Recommendations on purchasing powerful 14" laptop

General
1

I’m currently using a Windows 11 HP laptop which struggles to cope when using MG3 with SWAM instruments, or MG3 with Neural DSP software.

A MacBook seems like a better option to handle this sort of software. Any recommendations on particular laptop models and specs would be much appreciated.

Thanks

2

13" Macbook Air with M4 chip and 16gb ram: $999

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3

not a laptop, but i just bought a win11 mini pc, about the size of a mac mini.

add a portable 15" monitor and the total is still under $500.

i9-12900HK with 14 cores/20 threads and 32 gb of ram should be able to cope with swam and neural simultaneously (this is an assumption as i haven’t really tested it out yet).

for live use, the monitor can be clipped to a mic stand, the pc would fit right in on most pedalboards.

definitely not as convenient as a laptop, but i have less worries about hp/dell drivers throttling the cpu. also perhaps not as likely a candidate for theft, and i’d definitely be sadder if a $1k+ laptop went walkabout than a $400 cube.

https://www.newegg.com/p/2SW-002G-000K4

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4

Thanks. Are you using this MacBook at the moment?

5

Thanks for reply. Cost effective choice. Please do let me know if you try out your system with Swam and Neural. Cheers

6

Most important is that the SSD is big enough. Never try to run a VST that uses excessive sample sizes from some external drive. That will kill the best performing machine.

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7

No, using the Mac Mini M4 with the same specs.

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