A laptop for making music. Do brands matter?

R

Revover

New member
Hi all,

I'd like to get a bit of advice from fellow musicians. My current laptop is 13 years old and I think I should stop fixing it and get a new-used one. At the same time, after many years, I’d like to get back to music making, so I want to pick hardware that will be suitable for that. My needs aren’t complicated: I want to record guitars from amp or microphone, record keyboards via midi, and also do some midi sequencing. And I'm a PC person.

I did a bit of research, and I might be wrong, but it seems that for homebase music projects it doesn't matter what brand I pick. I'm assuming that everything what I want to record, or sequence will go through an external USB interface. Therefore, I need a machine with fast CPU, large storage (at least 512 SSD), and 16 GB (unless 32 is a new standard?), and at least 2 USB ports. As long the laptop is durable enough no brand is better for music making.

Is this correct or am I missing something here? I mean regarding computer hardware. Also, I prefer laptops over desktops (I sometimes travel) but do you think desktops have any advantages here?
 
Same as its always been. Expandability. If you dont need it, spec wins. I suppose it’s you really. What do you need? Years back i liked the panasonic tough books, because they were me proof. Im lazy and careless. All my laptops have been macs for years now, but frankly thats because i need one bit of software, Qlab. Everything else, could easily be windows, and macbooks have a built in timer running. Being told a two year old one was unfixable and elderly makes you lose respect for the brand.

There are now good bargains from the gaming community who continually update, so ebay has some great bargains in expensive second hand. I suspect the real budget end just get physically broken. One problem with remote buying is the feel of the keyboards. Some are just horrible to type on. I bought a more modern panasonic and hated it, the old one was so much better, but not good for music daws without a mouse.
 
Brand doesn't matter. Just get the best spec you can afford.
I went for a quad i5 laptop for my DAW, so I can move it easily between rooms.
It is all solid state, but the cooling fan annoys me at times. Not the fan itself, but the air wooshing out of the case.
I bought another Hexacore mini desktop PC for general use, with a big fan attached to the CPU. That is a very quiet fan, so that PC is quieter than the laptop.
 
Agreed. Brand doesn't really matter so much.
As you say, durability varies so try to hold the thing in your hands and see how build quality feels.
Some bend like a credit card and others are more tank-like.

If you were running that 13 year old machine and getting along OK I'd even question whether you need to shoot for 'fast CPU, large storage, and 16/32 ram'.
If your needs are very modest you could get away with a lot less than that, maybe settling for something used a few generations old.

As Rob says, gamers and the like update often to stay at the bleeding edge and that edge isn't exactly moving fast these days,
so the used market is full of good machines.
Audio production hardware requirements are generally much lower. (y)
 
I'm a big fan of purchasing off lease Microsoft certified refurbished computers. I run an AV installation company with a few field techs and Refurb Lenovo Thinkpad's are my go to. Extremely durable (have had some dropped off of ladders) and reliable. Also relatively cheap if you shop it right.

A few things to consider.

Windows 10 is at end of life this year. If upgradability is an issue for you, getting a computer with a CPU that can upgrade to Windows 11 is a consideration. Ryzen or 8 series and above Intel. Important if this is a general use computer, meaning you'll use it for email and web stuff as well as audio. I still have a functioning XP Protools rig but it will never get connected to the internet or get any updates or new software. It is like working in a time bubble. No new plugins or updates.

When buying used, the challenges are the same as new. Always check out the reviews for the model you are considering. PC Mag and a bunch of others have extensive reviews available which will highlight the pro's and con's. The advantage to used is that you'll find plenty of reviews for an older model than you would for something just released.

You don't mention what you are using for an interface or if at any point you'd like to upgrade. USB generation and speed should be a consideration as it will give you greater options moving forward.
 
My recording rig is very basic and works just fine for me but my DAW is Reaper so it doesn't require much processing power. My current laptop is an old HP and still running Win 7. I have not upgraded yet because the laptop is not connected to the Internet and everything still works perfect.
 
Also i might add get at least minimum of 500GB storage.If you get a mac it comes free with GarageBand.If you want a bigger DAW Logic prox $199.With the old computer you have now you will not be able to get 3rd party plug-ins.What ever one you buy always stay updated with computer DAW and Plug-ins.I have 3 imacs with logic pro omnisphere and Native instruments Kontakt 7 on 2 of them.The older mac would not allow Kontakt 7 to be downloaded
 
I like buying refurbished high end computers rather than budget new ones - particularly Dell Precision mobile workstations. The high end ones are built more solidly and tend to be more expandable. The Lenovo Thinkpads also have a good reputation for music though I've not used one personally.
 
