In the market for new laptop to use with Reason

[tiger jackson]

I mainly use a desktop pc, but use a laptop when I'm out of town. And I'm out of town, and my macbook air from 2013 just happened to crap out and cannot find its startup disk at all..
I'm looking for a windows laptop now because of VST support. I don't need a dedicated gpu. Just a strong enough cpu and enough memory to run well, I'm not even sure if I'd be connecting the laptop to an interface, will probably be completely in the box with it. A terabyte or more for storage. I don't wanna spend too much, maybr $300 or below. Anyone know if there's anything at this range?

[Jmax]

I'd check facebook marketplace. I buy/sell here and there and found a great deal on an Lenovo i7 8gig ram and SD. I paid 350, brand new battery and really nice onboard audio. Make sure you're running Windows down as it has built in ASIO drivers. Or else you may have some issues plugging in headphones and hearing audio out of Reason.
The guy I bought from buys and sells laptops, repairs etc. So he became a bit of a friend and handles any laptop upgrades or issues I may have.
Generally I'd look for an i5 or i7 Inel, Quad core, 8 gig ram (expandable up to 16).
I like to jam at night on the laptop or just sit on the couch and listen through the phones.

[reggie1979]

I couldn't not run Reason on a Dell I had with an i7. No matter how I tried to optimize it I'd get audio device stopped errors. Just be careful.

[Oquasec]

For processing power a Desktop is ideal but if you want portability or something then just save up for a minimum i3 laptop since gpus don't mean shit in laptop land anyways.

[tiger jackson]

Did some searching around and concluded what I was asking for was pretty impractical, these things are more expensive than I thought. I'd settle on at least 500gb SSD and around $500 or more dollars. Still can't really find one though.

I'd check facebook marketplace. I buy/sell here and there and found a great deal on an Lenovo i7 8gig ram and SD. I paid 350, brand new battery and really nice onboard audio. Make sure you're running Windows down as it has built in ASIO drivers. Or else you may have some issues plugging in headphones and hearing audio out of Reason.
The guy I bought from buys and sells laptops, repairs etc. So he became a bit of a friend and handles any laptop upgrades or issues I may have.
Generally I'd look for an i5 or i7 Inel, Quad core, 8 gig ram (expandable up to 16).
I like to jam at night on the laptop or just sit on the couch and listen through the phones.

I'm iffy on buying used pc's but I'll give this a look. Also what do you mean by "running windows down"?

I couldn't not run Reason on a Dell I had with an i7. No matter how I tried to optimize it I'd get audio device stopped errors. Just be careful.

Any brands I should avoid or stick to?

[Oquasec]

If you aren't gonna be doing heavy gaming 70% of the laptop market is available to you.

[reggie1979]

Did some searching around and concluded what I was asking for was pretty impractical, these things are more expensive than I thought. I'd settle on at least 500gb SSD and around $500 or more dollars. Still can't really find one though.

I'd check facebook marketplace. I buy/sell here and there and found a great deal on an Lenovo i7 8gig ram and SD. I paid 350, brand new battery and really nice onboard audio. Make sure you're running Windows down as it has built in ASIO drivers. Or else you may have some issues plugging in headphones and hearing audio out of Reason.
The guy I bought from buys and sells laptops, repairs etc. So he became a bit of a friend and handles any laptop upgrades or issues I may have.
Generally I'd look for an i5 or i7 Inel, Quad core, 8 gig ram (expandable up to 16).
I like to jam at night on the laptop or just sit on the couch and listen through the phones.

I'm iffy on buying used pc's but I'll give this a look. Also what do you mean by "running windows down"?

I couldn't not run Reason on a Dell I had with an i7. No matter how I tried to optimize it I'd get audio device stopped errors. Just be careful.

Any brands I should avoid or stick to?

Mine was a Dell. It had plenty of ram and was SSD. I wouldn't recommend them but just be careful, make sure there is a return policy and that way if it's lame you can return it. I didn't because originally I used Bitwig which ran "ok" compared to Reason. Maybe it's different now with the optimizations from 10.3? Just cover your bases.

[djadalaide]

Get a used ROG Strix GL702ZC - its pretty good. I can almost run 2 instances of spire RE with polyphony

[reddust]

I'm using a windows surface book as my main pc for everything including working with Reason.

