6 Best Laptops for Animation and Graphic Design

When working with animation and graphic design, you need a laptop to keep up with your creativity.

Programs like Adobe After Effects or Premiere Pro use many resources, especially while you keyframe or render your projects.

Computing power is an absolute necessity to handle the latest editing programs, giving you the ability to handle complex projects.

If animation and graphic design are a large part of your life, it’s worth investing in a laptop that can handle resource-intensive editing programs.

Otherwise, you’ll get stuck with a device that constantly freezes or overheats in the middle of your work. Using a laptop that isn’t up to the task adds stress to your workload, making animation and graphic design more challenging to complete.

The best laptops come with customizable features, intuitive shortcuts, and computing power for complex animation and design work. The following are six of the best laptops for animation and graphic design:

1. ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15

The ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 is packed with raw computing power. With an 8-core Intel i9 CPU and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, your laptop can keep up with the intensive demands of applications like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

You can feel confident when animating or designing on this device, thanks to the additional 8GB of VRAM, which helps your laptop display pixel-accurate images.

The ZenBook Pro Duo 15 also comes with an intuitive ScreenPad Plus touchscreen. This secondary display gives you a convenient place to keep controls essential to your workflow without having to switch windows constantly.

The ScreenPad Plus allows you to use the Control Panel tool to isolate precision controls from your applications, storing them on the secondary screen for quick access.

2. Razer Blade 15

The Razer Blade 15 is a sleek, powerful laptop great for 3D animation and other design work. This laptop uses a 9th Generation i7 CPU from Intel, which can clock up to 4.5GHz at peak performance.

The Razer Blade 15 uses NVIDIA’s GeForce 2070 RTX Max Q GPU, which is an excellent tool to improve your ability to render 3D files.

This laptop features a unique, liquid-filled vapor chamber that helps your laptop stay cool, even during high performance.

You’ll have no problem multitasking and pushing the Razer Blade 15 to its limits, thanks to the 16GB of DDR4 RAM and a 256GB solid-state drive.

3. MSI P65 Creator

The MSI P65 Creator is a good option for designers that need a professional level of performance.

The P65 uses 32GB of RAM and a six-core i7 CPU that will allow you to work with complex animations. This laptop also comes with the NVIDIA RTX 2060 GPU and a large 1TB solid-state drive.

The MSI Creator uses all of its computing power to help improve speeds when rendering your projects.

The six-core CPU also features a 4.5GHz Turbo Boost, giving you more power to render and work with large project files.

The MSI P65 Creator only weighs 4.2 pounds, making it highly portable despite a large 15.6-inch 4K UHD screen.

4. ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 15

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 is one of the best laptops for animators and designers. This laptop gets its computing power from the AMD Ryzen 9 CPU and its capability to support up to 32GB of RAM.

It also comes with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU, which uses cutting-edge AI-powered Dynamic Boost 2.0 to improve performance levels. With dedicated RT Cores and Tensor Cores, you can run programs on high settings and get the most out of the 4K display.

The ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 comes with the ScreenPad Plus feature, which gives you convenient access to a secondary touchscreen. You can use this display to manage controls for your editing programs and customize your workflow.

Plus, you can feel confident about pushing this laptop to its limits thanks to the advanced cooling system. The ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 uses a large intake behind the ScreenPad Plus to draw in cool air and increase airflow.

5. Apple MacBook Pro 15

The current MacBook Pro is a solid option for animation and design work. This machine uses 16GB of RAM along with the Intel i9 CPU to maximize your ability to handle complex files.

The MacBook Pro has a stunning 15.4-inch display with a resolution of 2880×1800 pixels, useful for design work.

The i9 CPU version of the MacBook Pro is capable of Turbo Boosting up to 5.0GHZ using a shared L3 cache.

When working with complex animations and rendering your projects, this laptop has the computing power to avoid overheating or freezing due to immense pressure on the CPU.

6. ASUS ProArt StudioBook Pro X

The ASUS ProArt StudioBook Pro X is an excellent choice for design work, thanks to its large 17-inch screen. With a wide color gamut and excellent color accuracy, this laptop delivers beautifully rendered pictures when you’re editing images or videos.

The ProArt StudioBook Pro X offers superb performance using up to 64GB ECC memory and the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 GPU. It can also be powered by up to the 9th Gen Intel Xeon CPU.

In addition, this laptop features the ASUS ScreenPad 2.0 technology to add an interactive secondary touchscreen.

The touchpad is fantastic for multitasking as you navigate between apps, controls, and convenient shortcuts. Any designer or animator can manage their workflow quickly and conveniently with this intuitive touchscreen feature.