Introduction:
If you want to buy an Apple laptop for 4K video editing, this post has three recommendations for you at different price points. Hey, my name is Matt Johnson, and I’m going to cover a budget MacBook option, the best bang-for-your-buck MacBook option, and an extremely powerful, beastly MacBook options that will handle literally anything you throw at it. Sound cool? To save you time, I’ve linked to the laptops I recommend in the post because I respect your time. Let’s get started.
Now, with the budget-friendly option—this post will be a bit more complicated than previous MacBook buyers' guide post I’ve made. It used to be that whenever Apple released a new chip generation, like going from the M1 to the M2, it was a no-brainer to recommend the M2. But now, with Apple moving from the M2 to the M3, there’s not nearly as big of a performance jump, and there are so many used and refurbished deals on older MacBooks that you can save a ton of money and still get an extremely powerful laptop.
With that said, I actually have two different low-budget video editing laptops for you to consider if you’re on a very tight budget. First, if you want a powerful video editing laptop that won’t break the bank, I recommend the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air with the 512GB SSD upgrade, 8-core GPU, and 16GB of RAM, which retails for $1,500 new at the time of making this video. If this laptop sounds familiar, it’s because I recommended it in my previous.
"Best Bang for Your Buck" MacBook buyer guide. It’s still a great option. Just like I mentioned in that video, this laptop offers all the performance you need for 4K video editing because it includes hardware encoders and decoders for H.264, H.265, Proves, and Proves RAW. This means the laptop can play back and render video files filmed by many cameras significantly faster than laptops with Intel or AMD processors.
That said, I did recommend some upgrades, and here’s why. Starting with the most important: I recommend upgrading to the 512GB SSD because Apple has throttled the 256GB SSD, making it approximately half the speed of the 512GB model.
This makes a huge difference when editing video, so spending the extra $200 for this upgrade is completely worth it. Next, the reason I recommend 16GB of RAM is that, while you can probably get by with 8GB if you’re only video editing, once you start multitasking—say, you have.
Basic:
Web browser open in the background, or you're playing music while you're editing—having 16GB of RAM is going to help your video editing software stay speedy. Alternatively, if you want to save more money because $1,500 is just too expensive for a laptop.
Let’s talk about my second, even cheaper budget video editing MacBook recommendation: the M1 MacBook Air. I’ve seen it online for as low as $750 on sale, and recently, it was $850, which is not bad. Yes, this laptop came out in 2020, but it is still quite capable for 4K video editing, and if your budget is under $1,000, I think it is a great choice.
Now, at this point, you might be thinking, “Matt, what about the 15-inch M2 MacBook Air that Apple recently introduced? Why are you skipping that laptop? It has better thermal performance than the 13-inch.” Well, here’s the issue: because the 15-inch MacBook Air is newer, if you configure it with the best possible specs for video editing.
Upgrading it to 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for storage—the price is $1,700 at the time of making this video. This wouldn’t be bad if Apple’s base 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 Pro chip, which is drastically faster, wasn’t selling for only $200 more brands new. I even saw it on Black Friday for $100 cheaper than the 15-inch M2 MacBook Air. So, it’s really hard for me to recommend a 15-inch MacBook Air for $1,700 when you can commonly get way more power for $1,900 with the M2 Pro.
Sorry, but the 15-inch MacBook Air is a no-go for budget video editing in my opinion. Just buy a base M2 MacBook Pro with the M2 Pro chip inside, and you’ll be much happier. Anyway, this takes us to the best bang-for-your-buck option, which is the 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 Pro chip. It comes with a 12-core CPU, a 19-core GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage for $2,500 at the time of making this video, or you can get it for $1,950 refurbished from Apple.
If you’re wondering why I’m not recommending the M3 Pro with similar specs, it’s because while the M2 Pro and M3 Pro both have 12 CPU cores, the M2 Pro has eight performance cores and four efficiency cores, while the M3 Pro only has six performance cores and six efficiency cores.
This means there’s not really a performance jump going from the M2 to the M3, and in some cases, the M3 Pro may even have a performance drop due to its reduced memory bandwidth compared to the M2 Pro. So, it’s a much better deal to just buy an M2 Pro, especially if you can find one refurbished or on sale. Talking about the upgrades that I recommend for the M2 Pro now, you will first notice that it recommended.
Features:
That resolution and quality of footage as fast as possible, and you have a larger budget, this final laptop is the one I would recommend for you. First, I know you’re probably thinking, “Matt, this is easy! If I want the best MacBook.
I just go to Apple’s website and max out the M3 Max for over $7,000, right?” Well, no, actually. You can think of this third laptop as another best bang-for-your-buck option that gives you even more power while still not getting anywhere close to the absolute maxed-out price for a laptop.
For option three, I’m going to recommend upgrading to the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Yes, we’re finally going up in size, but we’re still sticking with the M2 Max and ignoring the M3 Max because, based on all my research, the M2 Max provides very similar video editing performance to the M3 Max, but you can get it for significantly less.
So, don’t waste your money. Specifically, I recommend the M2 Max with the 12-core CPU and 30-core GPU, which you can get new for $3,700 or refurbished for $2,900 from Apple at the time of making this video. This is the entry-level M2 Max model, and it has one significant change over the M2 Pro that’s going to make a huge difference for video editing.
We’ve got to talk about hardware encoders and decoders again—but don’t worry, I promise this is the last time. The M2 Max takes all of those encoders and decoders from the previous laptops and doubles them, which skyrockets your video editing and rendering speeds even faster than the M2 Pro. In addition, because you’re choosing the 16-inch model of the MacBook Pro, you’ll also experience less throttling of the CPU compared to putting the M2 Max into the 14-inch chassis.
Yet again, just like in my last post editing MacBook buyer’s guide post, I want to give a big thank you to Max and Vadim Nureyev over at Max Tech for discovering this difference between these two laptop bodies. Their post about these laptops are awesome, and I highly recommend checking them out—I’ll link to them down below.
Now that we’ve covered the CPU, let’s talk memory. By default, if you select the M2 Max, Apple requires you to also select 32GB of RAM, and I think that is plenty. Remember, this is unified memory shared between the CPU and GPU, and even if you’re heavily multitasking, you should be fine for video editing, even with higher-resolution footage. So, I would save your money and not upgrade to 64GB of RAM.
Conclusion:
Watering 96 GB of RAM trust me you do not need that for video editing lastly for storage just like with the M2 Pro and the M2 air I would avoid that 512 GB SSD like the plague and upgrade to at least 1 terabyte of SSD or more if you can afford it remember.
That if you're editing 6K 8K or raw files having some extra space on your hard drive for caching Etc is always nice so that's where I would spend some extra money if you have it with that you are now looking at an absolute Beast of a laptop that's capable of editing pretty much any resolution or format of footage that you want to throw at it for a much cheaper.
Price than the M3 Max and there you have it three Apple laptops that I recommend at three different price points plus a couple bonuses regardless of your budget you should be able to find an option that works well for you but if I had to pick the 14-in MacBook Pro with the upgraded M2 Pro CPU and one team SSD upgrade is the best bang for your buck I'll link to all these laptops down below if you want to check them out.
And I will also link down below to my edit videos like a PR guide if you're a video editor which I assume that you are considering this is a video about video editing laptops this guy is going to show you some of the biggest things that took me years to learn as a video editor that are going to skyrocket your video editing capabilities this guide is completely free, and you can download it the link down in the post thanks so much for reading and have a great.
