The Laptops We Actually Use

Taylor

Video Editing

My go-to laptop to use at work is the Strix Scar 18 from ASUS. It is an absolute beast of a gaming laptop coming in at 18 inches and nearly 7 pounds. It comes packed with powerful components like its 14th gen intel HX processor and Nvidia’s RTX 4090 graphics card. This laptop is the end of the road for me. I never feel the need to switch from it, as it does exactly what I need it to.

Firstly, when you open the laptop, I’m greeted with that large 18-inch screen that gives me plenty of screen real estate for Premiere Pro. Super bright display with a wide color gamut. I also pair it with an external 4K monitor for even more space. Next, I love love love the keyboard on the Scar series, be it the 16 or the 18. Some people, like Cierra, find it to be a little mushy, but I just can’t get enough of it. I press down pretty hard when typing so the “mushiness” kinda cushions my heavy fingers. Finally, this laptop has plenty of ports. I can plug in everything I need all at the same time without any cords or plugs getting in my way while I’m working. Props to the 2.5G ethernet port, which is plenty of bandwidth for my editing needs. For rendering Josh uses his 10 gigabit connection at home.

Now, obviously, this laptop isn’t for everyone. It’s large and weighs a lot. It has a poor trackpad. It gets pretty loud when its fans get going, and it isn’t exactly what I would consider a “budget” laptop at over 3 grand for the config I’m using. But, as far as these downsides go, they don’t affect me. I always use it at my desk. I always have a mouse plugged in (I actually turn off the trackpad). And as an editor I’m always wearing large over-ear headphones, so I basically never hear the laptop’s fan anyways. Yes, 3 grand is crazy, but seeing as I didn’t have to pay for it AND it checks all my boxes, I’m very happy with it.

Home Use

I have a desktop for gaming with a multimonitor setup but when I'm on the couch working, I use a Zenbook 14X that Josh let me take home. We need to keep laptops from the last 12 months in the office to compare newer models to. So, this was one of the older ones that we had lying around that needed some love. I like its keyboard, and how portable it is, at least compared to the Scar 18.

Cierra

Script Writing and Research

As I’m sure many of our viewers know by now, I love the ASUS ProArt PX13. It’s a premium 13-inch 2-in-1 device with powerful components inside built for creators. It has our current favorite processor the AMD Zen 5 Ryzen 9 HX 370, and it is paired with an Nvidia RTX 4060. There is a cheaper 4050 model available too.

What I like most about this laptop is that it’s compact and lightweight enough to have on my lap during script reviews in Josh's office, but it’s powerful enough to run the Adobe suite when I need to review a video. I rarely feel heat or hear fan noise, which is super nice. Its screen has a high resolution, which means small text is easy to read as it looks very crisp. The screen’s biggest downsides are that it doesn’t get very bright and is capped at 60Hz which is unfortunate when buying a laptop as expensive as this. This also affects gaming, so despite its powerful specs, you’ll have a better time on something like the G14 with its fast refresh rate display. One thing I’ve noticed in my extensive use of the ProArt PX13 is it actually has a bit of deck flex on the keyboard deck itself. These aren’t dealbreakers for me, but I’d love to see these downsides fixed on the next model.

Because I am a laptop researcher and tester, it’s good practice to use a variety of them. So, I sometimes put down the ProArt and grab other small 13 or 14-inch ones. I prefer to use these and just pair them with an external monitor at my desk when I need the extra screen real estate.

One of the devices I gravitate towards on those days is the MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo (which has the absolute dumbest name). It is a small, super light 13-inch laptop with a comfortable keyboard, high-resolution screen, and awesome battery life, so it’s perfect for a long collaboration session. The Prestige does have an odd arrow key layout, though, where the left and right keys are smushed up against the page up and down keys. I don’t find this an issue as I use the trackpad to scroll left and right instead.

I also tend to frequently pick up the HP Pavilion Aero. This is a more budget-friendly lightweight laptop. We have the config with the higher resolution screen, and I enjoy its slightly clicky keyboard.

My main issue with both the Aero and the Prestige is that their lower performance starts to become a problem even when I’m just making our graphs in Excel. This is because our benchmarking data is large and complex with hundreds of rows and lots of formulas. This is a perfect example where “just using Office” is actually more demanding than you might expect. It really depends on what you are working on. In my case having the more powerful ProArt PX13 actually makes a difference.

Home Use

Well, I mostly use a desktop that I built myself for gaming and productivity work. Just like Taylor and Ethan. And lately, I often find myself using the Framework 13 that Josh lent me when I work from home or do my poetry. However, if I could bring any laptop home with me it would still be the ProArt PX13 for its versatility.

Ethan

Cinematography

The main laptops I use is the MacBook Air 13. Earlier in the year I did use the HP Spectre 14 which I liked, but it was a little too heavy to keep carrying around with me. Plus, I never really used the 2-in-1 function, but I would definitely suggest that laptop if you are looking for a 2-in-1. Or its newer replacement the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip. The reason I use the MacBook Air is that it has a nice screen, good trackpad, and is very light. I do wish it had an SD card reader and a USB-A port though, so I didn’t have to keep grabbing dongles.

I started with the M2 Air and switched to the M3 model later in the year. Overall, I didn’t notice a ton of differences moving to M3 except for the fact that it felt a little snappier.

Home Use

At home I game on a desktop and then I have a MacBook Air with M1 for my D&D campaigns. I like the Air M1 for all the same reasons as the newer ones, I'm just waiting for a bonus so I can upgrade it.

