Best windows laptop for music production?

population

Looking to run Cubase 5.5 with the yamaha steinberg ci2. A few external vsts. Amplitube plus ezdrummer ez keys ez mix etc.

Not a macbook person. So what windows suggestions and why?

Thanks

ravendude

If you have the money, something like this:
http://www.dell.com/en-ie/shop/laptops/xps-15/spd/xps-15-9560-laptop/cnx95604
In general though, the 2 must haves for me would be decent size SSD and decent CPU.  SSD makes a phenomenal difference,
Soundcard not a big deal presuming you are using a decent audio interface.

I'm a linux person generally, and I'll possibly go Mac when I next change my laptop, but have to stay on Windows for now, it's either Mac or Windows really for music prod.

Anima

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk

These guys are pretty good if you want a pre-made build. For audio, you need as good a CPU as you can afford, 16GB ram would be nice but you can always buy more later and an SSD.

I would get a desktop as well as it works out as better performance for the cost.

Some_randomer

I bought a laptop from the above site pcspecialist.co.uk in April 2014 and I still use it. At the time it was a decent spec - 15" Full HD IPS LED Widescreen, Intel Core i7-4700MQ 2.40GHz 6MB, 16GB RAM, and 250GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD. Price was just over 1000 euro.

There were 2 issues with it that were and still are a bit annoying and I probably should have sent it back at the time and got them fixed: sometimes the mouse pad doesn't work on the first touch, so it takes a second touch to do what you want like opening a web link, clicking a check box, selecting a file etc. Also the fan can be quite noisy now and again and seems to come on at random, and will definitely come on if you have a lot of programs running.

Neither of those would stop me buying from them again though so very happy with the laptop overall and was a very good price for the spec. Also f I was buying now I'd definitely get a bigger hard drive or a second one as it filled up pretty quick and I'm constantly deleting files as the disk is always running out of space.

Eyezone

Definitely Windows 7, there is too much hustle with newer ones. I reccomend Dectopp rather than laptop - they're stronger, faster, and easier to mend them. 8gb Ram is ok - the higher, the better. High Capacity of Hard Disk is importent because you need it for good libary of high quality samples, softwares, plugins, presets, projects etc. It can be external one. The most importent is SoundCard and you can choose one of the Steinberg, Roland, Native Instrument or Alesis - the best are external ones.

Endfloat

I've a Dell Precision 7510 and there's very little that challenges it. Nice build quality too.

Useful.Idiot

Does anyone know anything about the purported high DPC latency issues with Dell laptops? Specifically the XPS line. I've been reading many conflicting reports, some saying latency is fine with external sound card, some saying it isn't. A lot of talk about driver updates, hacky workarounds involving disabling certain drivers and things like that.

stateofflux

I have had many dell laptops and desktops and never had any major issues...although the DPC issue could be a windows 10 thing.

In my opinion there is no point getting a dell XPS unless you are also a gamer...a good chunk of its price is for the dedicated top tier GPU.

Any windows laptop with a decent i5 or i7 cpu, mininum 8gb ram & large hard drive would be fine for most stuff.

this would be in combo with a reputable external sound card eg focusrite scarlet

The Dell inspiron range has a good few different builds to choose from which would give you this spec on a budget. Precision series you could pick the exact spec you want but cost adds up pretty fast..