Laptop for Graphic Design student

savagelyric

Another new laptop thread - sorry! My 16 year old started college today, studying Graphic Design (level 3). I'd like to get a laptop for study work but I don't know where to start.

I've asked the college tutor who has advised 'most modern laptops will be fine' and the teen has mentioned they will need to use Photoshop. It will otherwise be used for general study and probably streaming TV in her room, plus will need to be portable and fairly hardy for teenage use!

Any help on where to start would be much appreciated! Budget around £500, happy to look at new and refurbished. 

flaneurs_lobster

You might want to ask that tutor if they have some kind of licencing deal in place for Photoshop - it's not a cheap product to subscribe to - full price would blow your laptop budget before you bought the laptop,

There's an Adobe deal at the moment for students if the college doesn't have something in place

https://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/buy/students/photoshop.html until 17/09.

Hope others can help with the hardware.

Cisco001

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5 | 16 inch WUXGA Laptop | Intel Core i5-12450H | 16GB RAM | 1TB SSD |Windows 11 Home | Abyss Blue £500 amazon

Reason of picking is the screen. 
This is currently on sale and I don't know how long it last

Cisco001

flaneurs_lobster said:

You might want to ask that tutor if they have some kind of licencing deal in place for Photoshop - it's not a cheap product to subscribe to - full price would blow your laptop budget before you bought the laptop,

There's an Adobe deal at the moment for students if the college doesn't have something in place

https://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/buy/students/photoshop.html until 17/09.

Hope others can help with the hardware.

There are plenty of free alternative...

MattMattMattUK

savagelyric said:

Another new laptop thread - sorry! My 16 year old started college today, studying Graphic Design (level 3). I'd like to get a laptop for study work but I don't know where to start.

I've asked the college tutor who has advised 'most modern laptops will be fine' and the teen has mentioned they will need to use Photoshop. It will otherwise be used for general study and probably streaming TV in her room, plus will need to be portable and fairly hardy for teenage use!

Any help on where to start would be much appreciated! Budget around £500, happy to look at new and refurbished. 

The tutor is mostly right, something Windows based, and 16GB of RAM would be best at that price point. Will your child also be using an external monitor, or will all editing be done on the device screen? If so then a 4k screen on the laptop will help, as will a larger screen but budget will be the limitation, or alternatively an external monitor might make a lot of difference when working at home. At that price point then something refurbished would probably be best. Is she likely to use the laptop for everything, or will the computers in the college be used for most of the work?

Something like the below could be a good option.

https://tier1online.com/collections/refurbished-laptops/products/dell-precision-5530-i7-8850h-2-60ghz-15-fhd-16gb-512gb-nvme-grade-b-nvidia-p1000

savagelyric

MattMattMattUK said:

savagelyric said:

Another new laptop thread - sorry! My 16 year old started college today, studying Graphic Design (level 3). I'd like to get a laptop for study work but I don't know where to start.

I've asked the college tutor who has advised 'most modern laptops will be fine' and the teen has mentioned they will need to use Photoshop. It will otherwise be used for general study and probably streaming TV in her room, plus will need to be portable and fairly hardy for teenage use!

Any help on where to start would be much appreciated! Budget around £500, happy to look at new and refurbished. 

The tutor is mostly right, something Windows based, and 16GB of RAM would be best at that price point. Will your child also be using an external monitor, or will all editing be done on the device screen? If so then a 4k screen on the laptop will help, as will a larger screen but budget will be the limitation, or alternatively an external monitor might make a lot of difference when working at home. At that price point then something refurbished would probably be best. Is she likely to use the laptop for everything, or will the computers in the college be used for most of the work?

Something like the below could be a good option.

https://tier1online.com/collections/refurbished-laptops/products/dell-precision-5530-i7-8850h-2-60ghz-15-fhd-16gb-512gb-nvme-grade-b-nvidia-p1000

Thank you for the reply, we have an external screen set up at home and most of her lessons will take place at college where they have computers in the room. Last laptop was bought from tier1online 5 years ago and it has served us well so thanks for the suggestion. 

DullGreyGuy

flaneurs_lobster said:

You might want to ask that tutor if they have some kind of licencing deal in place for Photoshop - it's not a cheap product to subscribe to - full price would blow your laptop budget before you bought the laptop,

Photoshop (or plus Lightroom) is £240/year as a non-student so a good slug of the monies but not all of it. If you want the full creative studio then yes it's more than the laptop budget. I'd have thought a graphic designer would also be using Illustrator.

Adobe products are expensive and only available on subscription these days, sure old one off payment versions can still be bought in some places but it'll be over 10 years old now and these packages do move on year on year. Certainly worth checking if you have to budget for that before committing to buy anything.

They can demand a reasonable amount of resources but thats very dependent on how large/complex the files you're working with are and even then it's fairly light compared to using video editing software. 

Cisco001

MattMattMattUK said:

savagelyric said:

Another new laptop thread - sorry! My 16 year old started college today, studying Graphic Design (level 3). I'd like to get a laptop for study work but I don't know where to start.

I've asked the college tutor who has advised 'most modern laptops will be fine' and the teen has mentioned they will need to use Photoshop. It will otherwise be used for general study and probably streaming TV in her room, plus will need to be portable and fairly hardy for teenage use!

Any help on where to start would be much appreciated! Budget around £500, happy to look at new and refurbished. 

The tutor is mostly right, something Windows based, and 16GB of RAM would be best at that price point. Will your child also be using an external monitor, or will all editing be done on the device screen? If so then a 4k screen on the laptop will help, as will a larger screen but budget will be the limitation, or alternatively an external monitor might make a lot of difference when working at home. At that price point then something refurbished would probably be best. Is she likely to use the laptop for everything, or will the computers in the college be used for most of the work?

Something like the below could be a good option.

https://tier1online.com/collections/refurbished-laptops/products/dell-precision-5530-i7-8850h-2-60ghz-15-fhd-16gb-512gb-nvme-grade-b-nvidia-p1000

Too old...

Sarahspangles

savagelyric said:

Another new laptop thread - sorry! My 16 year old started college today, studying Graphic Design (level 3). I'd like to get a laptop for study work but I don't know where to start.

I've asked the college tutor who has advised 'most modern laptops will be fine' and the teen has mentioned they will need to use Photoshop. It will otherwise be used for general study and probably streaming TV in her room, plus will need to be portable and fairly hardy for teenage use!

Any help on where to start would be much appreciated! Budget around £500, happy to look at new and refurbished. 

Note that Adobe Creative Cloud is discounted for two years for students. However you may want to ‘save’ that offer for later in the course when it will get more use.

marcia_

Cisco001 said:

flaneurs_lobster said:

You might want to ask that tutor if they have some kind of licencing deal in place for Photoshop - it's not a cheap product to subscribe to - full price would blow your laptop budget before you bought the laptop,

There's an Adobe deal at the moment for students if the college doesn't have something in place

https://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/buy/students/photoshop.html until 17/09.

Hope others can help with the hardware.

There are plenty of free alternative...

There is but they are not what they will use as part of the assessment or in the workplace where they will need to know how to use photoshop 

savagelyric

Thanks for the comments re Photoshop, just had confirmation from the tutor that there will be a college account that can be accessed from home - phew!