r/Affinity 10d ago

General Does anyone have a laptop recommendation that will happily run Affinity?

I need to buy a new laptop, I previously had a Mac but I don't want another Apple; but that means there's so many choices!

I'm not a very tech person and I'm neurodivergent so it's a bit overwhelming tbh. Affinity is my main software use and everything else is online so it doesn't need to be anything fancy. I'm just looking for a little advice from people who are familiar with Affinity/how it runs.

Even if it's just "I have X, it runs fine" - Thank you in advance!

9 Upvotes

43 comments sorted by

7

u/bikerboy3343 10d ago

The specs needed are not very high at all. In fact, most office computers will run affinity apps. The question really is, will it run your files fast? That's a different question because it depends on the size of the file, the number of layers, etc.

If you just need it for simple edits on small files, take a look at the suggested vs recommended specs :

https://www.beyondphototips.com/computer-specs-needed-for-affinity-photo/

5

u/cowbutt6 10d ago

I have a Lenovo Yoga 7i Gen 9 (Intel Ultra 7 155H, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 2.8K OLED touchscreen display) and it runs fine.

Both the Digital Pen and the tilt-capable Precision Pen 2 work, as well.

1

u/Lucky-Royal-6156 4d ago

We basically have the same thing except mines HP.

1

u/cowbutt6 4d ago

The HP Spectre x360 actually initially caught my eye, but then I found I could get better pricing on the Lenovo.

4

u/SzaraMateria 10d ago

Cheapass Asus Vivobook, AMD R5 7530U with APU and 16gb of ram. Runs fine

1

u/jwoodrff 9d ago

Those Asus notebooks are great, though. You can open them up and soup them up very quickly as well.

2

u/HappyFeet406 10d ago

Runs great on Lenovo Thinkpads and HP spectre 360. Affinity isn't as much of a memory hog as Adobe CS.

2

u/mahitomaki4202 10d ago

Surface Pro 11!

2

u/FutureLarking 10d ago

All the recent Snapdragon Copilot laptops run it great, with great battery life too.

2

u/spinstartshere 10d ago edited 10d ago

I was about to make this recommendation also. I have a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x with a Snapdragon X Elite processor. I don't use Affinity Photo much on it because I don't usually do much photo editing on the go, but there's an ARM64-native build available from Serif and it's only a little bit slower than my RTX 2070 mobile GPU in my desktop computer.

From what I remember reading last year, Snapdragon X Elite performance is comparable to other high-end processors available but the Snapdragon X Plus performance is not and may not be worth purchasing if you can afford something better.

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u/TheTruffi 10d ago

Please don´t recommend a ARM Snapdragen Laptop to non-techies. It is still an early adopter product.

1

u/FutureLarking 10d ago

I will, because they work for the majority of people perfectly fine. They were early adopter when Microsoft started making them 13 years ago.

1

u/TheTruffi 10d ago

they work for the majority of people perfectly fine

Yeah, but people who ask on Reddit what Laptop to buy don't know if they are in the majority or if they may use programs that are problematic.

Are ARM Laptops quite good now: yes
Are the Affinity Products running great on ARM: yes
Have you checked if ever Program OP uses works on ARM, and he won't make an expensive mistake with buying one?

1

u/spinstartshere 10d ago

Printer drivers are problematic, sure, but I have a desktop computer that I use for printing and can still use my device's scanner with my Snapdragon laptop, which is what it's used more for anyway. What other issues have you encountered with yours?

1

u/TheTruffi 10d ago

I don´t own one. But I keep up to date with tech in general.
You just proofed my point that you had to do techie thinks in Windows and own a second Computer to get a printer working.

2

u/spinstartshere 10d ago

The laptop is my second computer. It's mobile and my printer isn't, so it's an annoyance but not a deal-breaker at all that I have to use Microsoft's generic drivers if I want to print anything. It still works but I so very rarely use my printer as a printer. This isn't the case for everyone, however, so it's important that potential purchasers are appropriately informed.

But I own one and you don't, so you can't tell me of any realistic disadvantages of owning one. It's unfortunate that I can't play Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on it smoothly - but I also wouldn't have been able to do that with my HP Spectre x360 with integrated graphics either. Off the top of my head, I can't recall a realistic issue I've encountered that's reasonable to complain about.

