5 Best Laptops for Animation and Graphic Design in 2023

Having a good laptop for Animation and Graphic Design in order to be as efficient as possible being a graphic designer or an animator is essential, especially good laptops for animations as it requires more capable laptops equipped with better hardware to lessen the amount of time required to finish rendering.

Below are five of the best laptops for animation and graphic design in 2023, so let’s get into it without any further delay.

List of Best Laptops for Animation and Graphic Design

Specifications

• Display: 14 inch, 120Hz, 1920×1080 screen
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q 6 GB
• RAM: 16 GB DDR4 3200 MHz
• Storage: 1 TB PCIe SSD
• Dimensions: 12.8 x 8.7 x 0.7 inches

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 is one of the best laptops for animation and graphic design on the laptops market right now, wanna know why? Well, let’s take a deep dive into its features to figure it out.

It has a 14 inch, Full HD (1920×1080 pixels) display with a refresh rate of 120 Hz, with a 117% sRGB color gamut making it a great display with a good set of features for graphics designers and animators.

So with that refresh rate, you don’t need to worry about how your animation or graphics look in a smooth, color-accurate display.

The brightness of the display can get as high as 323 nits so that you can use it in bright areas without worries.

It also supports AMD FreeSync which as a result supports Nvidia’s G-Sync without any problem for a smooth experience if you decide to get out of the working environment and game for a bit so no more tearing in games.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 features an AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS 3.0 GHz processor that can be boosted up to 4.3 GHz with 8 Cores and 16 Threads for heavy multi-tasking operations which means it can handle anything you throw at resulting in a better and faster rendering experience.

It also has better multitasking performance than the Core i7-10750H processor with less power consumption.

It features an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q for a powerful rendering and gaming experience and heavy workloads. With the RTX 2060, you can expect to run anything you want with ease and high framerates as it is a very good graphics card.

On the memory side, it has 16 gigabytes of RAM which is decent for a laptop for animating or graphic design with a speed of 3200 MHz as it is very crucial to have high speeds of RAM for Ryzen processors to take advantage of AMD Infinity Fabric.

It has 1 TB of PCIe SSD storage, which is awesome as SSDs have much higher speeds than normal hard-drives, and given it is PCIe means it is even faster than normal SSDs.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 is not only one of the best laptops for Animators and Graphic Designers, but also one of the best laptops overall. I highly recommend it to everyone that wants a small, lightweight laptop with a powerful set of features and not overpriced.

Specifications

• Display: 15.6 inch, 144Hz, 1920×1080 screen
• CPU: Intel Core i5-10300H
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB
• RAM: 8 GB DDR4 2666 MHz
• Storage: 256 GB PCIe SSD
• Dimensions: 14.08 x 9.76 x 1.08 inches

If I told you that there is a very good laptop in the 1300$ – 1500$ price range (at the time of writing) that has a 10th gen Core i7 processor with an RTX 2070, you would probably say that I am crazy, right? Well, the MSI GL65 Leopard says otherwise.

The MSI GL65 Leopard has a Core i5-10300H CPU that is based on a 14 nm chip with 6 Cores, 12 Threads with a base clock speed of 2.6 GHz that can be overclocked up to 5 GHz (Though I don’t recommend doing this on laptops as they heat up quickly when running at full power).

It has a 15.6 inch Full HD (1920×1080) display that has a refresh rate of 144 Hz which is good for having a smooth display especially on objects that move fast which is good for animators and gamers as well.

The display of the laptop has a 3 ms response time to reduce ghosting in fast motion.

The display has about 96% sRGB color gamut which is good for color accuracy dependant work and the display brightness can go up to 290 nits.

It comes with a 256 GB PCIe SSD storage, which may be enough for some and not for others, however, you can still upgrade the storage as there is an open slot for 2.5 inches drive either for SSD or HDD.

Thanks to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 the laptop is equipped with, it is a true beast. And with a graphics card like that on 1920x1080p, you should expect above 100+ framerates on most applications and games. The RTX 2070 can handle it all for you without a problem.

The MSI GL65 Leopard is a great laptop, equipped with a powerful RTX 2070 with a competitive price tag. When taking the hardware inside the laptop into consideration, it is considered a cheap laptop for animation and graphic design.

Specifications

• Display: 15.6 inch, 240 Hz, 1920×1080 screen
• CPU: Intel Core i7-11800H
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB
• RAM: 16 GB DDR4 2933 MHz
• Storage: 512 GB PCIe SSD
• Dimensions: 14.31 x 10.04 x 0.90 inches

The Acer Predator Helios 300 is famous for being one of the best laptops on the market, and as the 2020 version dropped out, it became even more powerful with a better processor, better graphics card, and higher refresh rate display.

Similar to the GL65 Leopard, it has an i7-11800H which is good for heavy tasks like rendering or processing heavy games. It also has an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 which is a powerful graphics card.

The Helios 300 features a 15.6 inch Full HD (1920×1080) display with a 240 Hz refresh rate for ultra smoothness in fast motions, which is actually the highest refresh rate in this list.