Brand does matter to me - I have a MacBook Pro M3 Pro with 36gb Ram and 1 Tb hardrive - I run Logic, Plugins, Helix Native, Ozone, Kontakt etc...
but I’m not fooling myself - I could have got the equivalent PC Notebook with more ram and a 2TB hardrive for half of what I paid for the Mac -
but I’m vested in Apple - all my software is Apple - so to transition would be quite expensive.

But another reason Apple appeals to me is that I can plug anything in and it just works - PCs not so much - they are easier than before - but still not nearly as
plug and play as the Macs.
 
One thing that has changed recently is that many laptops are not allowing you to upgrade the memory. Up until the past year or two, they used SODIMM modules so you could add modules or upgrade the modules. Buy an 8GB computer and add another 16GB for a few dollars. Several that I've looked at recently have the memory soldered to the motherboard, so you can't add more. So when you start narrowing down your choices, check for upgrade paths. There are often Youtube videos that will show you the internals. My Ideapad had both memory slots and a SATA connector, so I could add both a second SSD and more memory.

I've bought a couple of Ideapads. my daughter bought a refurb HP Elitebook that is pretty nice. I made sure she got an 8th gen I7 machine. It had Win10 Pro, and the 16GB and 500G SSD would be sufficient for music recording. It was around $300 on Amazon. One thing that was unusual is that it has Thunderbolt 3 should you decide to go with a T-bolt interface rather than USB. She uses it with a Thunderbolt dock that she has from her work, letting her using multiple monitors.
 
Thank you for all the answers so far. My strategy for the past 20 years was to buy refurbished business laptop. I bought them from the same company, and always was buying ThinkPads. My current one is T410. It's still OK, although it's power hungry as I run both SSD and HDD inside. And the fan is a bit worn out. And it could use more memory... And here we are, thinking if it's still worth to put even more money in it, or invest in another refurbished machine.

A small caveat is that I need to use the laptop for other things too. Not gaming (apart from some 80/90/00s oldies), but my environment will require me to go Win11 at some point. There's no official upgrade path for T410.

As for recording, I got myself and older Focusrite 2i2 interface (2nd gen).

Looking at the answers, I am tempted to keep T410 as a separate machine and run Win10 for as long as possible and then just have it offline.
 
Revover said:
Thank you for all the answers so far. My strategy for the past 20 years was to buy refurbished business laptop. I bought them from the same company, and always was buying ThinkPads. My current one is T410. It's still OK, although it's power hungry as I run both SSD and HDD inside. And the fan is a bit worn out. And it could use more memory... And here we are, thinking if it's still worth to put even more money in it, or invest in another refurbished machine.

A small caveat is that I need to use the laptop for other things too. Not gaming (apart from some 80/90/00s oldies), but my environment will require me to go Win11 at some point. There's no official upgrade path for T410.

As for recording, I got myself and older Focusrite 2i2 interface (2nd gen).

Looking at the answers, I am tempted to keep T410 as a separate machine and run Win10 for as long as possible and then just have it offline.
Click to expand...
One advantage to Lenovo business PC's is there is seemingly a cottage industry for getting service parts. I needed to get a replacement keyboard and they were cheap and easy to find.

The T410 is a 5 series processor if I am correct. An 8 series would be a big jump in both performance and is win 11 eligible. An 8 series T480 is just over $200 with 256g of storage and 16gig of memory. It also has both SSD and PCIe storage slots and can run both. It is rather cheap to add 500G of extra storage. Kingston or Crucial is about $50.
 
Folkcafe said:
The T410 is a 5 series processor if I am correct. An 8 series would be a big jump in both performance and is win 11 eligible. An 8 series T480 is just over $200 with 256g of storage and 16gig of memory. It also has both SSD and PCIe storage slots and can run both. It is rather cheap to add 500G of extra storage. Kingston or Crucial is about $50.
Click to expand...
The T410 is a 15 yr old machine. That's ancient for sure. It's time for him to upgrade. A new processor should be 5 or 10 times more efficient to better handle any plugins, etc.

Just last week, I upgraded my sister's laptop. I had gotten it for her a few year back. It had 8GB Ram but a 1 TB spinner drive (5400rpm). Last fall she upgraded to Win 11 and the machine became almost unusable. Even simple updates would take forever. Task Manager would show the drive running at 100% constantly. I cloned the drive on to a Sandisk 1TB SSD, and it was a new machine! Bootup went from minutes to about 10 seconds. Updates that took hours were done in 20 minutes. I think the 1TB cost me $65. It was well worth the few dollars.
 
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