Colin

Video Editing and Gaming

I use a laptop for everything – work and home. My laptop of choice is the ASUS Zenbook Pro 16X, which you can’t even buy anymore! When it was available in 2023, it was marketed as a powerful laptop for creators. It comes with an RTX 4080 and 32GB of soldered memory. This is powerful enough for my video editing and also allows me to enjoy some solid gaming in my downtime. Especially as the laptop has a 120Hz refresh rate display. I also like the fact that the Zenbook Pro stays cool to the touch, due to its unique thermal design. Its keyboard lifts up off the deck. I also find that the angled keyboard is more comfortable. Another nice-to-have feature is the dedicated home and page up keys on the right side, which are especially useful for editing. Some of the downsides I've experienced are its relatively dim screen at only 360 nits and its slow SD card reader. We thought it was fast, but when I was in the office trying to upload it was quite disappointing. It’s also heavy at over 5 lbs, and it gets quite loud. Particularly in its performance mode. This is a downside of this laptop’s cooling design. The noise from the fans is more audible as the chassis is literally open.

I did actually try using Asus’s newer video editing laptop the ProArt P16 when I was in the states, and I did appreciate how much quieter that laptop is. This is mainly due to its closed chassis design and more efficient AMD Zen 5 processor. But I didn’t like having to downgrade to a 4070 and a 60Hz display.

One thing I am not a fan of on either the Zenbook Pro or ProArt P16 is the ASUS dial. I don't find it useful for video editing and just end up disabling it. This is a bit of a failure, as a video editor like me is who it’s designed for.

Josh

A Little Bit of Everything

Unsurprisingly, I use the most laptops of anyone. My favorite is the MacBook Pro 14. To me it just epitomizes what a laptop should be. I like its comfortable keyboard, large high-quality display, long battery life, good speakers, excellent webcam, and phenomenal performance. It’s a great laptop for writing scripts on and managing this business whether in the office or out in a coffee store. Yet, it still has enough power to edit videos on and play my cheeky TFT games on. I made it to Emerald last season, which I'm very proud of.

I said “a” MacBook Pro 14 as I currently use many of the different configurations to get a sense of how they actually perform. For most of the year I was on an older M2 Pro 12-core spec’d up with 32GB of memory and 2TB of storage. I bought this one when I was frequently traveling for my older corporate job, and I wanted something configured to edit videos on. Nowadays, I'm mostly in the office or at home and when I do travel one of our editors can send me a draft of a video to review. Because of this, our newer MacBook Pro 14s are stock configuration. I actually kind of like this because I feel most buyers buy stock anyway. So, it allows me to see if these are truly good enough for you guys. Right now, I'm bouncing between several of the new M4 models as well as the 12-core M3 Pro to find out which I prefer. I’m probably going to do a long-term review, so get subscribed for that.

Light Use

Now if you’ve watched the channel a lot this year, you’ll know there is another daily driver I have been using: the Surface Laptop 7. For days I'm just doing office work and script writing, I often bring that laptop with me. I really like that it’s smaller and lighter than my MacBook Pro 14, yet it feels just as premium. If you are wondering why I don’t use a MacBook Air like Ethan, I find the Surface laptop’s keyboard much more comfortable. This all being said there are some issues that are starting to get to me. Many Windows applications still don’t work on Windows on ARM, which is what these Snapdragon laptops use. In my case, League of Legends doesn’t work and I have to switch to another machine. Also, the Surface’s battery life is really mediocre. I’d say around 5 hours in real world use. Some of this may be due to me running my laptops’ displays at high brightness. Some of it is due to the Surface’s small battery, and its Snapdragon processor, which isn’t as efficient as the processors in my Macs.

Video Editing

For video editing I am loving my new MacBook Pro 16. I have the most powerful M4 Max model with 48GB of memory and 1TB of storage. It is noticeably faster than my older M2 Max MacBook Pro 16. That laptop was really struggling with our more complex videos. Even playing videos back from the timeline at 25% resolution would stutter. I actually skipped over the M3 Max MacBook Pro 16. We bought two but they just didn’t really perform that much better, and they got very warm.

Gaming

For gaming I have been using the Acer Helios Neo 14. It’s kind of my ultimate Windows laptop. I am someone who does a variety of tasks gaming, coding, video editing and I also want portability. The Neo 14 is pretty much good at everything. It has a very high resolution 14.5-inch panel with a wide color gamut. This means looking at small text is nice and crisp and easy to make out. When it comes to gaming, I find a 14.5 inch display is a bit more immersive than a 14-inch one. Might not seem like much on paper but it does make a difference on a small laptop. It’s got a full wattage RTX 4070 and a Core Ultra 9 processor. So, plenty of performance underneath the hood. One thing I really like about this laptop is that it often goes on big sales making it a really good deal. Of course there are some downsides though. It gets warm during gaming. It has a right column of special keys that you may miss press and takes time to get used to. Plus, it’s heavy for a 14-inch laptop. In fact, it weighs around the same as the Zephyrus G16, which has a larger display.

Look you may wonder why I don’t use a desktop. Obviously if you are stationary, you should. But folks I'm passionate about what we do here, which is reviewing laptops. And I think the fact we use laptops for everything we do gives us a deeper insight into the laptops we are reviewing.

Conclusion

With that said, I want to end by saying thanks. We have grown a lot this year, and we have huge plans for 2025. We want to bring you higher quality videos and more of them. On the website, we want to add support for non-US buyers, and the ability to set notifications. For example, when a laptop falls below a certain price. We can only achieve this with your support. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel and use the website when you are shopping for laptops. Not only do we tell you our recommendations based on who you are, but we also have a helpful price tracker that will let you know if you're getting the best deal you can.

Thanks for reading, now go do something awesome with your day and we will catch you later.