I know it's not in the budget but what I wanted to say is that in my case it makes a big difference if I have my laptop plugged to the power source or not, when not plugged in I can't almost make any use of reason and I get performance error issues in Reason, as soon as I plug the laptop in to the power source everything works smoothly.

I don't know if that's the case with other laptops but I guess it could happen to other laptops that have a detachable touch screen as well.

[antic604]

I'm using a windows surface book as my main pc for everything including working with Reason.

I know it's not in the budget but what I wanted to say is that in my case it makes a big difference if I have my laptop plugged to the power source or not, when not plugged in I can't almost make any use of reason and I get performance error issues in Reason, as soon as I plug the laptop in to the power source everything works smoothly.

I don't know if that's the case with other laptops but I guess it could happen to other laptops that have a detachable touch screen as well.

Are you enabling the high-performance mode? Because I've been using Surface Pro 4 (which should be weaker than Surface Book) and - especially since 10.3 - it ploughs through projects without a sweat. The high-DPI 12.3'' screen is an issue unless I'm on 200% scaling, but performance wise it's been great.

[reddust]

I'm using a windows surface book as my main pc for everything including working with Reason.

I know it's not in the budget but what I wanted to say is that in my case it makes a big difference if I have my laptop plugged to the power source or not, when not plugged in I can't almost make any use of reason and I get performance error issues in Reason, as soon as I plug the laptop in to the power source everything works smoothly.

I don't know if that's the case with other laptops but I guess it could happen to other laptops that have a detachable touch screen as well.

Are you enabling the high-performance mode? Because I've been using Surface Pro 4 (which should be weaker than Surface Book) and - especially since 10.3 - it ploughs through projects without a sweat. The high-DPI 12.3'' screen is an issue unless I'm on 200% scaling, but performance wise it's been great.

I guess I am, I actually followed one of Molten Music's tutorials on how to tweak the surface for a better performance when making music with it. Mine is working really fine since the 10.3 update, songs that would overload my CPU barely reach half the DSP bars now. The only thing is that I need to plug the Surface to the power supply every time I want to make music with it, but otherwise is working fine and it's nice to be able to tweak some faders with the touch screen

[tiger jackson]

If you aren't gonna be doing heavy gaming 70% of the laptop market is available to you.

No gaming at all, just web browsing, video watching, reason, and maybe reaper. So most important is a strong cpu that doesn't get overloaded to quickly. Should I have 8 gig ram minimum?

[reggie1979]

Yeah, that should be your minimum.

[Oquasec]

Simply put if you can run reaktor you can run reason.
Probably getting a macbook myself since I might be thinking about keeping windows only for custom built desktops.

[Jmax]

Did some searching around and concluded what I was asking for was pretty impractical, these things are more expensive than I thought. I'd settle on at least 500gb SSD and around $500 or more dollars. Still can't really find one though.

I'd check facebook marketplace. I buy/sell here and there and found a great deal on an Lenovo i7 8gig ram and SD. I paid 350, brand new battery and really nice onboard audio. Make sure you're running Windows down as it has built in ASIO drivers. Or else you may have some issues plugging in headphones and hearing audio out of Reason.
The guy I bought from buys and sells laptops, repairs etc. So he became a bit of a friend and handles any laptop upgrades or issues I may have.
Generally I'd look for an i5 or i7 Inel, Quad core, 8 gig ram (expandable up to 16).
I like to jam at night on the laptop or just sit on the couch and listen through the phones.

I'm iffy on buying used pc's but I'll give this a look. Also what do you mean by "running windows down"?

I couldn't not run Reason on a Dell I had with an i7. No matter how I tried to optimize it I'd get audio device stopped errors. Just be careful.

Any brands I should avoid or stick to?

You should be ok with most laptops that are running Win10. Lenovo's seem to work well. Dell's are usually ok as well.

I ran into problems plugging in headphones into my older laptop running Win7 because the audio wouldn't transfer through Reason for some reason. It played out of the speakers no problem. Win10 seems to take care of that issue.

Thing about new laptops is they're very pricey.
Just do a bit of research and try and get yourself something that's used. Keep in mind you can even buy a cheap new SSD 45 bucks and pop that in the laptop, upgrade the RAM etc.
It helps to know someone that can do it for you, most computer stores will do the upgrades for you for a small fee.
My SSD is only 128gig, with Windows installed and Office i think I"m left with like 80 gig. I thought about upgrading but realized there's no point. Work on a few tracks, install your key plugins. Upload anything to Google Drive that needs to be transferred/stored. Works plenty well.
Mostly I try to work on Drum tracks or synth lines on the laptop... then transfer over to my PC setup.

