Best budget laptop for phot editing?

Hello other photo junkies! New to the group/ forum and am in the market for a budget laptop to handle light/ medium photo editing in most likely lightroom. Has been on the back burner for a couple of years and now I'm in the position to start getting back into my photos. Going with a laptop do to versatility and being able to go anywhere I go. Was looking at this model ASUS - Vivobook 15.6" Laptop - AMD Ryzen 5 - 8GB Memory - AMD Radeon Vega 8 - 512GB SSD - Silver - Silver Notebook X512DA-BTS2020RL After days of delving into the dark, deep, well of internet research and pro suggestions via you tube and top lists that I went through. Also playing with a few laptops at the store I liked the quick smooth response of the asus brands and the picture quality was fantastic with good color quality. The one I used at the store was a ryzen 3 model and I know that i5/ ryzen 5 is better processing.  Honestly I'm trying really hard to keep it under $500-600, as this year has been hard and this is an added personal expense.  Thoughts, advice, ect is appreciated!

My sister has been using ASUS computers for long time and swears by them.  As for me, I’m a Mac girl and would recommend MacBook.  

Your efforts and devotion to this activity requires quite some
investments for shooting gear; and, from the SR moment to
the print, the whole chain is no stronger than its weakest point.
Better wait than make a wrong investment. I'm a Mac user too.

I am kind of in your position right now, and thinking of saving a few more dollars and going with the new M1 MacBook air.
and that is coming from a total windows guy. the Mac seems to be something you will not have to replace quickly and you can get the minimum one and just add a few things to keep it going for a while.

Pilotshark wrote: I am kind of in your position right now, and thinking of saving a few more dollars and going with the new M1 MacBook air.
and that is coming from a total windows guy. the Mac seems to be something you will not have to replace quickly and you can get the minimum one and just add a few things to keep it going for a while.

I've just bought one of those. Just went for the base model and bought a Sandisk 1TB external SSD. I'm really happy with it so far after being really annoyed with the (more expensive) Asus I bought in the summer. You never realise how much fans annoy you until you own a computer that doesn't need one.

There are a couple of things that take a while to get used to (the command button is too close to the C and V keys), but I reckon within a week it was completely seamless tbh.

Having said all that, there's no upgrading them once you've got them, so get the specs you need. The advantage of a Mac is that they tend to hold their value better though, so if you buy it and then in two years you decide you need more performance, you can probably get a decent second hand price for it.

As for the OP, I think the Asus you mention sounds fine. I'm slightly biased against them because they sold me a dud last year with a trackpad that kept breaking and they couldn't fix it and refused to give me a new one. But yeah, Ryzen 5 or i5 with 8GB RAM should do you well for most needs. 512GB SSD should be fine and then buy external hard SSDs as you need them (might want to check the connection speeds of the USB-C ports). You might find that the screen is the compromise for really accurate colour reproduction, which you would probably only notice if you're printing. And at this price point, you're not going to get a perfect screen, so I wouldn't worry.

Amazon has had those new M1 Macs on sale lately

Yes, keep an eye on the price. I wonder if they will drop some here in March with Apple's usually roll out of new gear. But then again, it might make sense to grab a more recent version.

I would personally go with an i7 and 16gb of RAM which means that budget would need to increase to about 700-900.  I say that only because Lightroom seems to work better on that 16 than anything less (at least you'll be happier with it).  I will always use my desktop system for anything at home but I am looking at the Lenovo Ideapad 5I for when I travel on the bike.  It looks light and will fit inside my top case without taking up a lot of room.   I don't know where you live but the MicroCenter near Cincinnati has it for $800 right now

www.microcenter.com/product/629058/lenov...ptop-computer---grey