9+ Best Laptop For Animation 2021 | Products Overview & Guide

An Apple MacBook Pro for animation?

I know a lot of people who would just love to have a MacBook Pro. They look cool and it looks like everyone in the design industry has a Mac or MacBook, right?

Since this is a topic that is usually very controversial and elicits very personal opinions, I’ll just list a few facts here and let you decide for yourself:

• The Cost : The laptop (s) I recommend below are 50% cheaper than the same parts in a MacBook Pro
• Graphics card : Recommended laptops are equipped (for this use case) with superior graphics cards from Nvidia (based on CUDA), on which you can also GPU render in much more 3D software (Apple only offers the AMD Radeon GPU with OpenCL)
• Industry use : All the serious 3D studios I have worked in so far as a freelancer use Windows PCs, not Macs. Some only had Macs in their infrastructure, but these were advertising agencies that still outsourced any serious 3D or animation work.
• Extensibility: Laptops can generally be upgraded more easily
• Cost of repairs: Laptops can usually be repaired cheaply
• Sockets / Adapters: A laptop computer has all the usual connectors already integrated. MacBooks usually need expensive additional adapters for anything external.

Using the laptop

Input devices

To be productive on a laptop, it is essential to have a good input device, such as a mouse or tablet and pen.

I’ve never seen someone on a touchpad come close to the speed of someone using a mouse or tablet and pen.

I know that using additional input devices can be quite inconvenient at times, especially if you are in a confined space like on the train or plane.

However, whenever possible, especially at home, work, or school where you have a fairly large desk, use an input device that will speed up your work considerably.

Some laptops come with touch screens, which can also be quite fast if you’re used to using the touchscreen as an input device. You can try it out in a store and see if it’s right for you.

Plus, a mouse is not expensive, you can always get one later.

Laptop screen

Since laptop screens are generally much smaller than the external displays you can buy, you need to make sure that the resolution of the laptop screen is high enough that you can place all of your software palettes. and your windows on the single screen you need.

A resolution Full HD (1920 × 1080) is usually a minimum right to buy, but there are laptops with even higher resolutions such as 4K, on which you can install many more things.

It’s best to get an additional external monitor for a multiscreen setup or even use your external monitor in a single screen setup if it’s much larger.

A screen size of 15 ″ as a minimum on a laptop for animation should do the trick.

IPS or TN panels?

For those working on projects that require higher color accuracy, better contrast, and better screen, your best bet would be an IPS rather than a TN panel.

It is not necessary for everyone. If you do a lot of modeling or animation in your viewport, but don’t use a lot of colors or composites, a TN panel is usually sufficient.

But if you want a more accurate display of colors, go with IPS.

What are the other important parts of a laptop PC for animation

If you plan to use the laptop with external devices, in order to improve your speed and workflow, you should make sure that it has all the necessary ports.

For external displays, you will need an HDMI port and/or a Display Port port. Some of the older monitors only support DVI or VGA sockets, as these connectors are so large that they are usually not found on modern laptops anymore.

But you can still get an adapter.

If you are using a LAN at your workplace or home, you will need an RJ45 LAN port to plug in an ethernet cable that offers much higher speeds than a wireless connection.

For external USB devices such as external hard drives for backup and storage, input devices such as a mouse, tablet, or headset, you will need a sufficient number of sufficiently fast USB ports like the ‘USB 3.0.

Conclusion

Choosing the “best laptop for animation” would not be viable. It all depends on your own preferences combined with your usage which determines the best machine for your routine.

We think our brief reviews on each animation laptop listed above will help you figure that out, but if you still need some advice on which laptop you should invest in, be sure to check out our previous articles.