[Oquasec]

The gpus aren't in the same league but I'm pretty sure laptops caught up in the cpu/ram department 11 years ago.

[Jackjackdaw]

I'd check facebook marketplace. I buy/sell here and there and found a great deal on an Lenovo i7 8gig ram and SD. I paid 350, brand new battery and really nice onboard audio. Make sure you're running Windows down as it has built in ASIO drivers. Or else you may have some issues plugging in headphones and hearing audio out of Reason.
The guy I bought from buys and sells laptops, repairs etc. So he became a bit of a friend and handles any laptop upgrades or issues I may have.
Generally I'd look for an i5 or i7 Inel, Quad core, 8 gig ram (expandable up to 16).
I like to jam at night on the laptop or just sit on the couch and listen through the phones.

What is this Windows down?

[O1B]

Took a buggy MBP 13" to apple yesterday. Yesterday.

The issue was $175 but they didn't charge for it. A good internal "spray" may be all it needs.
On my Air, the Audio I/O crapped out (Mother Board) and the Screen is Whited out. That's a pretty penny.

You never know.

I mainly use a desktop pc, but use a laptop when I'm out of town. And I'm out of town, and my macbook air from 2013 just happened to crap out and cannot find its startup disk at all..
I'm looking for a windows laptop now because of VST support. I don't need a dedicated gpu. Just a strong enough cpu and enough memory to run well, I'm not even sure if I'd be connecting the laptop to an interface, will probably be completely in the box with it. A terabyte or more for storage. I don't wanna spend too much, maybr $300 or below. Anyone know if there's anything at this range?

[tiger jackson]

So I stumbled on this https://www.rakuten.com/shop/lenovo/pro ... y=10852245

Looks like it has most of what I was initially looking for. The price especially. Looks almost too good to be true. What's the catch here? Would this be a good one? Unsure about the I3 cpu though.

[littlejam]

hello,

my concern with the rakuten
would be the 5400 rpm drive
these days everyone is going ssd
at minimum 7200 rpm
with multiple drives

can you replace the 5400 rpm drive with an ssd?

cheers,
j

[fullforce]

So I stumbled on this https://www.rakuten.com/shop/lenovo/pro ... y=10852245

Looks like it has most of what I was initially looking for. The price especially. Looks almost too good to be true. What's the catch here? Would this be a good one? Unsure about the I3 cpu though.

If you think you can buy a new laptop for under 300 to run Reason 10 on, you're a few RE's short of a full rack.

[djadalaide]

So I stumbled on this https://www.rakuten.com/shop/lenovo/pro ... y=10852245

Looks like it has most of what I was initially looking for. The price especially. Looks almost too good to be true. What's the catch here? Would this be a good one? Unsure about the I3 cpu though.

If you think you can buy a new laptop for under 300 to run Reason 10 on, you're a few RE's short of a full rack.

Kind of why i said an 8-core machine, costing over 1000 2nd hand.. if anyone noticed

[tiger jackson]

Alright, I'm back, kinda prepared for it now. So my local fry's electronics has these models

A dell https://www.frys.com/product/9560252?si ... IN_RSLT_PG

An asus, storage configuration on this seems cool https://www.frys.com/product/9466921?si ... IN_RSLT_PG

Another asus, this one has a gpu and clearance makes it less than the above https://www.frys.com/product/9528002?si ... IN_RSLT_PG

Any opinions?

[fullforce]

Alright, I'm back, kinda prepared for it now. So my local fry's electronics has these models

A dell https://www.frys.com/product/9560252?si ... IN_RSLT_PG

Forget about that one.

An asus, storage configuration on this seems cool https://www.frys.com/product/9466921?si ... IN_RSLT_PG

This one has SSD, which is a must for running your operating system (and applications) from.

Another asus, this one has a gpu and clearance makes it less than the above https://www.frys.com/product/9528002?si ... IN_RSLT_PG

This one does not have SSD and the gpu is useless unless you play games.

[tiger jackson]

I consider myself a light gamer, I play them a couple times a month on my desktop pc but they aren't really important to me to be playing them when I'm mobile with a laptop, guess I will be going with this one then https://www.frys.com/product/9466921?si ... IN_RSLT_PG