In the past, music was composed, created and produced in specialized music studios filled with heavy analog equipment. . Now you can take the studio to the beach, mountains and even family dinners.
Nowadays we are not so limited and we can work better on our laptops. There are many digital audio workstations available that can help with music production on your laptop or desktop computer.
What Laptops Are Best For Music Production
But not all laptops have what it takes for serious music production. Buying a suitable laptop for this purpose can be a bit difficult because of all the options you have today. A laptop for this type of work must meet certain requirements, which we will elaborate on.
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Editor’s Note: This list of the best laptops for music production is constantly updated to reflect the actual market, so be sure to bookmark this article for future reference.
The most important factors for any music producing laptop are the CPU power as well as the amount of RAM you have. This is followed by storage type and speed, but since everything today runs on SSD technology, we will not go into this discussion and consider all laptop storage technologies equally.
So the third thing is that you want very good battery life if you’re traveling or flying a lot.
We have a very good article about what these technical specifications mean for music production, and we invite you to read it here before proceeding with our product list.
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The i7 processor appears to be the industry standard CPU, although the exact model varies as do overclocking capabilities. For portability you can get pretty good with the i5, only it doesn’t hold many channels (still enough for regular use). AMD has developed a very good line of processors called Ryzen that outperform Intel’s products in desktops by a long shot, and they are now entering the laptop market as well. That’s why we’ve included Ryzen-powered laptops in our list.
At this time we do not recommend the new M1 Apple laptops for music production, this is still early technology that will likely improve significantly in the coming years.
If you want a good explanation on the Apple M1 chips, here’s a great video. We are not saying that the technology is not good, we are advising you to wait and get the next generation which will have less problems and more stability and performance. A good note to add is that now the compatibility is better than expected, as the video below shows, it’s just that you should not rush and buy the first generation new technical products as a general rule, but wait a little and get it. A more mature iteration. If you do, check every plugin you use for compatibility with the M1. Also, be prepared for some update issues in the future as it is common for the first generation to have issues later due to faulty software updates.
Last but not least, good speakers are always good for emergencies, as well as good headphone output.
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Don’t forget the software that runs on your portable music production laptop, so be sure to check out our list of the BEST VST synths.
To make your life easier, we polled our team and community to come up with the best laptop for music production 2023. For a summary table, check below.
Also note that while this portable music product comparison is of course correct for 2023, we have included products from 2019 and 2020 because their prices have dropped significantly and performance is still top notch for current music product needs.
Note: If you are using a mobile device, scroll left and right in the table to view all records, and up and down cells to view all content.
Best Laptops For Music Production
As you can see, we have a very good selection and defined not one but three winners based on each user. It would be foolish to recommend a student laptop over $2,500, so we’ve broken down the value proposition into value winners (bang for the buck) and budget (cheapest). An all-rounder can’t be anything other than a MacBook, and while it saddens us to see the Windows range a little behind, it’s gotten better in recent years and with price being a deciding factor, we can fully recommend a Windows machine.
A very important note here: We recommend Apple laptops not because of the hardware, which is equivalent to Windows devices, but because of the drivers.
Apple’s audio software drivers (CoreAudio) are still the best for audio production. The latency, broad compatibility and ease of use (basically plug and play) can’t be matched with what can be done with the Windows operating system.
Another advantage, small but present, is the native MIDI support of MacOS, which is much easier to manage, filter and route than using third-party software on Windows (very weak native MIDI).
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If you also want to record vocals, we have an interesting article on microphone booms – tested and reviewed.
Price Range: 2000-3000 USD Portability: Average Number of Processor Cores: 8 Core Processor RAM: 32GB Storage Size: 1TB Connectivity: Very Poor Check Current Price
It was that simple, everyone everywhere would agree that in 2023 you’re still better off with an Apple device. This particular MacBook Pro is, above all, future-proof. You will be covered for at least 5 years with this device, and if you take care of your laptop, you will celebrate 2030 with it. 32GB of RAM is very useful if you’re doing orchestral music or working with a lot of sample-based instruments and materials. An 8-core processor is quite unusual in a laptop, but it guarantees the lowest latency even when working with 192kHz sampling rates that really capture your outboards and hardware synths.
The processor is top class with a huge set of 8 cores. You can take this baby out and record a full orchestral performance with over 100 different instruments at once, it will take them. If you want to use it for electronic music, it will easily handle any VST synth, no matter how many polyphony sounds you want to use. Some synths allow 128 sounds, and the results are very interesting, if your processor allows it of course. Do you insist on working with high quality VST processing or oversampling sets? No problem, go ahead, this laptop can do anything at once.
Review: Apple M1 Macbook Pro
The build quality is truly unique. There is no other product that looks and feels this good, while on the other hand it can take a beating on tour and still look and function well. No wonder all touring musicians and DJs travel with a MacBook Pro. I’ve never seen a broken hinge, cracks in the case (which is smooth aluminum) or obvious fading from the sun like with plastic units.
The screen is the best in its class, not only because of the very high resolution but also because of its natural color reproduction. Yes, it creates a lot of glare and is prone to fingerprints, in fact all MacBooks are like that, but that’s only because there is a layer of very resistant glass on top, and resistant glass is always there.
Oh… Apple, the company we hate. Yes, it is expensive. Yes, stability is preferred over innovation. Yes, the connectivity options are (at first glance) quite limited. But we still buy it because it’s the best operating system ever, with the best drivers and compatibility for your devices. If you need very low audio latency, excellent MIDI and audio routing, better than average battery life and excellent build quality then buy a MacBook Pro.
This Apple device has two built-in Thunderbolt 3 ports, and we recommend using both, one for your built-in Thunderbolt 3 sound card (or other sound card with an adapter) and one for the Thunderbolt 3 dongle.
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For connectivity, we recommend this Thunderbolt dongle, so you can have a single connection from the switch to the laptop with power:
Never connect your sound card to a laptop for music production through a dongle as this will affect your latency regardless of your laptop’s specs. Always go for direct connection. Best value portable laptop for music production: ASUS ZenBook Pro UX534FTC review
ASUS is a famous company and when you look at their laptops you should have only high expectations. Needless to say, this particular model effortlessly meets high expectations.
We now want to state that the value does not mean
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