Hyer all. I'm new to this forum and need some advice on what laptop to buy. Not into mac tho I know they are really good. My budget is £800 - £900. I've Been eyeing up the Dell xps 13 and the lenovo legion 5 but I go onto website reviews and I get to much mixed opinions and leaves me in a condary. Really appreciate your thoughts. I'm using lenovo thinkpad i7 8 GB ram at mo. But need something a bit more smoother. Thank you in advance
Advice on a windows laptop to buy for music composition by a hobbyist musician
- Thread starter Iano
- Start date
famous beagle
Well-known member
When you say "music composition," are you talking about recording music, or are you mainly wanting to use it for music notation software like Sibelius, Finale, etc.?
Steenamaroo
...
Hi,
What are the specs of your thinkpad? Any half way modern laptop should be more than capable for modest home recording/composing tasks.
What are the specs of your thinkpad? Any half way modern laptop should be more than capable for modest home recording/composing tasks.
Hi Iano and welcome to the mad house! As Mr S says above, most laptops will run a DAW these days, in fact that has been true for some years. My old HP g6, i3, 8G ram runs Samplitude Pro X 3 and has run over 20 tracks of Cubase Ess6.
So, i7 yes, 8G ram? Hmm, you want Win 11 and so try to get 12 or 16G if budget allows. SSD hard drive of course and again, get a big 'un! 500G minimum IMHO. I had to limit myself to 140G for this i7 Lenovo T150 and I am constantly having to dump stuff off onto external drives (get a 1TB one of those as well)
Screen size: I cannot cope with smaller than 15.6" and would have gone 17" but they are like rocking horse droppings. If you are likely to want to use a larger screen and modern FSTVs are great, check the lappy has an HDMI port and VGA. This Lenovo has the latter but HDMI has to be done through a Mini Display port adaptor. More cost and hassle. See. a lot of later TVs do not have VGA ports.
Dave.
So, i7 yes, 8G ram? Hmm, you want Win 11 and so try to get 12 or 16G if budget allows. SSD hard drive of course and again, get a big 'un! 500G minimum IMHO. I had to limit myself to 140G for this i7 Lenovo T150 and I am constantly having to dump stuff off onto external drives (get a 1TB one of those as well)
Screen size: I cannot cope with smaller than 15.6" and would have gone 17" but they are like rocking horse droppings. If you are likely to want to use a larger screen and modern FSTVs are great, check the lappy has an HDMI port and VGA. This Lenovo has the latter but HDMI has to be done through a Mini Display port adaptor. More cost and hassle. See. a lot of later TVs do not have VGA ports.
Dave.
jamesperrett
Active member
How old is the Lenovo? A modern i7 is probably at least twice as fast as a 10 year old 2nd generation i7 but the 10 year old i7 will outperform plenty of modern computers with lesser processors. An SSD is certainly worth having.
My Lenovo James? Don't know its age, bought as a refurb. The CPU is an i7 620m 2 core 4threads, 2.67Ghz.
I bought it in rather a rush. My i3 HP W7 machine was fine and ran my NI KA6 perfectly well but at the time I was a bit worried about using a W7 PC on the internet and for general 'office' duties because we were getting dire warnings that we MUST upgrade to Ten*.
I never intended to use the T510 for audio purposes. However, it proved quite a bit slicker than the HP and gradually got loaded with audio proggs and in the end I bought Sam ProX6 and it runs famously!
*In the event I needn't have worried. I still go on the net with the HP at least once a week and have not caught anything nasty so far.
Just like to add....it will be a LOOOONG time until I go in for a W11 machine. In fact TWELVE might be out before I jump!
Dave.
Steenamaroo
...
OP, I'd imagine, but your specs make a point Dave. 
620m is about 12 years old or thereabouts and gets outperformed by my laptop two laptops ago (i5, 2011).
I'm prepared to bet you can fire up Reaper or whatever on that and get a good jam going.
I keep a very old very dusty Core2Quad box handy. It rarely gets used but, performance wise, I'd have no concerns about making a record on it.
SSD upgrade in any computer is a no brainer, in my opinion, whether 'necessary' or not.
They've been around long enough for prices to have come down and durability to have been proven. It's a reasonably cheap and easy way to breathe new life into an older machine.
