Media Studies and Communication Student Laptop!!

What is the best laptop for ''Media studies and communication'' student. Is Surface pro 7, i7, 16GB, 1TB ok nor Mackbook pro16 AMD radeon ? I've a bonus in surface pro £400 pound discount should I buy this nor MacBook is better for my degree?

Reply 1

username612415

21

Original post by Sakib Uddin

What is the best laptop for ''Media studies and communication'' student. Is Surface pro 7, i7, 16GB, 1TB ok nor Mackbook pro16 AMD radeon ? I've a bonus in surface pro £400 pound discount should I buy this nor MacBook is better for my degree?

Both are complete overkill, never mind being okay. The question comes down to whether you want a touchscreen or not. If you do decide on a MacBook though, do not buy the 16" model- it's horrific value at £2000+ and now gets utterly embarrassed by the M1 based models of MacBook Air and 13" MacBook Pro, costing as little as £999 (and regularly below that for the base Air), in all areas except tasks which require dedicated graphics, where the 16" Pro is still awful value- you could buy a 13" Air and a dGPU equipped desktop or laptop for less than the price of the base model 16" Pro. If you really want a large screen MacBook, wait until later this year when they refresh the lineup with new Apple Silicon processors.

What is the exact spec and price of the Surface Pro you are looking at?

Reply 2

username612415

21

Original post by Sakib Uddin

I really appreciate your advice. I'm looking at Surface pro 7, i7, 1TB official price £2248, but with bonus I could purchase it £1650. Actually I'm looking something under £2000.

That's good for that particular configuration of Surface Pro 7, but it's very overpriced for the actual specs you're getting- you're just paying for the form factor. Unless you are really tied to getting something with a tablet mode, I would not purchase this.

If I spend £2000 now, then I won't be able to buy another expensive device again.

I know, my point was that you could get both a MacBook Air and a powerful Windows computer together for within that same £2000 budget.

so I want to spend on something worthy and will be perfect for my degree.

That would actually be my preferred combination- you get a portable MacBook for taking to lectures, working on the go, Apple-exclusive applications like Final Cut, and a great day-to-day computer for lounging on the bed. Then you have a more powerful PC for your workhorse that will do the best job at heavy editing, as well as a large screen for the best possible experience while doing so. It's the best of both worlds.

If I was to buy today, it would be theMacBook Air for £899, plus this desktop PC for £800, and this monitor for £209. That comes to a hair over £1800 after postage, so budget leftover for peripherals, and giving you the best machines for all jobs.

https://shop.bt.com/products/apple-13-inch-macbook-air--m1-chip-8c-cpu--7c-gpu-256gb-space-grey-mgn63b-a-G2JY.html
https://www.box.co.uk/Medion-Akoya-P67064-MD35097-Gaming-Deskt_3609343.html
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08FRJ1QCN

I heard that Media and communication student need video editing capable laptop like 16gb Ram, 1TB storage, Intel processor, AMD, this grapics those grapics.

A well picked £500 laptop is a video editing capable laptop, a £1000 or £2000 laptop will simply be better. This laptop here is less than £700 and more powerful than the top-end Surface Pro 7 you're considering;
https://www.box.co.uk/S413EA-AM616T-ASUS-VivoBook-14-Intel-Core-i5-16GB-RAM-_3555491.html

If M1 processor will be fine then I would love to buy Macbook or I must need i7?
I'm really confused and I really need your suggestions.

The M1 processor in the new MacBooks outperforms the majority of processors labelled i7 by a substantial margin, they are simply so new that they haven't trickled into most guides written around media studies laptops. An i7 paired with a dedicated GPU from AMD or Nvidia would have merit, but I would take an M1 equipped MacBook over most laptops with i7 or even i9 if they are only using integrated graphics.

Reply 3

username612415

21

Original post by Sakib Uddin

Thanks a lot for your reply. Could you advice a little more. what do you think about new Macbook pro 13’’ , 16 gb ram, 512GB storege price-£1600..? won't it be suitable? cause I prefer like only one device has lots of things that I need. If it isn't a good idea then I'm gonna follow what you've said.

If you were going to get a Mac as your single device, I would sooner get the baseline Air with 16GB upgrade for £1199, the performance gap between the Air and Pro is small and beyond that you're essentially spending £400 more for an extra graphics core, a cooling system which rarely kicks in, a Touchbar nobody likes, and 256GB of storage which isn't really needed internally when you should really be buying an external hard drive for your mass storage and backup anyway.

Reply 4

Rheasaxena

1

Original post by username612415

If you were going to get a Mac as your single device, I would sooner get the baseline Air with 16GB upgrade for £1199, the performance gap between the Air and Pro is small and beyond that you're essentially spending £400 more for an extra graphics core, a cooling system which rarely kicks in, a Touchbar nobody likes, and 256GB of storage which isn't really needed internally when you should really be buying an external hard drive for your mass storage and backup anyway.

This is great advice. Thank you so much.

Media Studies and Communication Student Laptop!!

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