It has about 90% sRGB color gamut which is okay, not the best color-accurate display but it is decent enough.

It comes with 512 GB PCIe SSD and those who find it a low amount of space can upgrade the storage with ease.

Memory-wise, it has 16 GB DDR4 RAM with a decent 2933 MHz speed.

The Acer Predator Helios 300 is a good option for an animation laptop or graphic design laptop, with decent hardware to run all the programs and games you need.

Other Great Options

Specifications

• Display: 15.6 inch, 144 Hz, 1920×1080 screen
• CPU: Intel Core i7-10750H
• GPU: GeForce RTX 2060Ti 6 GB
• RAM: 16 GB 2933 MHz
• Storage: 512GB GB SSD
• Dimensions: 13.98 x 0.78 x 9.25 inches

The Razer Blade 15 is a well-built, stylish, powerful yet expensive gaming laptop that is more than capable of running heavy animation and graphic design programs.

The 2020 version of the Razer Blade 15 basic edition comes with an upgraded CPU, the i7-10750H for running heavy tasks on your machine in less time.

It has a 15.6-inch display with a refresh rate of 144 Hz and a resolution of 1920×1080 (Full HD). The display has a color gamut of 111% sRGB, and it can go as bright as 300 nits which is decent.

Featuring an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060, it should more than enough for most animators and graphic designers so there should be no worries here.

On the storage side, it has a 512 GB of PCIe SSD, which is fast but may not be enough for some users, so you might want to add another SSD or HDD, and the good thing is that it is upgradable.

The Razer Blade 15 has 16 gigs of RAM with a frequency of 2933 MHz, which is quite good and more than enough for most users.

The Razer Blade 15 is one of the best laptops for graphic design and animation, however, it is an expensive laptop. It is recommended if you are not worried about your budget.

Specifications

• Display: 15.6 inch, 144 Hz, 1920×1080 screen
• CPU: Intel Core i7-9750H
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB
• RAM: 16 GB DDR4 2666 MHz
• Storage: 256GB PCIe SSD
• Dimensions: 14.31 x 10.04 x 0.96 inches

The Acer Nitro 5 is one of the best budget laptops for animation and graphic design, if not the best. At a price tag between 1000$ – 1100$, this is a beast equipped with very powerful hardware.

The only problem with it is its display, the colors of the display are not so accurate, so if you are not worried about that, I highly recommend this laptop to everyone!

A laptop with an Intel Core i7-9750H at this price tag means it is a killer. It means a decent rendering performance and multi-tasking.

It also features an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060, and again, at this price point, this is crazy, with that build quality, it is a very good budget laptop for gaming, animating, and graphic design.

One of the downsides of this laptop is storage, as it comes with a 256 GB PCIe SSD as most users will find 256 GB quite a low amount of storage. So you will most likely want to add another SSD or HDD in there.

It has 16 GB of RAM with 2666 MHz speed like most other expensive laptops whilst being cheap making it one of the best cheap laptops if not the best.

On the display side, it features a 15.6 inch Full HD display with a 144 Hz refresh rate which is decent at that price point. It also has 2 variants, a 15.6-inch model and 17.3 inches one for those who prefer bigger screens.

It has lower color accuracy than all displays of the laptops above in the list, and that should be a deal-breaker only for professional graphic designers and animators, for other animators and graphic designers, however, it is still a very good and affordable option.

The Acer Nitro 5 is one of the best affordable laptops for animation and graphic, and if color accuracy is not a deal-breaker for you, then I recommend it highly as it has the best price to performance ratio among all of these laptops.

Quick Tip

Laptops in the list may have a few variants that you can get, these variants are subject to changes in the laptop specs.

Example: the Predator Triton 500 has some models equipped with an NVIDIA RTX 2060 graphics card while some others have NVIDIA RTX 2080 Max-Q.

So be aware of these models if you are buying a laptop and check what is best for you.

What you should look for in a laptop for Animation or Graphic Design?

CPU

The least laptop CPU I recommend for Animation and Graphic Design is at least an i5 9th gen processor or Ryzen 5 processor. However, I recommend an i7 or a Ryzen 7 CPU instead.

GPU

You can of course look at the minimum requirements at the software you are using for that be it Blender, Maya, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, or whatever. But that should not be below a GTX 1060 as that is the bare minimum I recommend for animators especially. An RTX 2060 or better is recommended for heavy 3D animations.

RAM

RAM size of 8 GB might be enough for some animators or graphic designers, though I recommend at least 16 GB. Of course, it may not be a problem if you can upgrade it from 8 GBs to 16 GBs later on.

Storage

Good animation and graphic design laptops must have at least 256 GB of SSD storage. However, I recommend 512 GB or even better, a 1 TB SSD is a safe choice so you don’t have to worry about running out of storage.

Conclusion

A good graphic design and animation laptop choice can be hard and tricky if you don’t know what to look for, however, with the guide above and our recommended list you should be now more confident when picking your own laptop for animation or graphic design or be able to pick one from the list above.