Gigabyte 14K an option?

[MV_55]

Hi,

I'm buying a new laptop and I'm starting to delve into freelance photography and photojournalism.

Do you think the Gigabyte 14K is a viable mobile work station? My budget doesn't stretch much farther than the 1.2K newegg is asking for it.

Thanks,

Mike

[Moved out of the Color management forum into a product-specific forum - moderator]

[Szalam]

I would recommend asking in the Photoshop or Lightroom forums. Also, rather than just providing an article that reviews it, maybe put into your post the exact specs of the machine you are looking to buy.

[MV_55]

Sorry i wasn't more specific. I'm only concerned about the screen's viability. It's a 14" QHD 2560x1440 IPS Wide Viewing Angle Anti-Glare Display LCD. http://www.gigabyte.us/Laptop/AERO-14--GTX-970M-965M#sp

Open Box: GIGABYTE Aero 14K-BKNE1 Gaming Laptops Intel Core i7 6700HQ (2.60 GHz) 16 GB Memory 256 GB...

[D Fosse]

In spite of what the manufacturers claim, laptop displays are generally nowhere near the quality of a good desktop monitor. That's just a given, considering what it's squeezed into. You'd be hard pressed to find one with even decent uniformity, for one thing.

That said, IPS is vastly preferable over the standard TN panels usually found in laptops.

2560 pixels over 14 inches is a lot of pixels. Everything will be tiny unless scaled accordingly, and different applications may handle this in different ways. You should try this before you commit. In Photoshop, for instance, the image will display at less than half the size you're used to.

[MV_55]

Thanks for the response. I Currently work on a 24.6" 1080p monitor and it works well, but I'll be on the road for three months and will absolutely have to use a laptop to do editing.

I'm going to give it a whirl, I can always return it if it's unworkable.

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

If you are talking about Lightroom 6 or Lightroom CC 2015 (are you?), a monitor that is 2560x1440 will require either a powerful GPU and a powerful CPU or both, because monitors of this size require more "horsepower" for Lightroom to do the calculations in close to real time. The need for power increases even further if you are working with cameras that take very large images (for example in the 30 MP range or larger) and it also depends on the type of work that you do (if you do a lot of brushing and/or spot healing that makes things worse). The CPU, i7-6700HQ has a middling benchmark, certainly not one of the fastest available, and the GTX 970 gets low benchmark scores, and so I would be skeptical that this laptop is a good choice for serious Lightroom work. In fact, you'd be better off with a 1080P monitor on your laptop, which requires much less CPU/GPU horsepower.

If you're talking about Lightroom 5 or earlier, I think this is a poor choice, you definitely want a 1080P monitor.