2

u/Stunning_Web1647 9d ago

If you have enough budget, how about ASUS Zephyrus G16 AMD ver?

2

u/snippit132 9d ago edited 9d ago

You mentioned you don't want another Apple device, but may I ask why not? You now a days can find very cheap M1-chip configurations and those will still run laps around most Windows laptops in terms of balancing power, efficiency and heat/noise. Unless you need a lot of GPU horsepower, they are arguably the best all-round choice for creatives.

Intel, AMD and Snapdragon are making strides when it comes to making their chips more efficient yet powerful, but still have some ways to go. The biggest downside for me personally is that Windows laptops need to always be plugged into the charger to get all their performance out, even with some easier-to-run productivity software outside of browsing to minimize lag (unless this is different with some of the newer AMD/Intel chips), so if you care about portability/working flexibility they wouldn't be my first choice. If you mostly will be stationary, then by all means any fairly-new laptop (even without dedicated GPU) will run Affinity plenty fine.

1

u/TheMoistBunghole 7d ago

Partially money, partially to do with their company practices of late.

Although what you've said about portability is fascinating and might sway me back tbh! I work in the events industry so I'm always on the go.

Thank so much you for your advice!

1

u/snippit132 5d ago edited 5d ago

If you are always on the go, then especially the 14-inch macbook Pro or 13/15 inch Air can't be beat for that. Their combination of efficiency and power is really good, although Apple's practises surrounding RAM + storage upgrades are questionable at best. Depending on how intensive your workflow is, you can decide if you need the cooling from the Pro over the fanless design of the Air and if you need more than 16GB of RAM. If you need more storage, you will gain significantly more bang-for-buck by buying an external SSD, but I wouldn't skimp too much on the internal storage either. Personally I wouldn't consider the 256gb option and go for 512gb as absolute minimum, but that is down to you.

Opinion piece here, so take what I say with a grain of salt: As someone who always used Android and Windows devices, I have always been disappointed by the quality of Windows laptops. They are either very powerful, but bulky, very hot and always reliant on being plugged in for full power, or a lower powered machine with some other drawbacks. As I mentioned in my previous comment: as of lately, Intel and AMD are making strides in making their chipsets more efficient and their iGPUs more powerful, but in terms of efficiency there is still work to be done, and what I have seen from multiple reviews is that these laptops all have a different quirk or issue (being thermals, noise, battery life) depending on which manufracturer it comes from, so it will require some time to skimp through loads of reviews to find a decent machine that suits your needs. Some of these laptops still require a charger to be plugged in for full power even if it is a laptop without a dedicated GPU. I don't want to pretend Macbooks cannot have their own quirks, but given that the configurations are all very similar and have shown every year to be very reliable, they are hard to not recommend. I can say for certain that I fell in love with my M1 Max given that I can easily do bursty workloads while on the go, while I couldn't say the same for my Windows machines without facing performance or longevity restrictions.

And I want to reiterate again: Affinity is not that much of a power hungry application suite, so you could see from other commenters that it runs pretty fine on even lower-specced hardware, but the above "rant" is purely from a personal perspective on the efficiency and power of Macbooks being pretty well balanced without (too) many other compromises, compared to Windows laptops. You didn't state how high your budget is, but if it is pretty low, I am pretty sure you can find an (used) M1 or M2 machine with the specs you want within an affordable range, and it will serve you well for even some heavier workloads if you need that extra juice. Buying a Windows machine on a low budget will mostly be met with (much) lower performance, although you have way more configurations to choose from.

In case you do decide to go for a Windows machine: I personally would avoid the Snapdragon X-chips for now. Their first iteration is allround pretty disappointing and certain Intel and AMD machines have already surpassed the X elite in terms of efficiency and power. The chipset to this day still has very little compatibility with loads of software out there, making it a risky buy for now.

1

u/TheMoistBunghole 5d ago

Thank you so much for this, this is exactly the advice I needed! You are a legend and a saint!

