Recommended Laptops of DaVinci Resolve

[Michael Gissing]

I recommend reading the configuration guide on the Blackmagic support page. Depending on what you wish to use Resolve for you will need thunderbolt to run outboard I/O and external GPU to get performance and accurate monitoring for grading.

The GPU and Blackmagic I/O devices will eat most of your budget before you buy the laptop unfortunately. If you are not using it to grade, just edit, then you might be OK with editing on a laptop but that is codec dependent. Same as all NLEs

[Tero Ahlfors]

If you get a powerful enough laptop you don’t need an external GPU. At least right away. I would probably buy a beefy gaming computer. I’ve had a few MSIs and they’ve been great. They also have slimmer “stealth” models if you need to lug it around.

[Max Becker]

I’m now using a Dell G7. It comes with two drives, one an SATA M.2 SSD for the OS, and the other a 1TB HDD for data. It has an 8th gen i7 processor and comes with a GTX 1060 installed. Supposedly you can select drive size to meet your needs, but all those I saw on the shelf came with 128GB M.2 SSD, which is way too small for my needs, but it’s all they had. After I bought it I swapped out the 128GB M.2 SATA drive to a cloned 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD (Samsung EVO 970). Not sure how demanding your editing is, but it runs smoothly for my medium-duty editing and rendering. I’ll probably upgrade the second HDD to a SSD, but for now it’s running well enough. The laptop came in just under $1200US, and the replacement M.2 NVMe SSD was about $160US. Of note, this laptop is very particular about what memory is installed. If you plan to upgrade the memory you need to ensure it’s compatible.