Ram upgrade isn't quite the same story. There's no point upgrading to 16GB ram if the 8GB you have aren't getting used.
Saying that I've been a member here for longer than I care to remember and I don't think anyone's ever gone 'oh, fair enough' to that statement.
620m is about 12 years old or thereabouts and gets outperformed by my laptop two laptops ago (i5, 2011).
I'm prepared to bet you can fire up Reaper or whatever on that and get a good jam going.
I keep a very old very dusty Core2Quad box handy. It rarely gets used but, performance wise, I'd have no concerns about making a record on it.
SSD upgrade in any computer is a no brainer, in my opinion, whether 'necessary' or not.
They've been around long enough for prices to have come down and durability to have been proven. It's a reasonably cheap and easy way to breathe new life into an older machine.
Ram upgrade isn't quite the same story. There's no point upgrading to 16GB ram if the 8GB you have aren't getting used.
Saying that I've been a member here for longer than I care to remember and I don't think anyone's ever gone 'oh, fair enough' to that statement.
My Lenovo James? Don't know its age, bought as a refurb. The CPU is an i7 620m 2 core 4threads, 2.67Ghz.
I bought it in rather a rush. My i3 HP W7 machine was fine and ran my NI KA6 perfectly well but at the time I was a bit worried about using a W7 PC on the internet and for general 'office' duties because we were getting dire warnings that we MUST upgrade to Ten*.
I never intended to use the T510 for audio purposes. However, it proved quite a bit slicker than the HP and gradually got loaded with audio proggs and in the end I bought Sam ProX6 and it runs famously!
*In the event I needn't have worried. I still go on the net with the HP at least once a week and have not caught anything nasty so far.
Dave.
Don't know how that double post came about? Yes, I can run pretty much anything on both laptops. Both Sams have a 20+ track demo in them with plugins and they run fine.OP, I'd imagine, but your specs make a point Dave.
620m is about 12 years old or thereabouts and gets outperformed by my laptop two laptops ago (i5, 2011).
I'm prepared to bet you can fire up Reaper or whatever on that and get a good jam going.
I keep a very old very dusty Core2Quad box handy. It rarely gets used but, performance wise, I'd have no concerns about making a record on it.
SSD upgrade in any computer is a no brainer, in my opinion, whether 'necessary' or not.
They've been around long enough for prices to have come down and durability to have been proven. It's a reasonably cheap and easy way to breathe new life into an older machine.
Ram upgrade isn't quite the same story. There's no point upgrading to 16GB ram if the 8GB you have aren't getting used.
Saying that I've been a member here for longer than I care to remember and I don't think anyone's ever gone 'oh, fair enough' to that statement.
Memory: The HP W7 jobbie started with 4G but I got another 4 fitted. Cannot say it made a huge difference except the machine runs a bit warmer! So I would agree that 8G is plenty but, I do not know W11s specc for ram OTTOMH and every OS has demanded more memory so I was playing it safe. If OP wants to do anything with video, 16G will be most 'andy.
SSD, yes of course. This Lenovo boots up much faster than the HP ever did and...I have read that W10 EXPECTS to run with an SSD and 11 will I am sure be the same. Cooler, no fragging, silent, low current pull. What's not to like?
Dave.
jamesperrett
Active member
I meant the OP's Lenovo Dave, but, as Steenamaroo said, the i7 620m is going to have a very different level of performance to something that is 4 or 5 years old. 8GB is fine for most things (that's what I have) but, if you are using sample libraries you may want more.
junplugged
Taking the slow road
I never thought I'd use a mac, then I inherited a non-functional macbook and I upgraded it, back when you still could, and then re-installed the os up to the point where it couldn't do any more updates. Then I used Garageband and it was pretty good, impressed with the included samples I went in deep and got Logic, at that time, the os did support the latest version. It's now stuck at 10.3, still not too bad, and os is stuck at El Capitan, but it got the mac bug to bite me. There's more to the story, but at least try one for a few hours, maybe before going down the road of the other monolith. This little crappy macbook is only a core2 duo, and so it can't handle much, but a good test, I doubled ram from 2 to 4g, and swapped hd for ssd....