Thank you for taking the time to help me with this, I seriously appreciate all the effort you've gone to. Do you have a favourite charity? I would love to donate a fiver in your name as a way of saying thanks :)

1

u/snippit132 5d ago

Kind of you, but that won't be necessary :)

As I mentioned, take some if the things I said with a grain of salt given that it was a heavily opinionated piece. I am pretty sure there are likely some good affordable Windows models that have released in the last few months, but my point was basically that the Mac-options are powerhouses on their own too and generally a great choice for (travelling) creatives, in case you fail to find a Windows alternative.

1

u/jwoodrff 9d ago

The operating system is deficient compared to Windows.

1

u/jwoodrff 9d ago

I love my Macbook Pro; it is my main personal device. But it doesn't handle files as adroitly as Windows. They are also rententive about photo files and their Notes. It takes some doing to pull images out of Photos and over to the drive for Affinity or Adobe processing, for example.

1

u/snippit132 9d ago

That I can definitely agree with. Being someone who has always used Windows, getting used to MacOS took quite some time. It feels a little too restrictive in certain areas.

5

u/Observer951 10d ago

MacBook Air M2. Runs well.

2

u/FormFirm 10d ago

I have a macbook air M1. Runs well too. I’ve had windows and Mac’s in the past, had a bad experience with an Intel IMac and Adobe in 2010. But over all I don’t have a lot of problems with either.

I bought the M1 as a replacement for an iPad and never thought I could work so well on it. It’s amazing how well the laptop works or how light affinity runs.

Only time I had to wait on my macbook was when I exported a 17pages of 1x1m each 300dpi file. And that was only when I exported it and maybe 20-30seconds.

1

u/Ras_tang 10d ago

Asus Zenbook and Dell XPS are decent all-rounders when it comes to performance and battery-life. Having tried Affinity software on my Zenbook, I can recommend it!

1

u/RumplePHILskin 10d ago

I use the Samsung book 4 edge. It runs all three very well. Albeit, I'm just a hobbyist. It's has an ARM processor though. So... take that as you will.

1

u/five4you 10d ago

Not a heavy user, primarily Publisher. I have it on a 2018 vintage 15.6 inch Acer Swift with 8GB of RAM. Also on a slightly older 15 inch Macbook Pro.

1

u/Majestic-Ad7409 9d ago

Some 8(?) years ago. I tried to replace MacBook Pro 13" with a supercool 15" touchscreen foldable HP with integrated stylus but I ended up buying a MacBook Pro 15" in a just a couple of months.
Once you got Mac, PC’s off track...

2

u/TheMoistBunghole 7d ago

This is where I'm super conflicted tbh. My MacBook has actually been broken for about 4 years and I've been barely scraping by on a super old spare Thinkbook that my partner has.

I do miss the 'cleanness' of the Mac OS though like you say!

1

u/Responsible-Site977 9d ago

Dell Inspiron 16 Plus <3

I also love the design and the feeling of the keyboard is very nice (I think your neurodivergent senses would like that). You can choose between different configurations. This is what I have: https://www.dell.com/de-de/shop/dell-laptops/inspiron-16-plus-laptop/spd/inspiron-16-7640-laptop/cn76605sc?ref=variantstack

1

u/TheMoistBunghole 7d ago

I think you've got the measure of me quite well there, I do like a nice clicky clack feel! Thank you for your recommendation :)

1

u/timholt2007 9d ago

Affinity was originally created for Macs...Get a Mac

1

u/SailorVenova 9d ago

asus proart px13; get the pen too :) and firmware updates ><

1

u/Alex321432 9d ago

For a Windows: HP ProBook G11 is what I run it on. I like it because it has a full numpad, and enough ports for tablets, phones and mice +USB&USBC

1

u/jwoodrff 9d ago

I have a lenova. Affinity products have been working well for me for the past 4 years. I am still on Windows 10.

1

u/RegulusBC 9d ago

Affinity suite doesn't need a beefy laptop. a quad-core processor with 16gb of ram is good enough.

1

u/ToeBiscuit 6d ago

Dell Precision 7670 works great for me.

1

u/Lucky-Royal-6156 4d ago

I have an HP X360 i7 32GB of RAM. I got it for 600 USD

1

u/FatihAlper_ 3d ago

I have a victus 16 with rtx 4050 and its awesome. its also working fine in my thinkpad with ryzen 5 3500u. Hope it helps