4 Best Laptops for 3D Animation

Are you a student new to 3D animation? Or you’ve been in the business for some time, but your laptop keeps bailing out on you? Whatever category you fall in, there’s something for you.

It’s clear that animation requires a laptop with high-end dedicated graphics, ample RAM capacity, large storage, and a blazing-fast processor.

In this article, you’ll get a comprehensive list of the things you should look out for before buying a laptop. Also, we listed several laptops that will help you immensely—without lagging issues.

Who Should Get This

If you’re keen on getting a good animation laptop with a good resolution that supports all your software pallets and windows on a single screen—you’re in the right place. The laptops on this list are ideal for students or animators that need a strong graphics card to support their work.

The recommendations in this article are perfect for students or animators who value portability after quality. However, these options aren’t necessary for people that work with lesser graphics demanding software like writers and journalists.

Best Laptops for 3D Animation: Our Picks

We have listed our best picks below, along with a quick review of each option.

1. MacBook Pro with M2 chip

The MacBook Pro is a powerful device that has a durable performance. It comes with a powerful M2 chip that proves responsive—irrespective of the number of tabs you open on the Safari browser.

With the new MacBook Pro, you can explore your multitasking skills without any hassles—because it has an excellent RAM capacity.

Do you need to work on the go? The MBP has a battery life of up to 20 hours to see you through your work. Even if you need to work late in a dark room, its Retina LED-backlit display will keep you going.

If you need your programs to boot faster, the MacBook comes with a 256GB or 512 SSD. Even with its slim design, it has a lot of useful ports—that increase its functionality.

What We Like:

• It has an impressive display
• It’s lightweight
• It has a LED-backlit display
• Slender and lightweight

What We Don’t Like:

• It lacks connectivity ports
• The touch bar changes constantly

2. GIGABYTE Aero 15X v8-BK4 15″ Ultra Slim Gaming Laptop

The Gigabyte Gaming Aero is useful to animators that use a lot of graphically demanding software. Don’t pay attention to the “Gaming” in its title. The manufacturers added it because of its high tier graphics card.

So, if you plan to play games on your laptop after the day’s work to cool off—the laptop will serve the purpose without glitches.

The Aero 15X weighs almost 4.4lbs –which means you, can move around with ease.

Oh yes, before we forget; Thet laptop comes with a 512GB PCle SSD—which makes it a fast system. Plus, the display is impressive because it has a full HD resolution.

What We Like:

• It has an excellent battery life
• It’s slender with light chassis
• It has excellent performance for animation
• It comes with a full-sized RGB keyboard

What We Don’t Like:

• The laptop is loud during 3D workload
• The Webcam is below the screen

3. ASUS ROG Zephyrus S Ultra Slim Gaming PC Laptop

Asus ROG is one laptop that can only blow any animator’s mind because it takes up any task with help from the 8th Generation Intel Core i7-8750H processor.

Additionally, the Zephyrus comes with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 which offers a ton of power for animation, gaming, and other creative work.

With this gadget, you don’t need to worry about it overheating while you work—because it comes with improved 12v fans. Plus, the laptop regulates its temperature based on the GPU and CPU temperatures.

It allows you to toggle between the three modes conveniently. Also, it weighs about 4.63 lbs and has a battery life of up to 8 hours.

What We Like:

• It has a good processor
• It allows for seamless connectivity
• It has the best thermals and cooling
• It’s lightweight and powerful

What We Don’t Like:

• The laptop fans are loud
• It doesn’t have Thunderbolt

4. Acer Aspire E15

If you’re new to animating and you’re on a low budget, the Acer Aspire E15 is the perfect go-to. It has a core i7-8550U processor which is an excellent start for animation.

The laptop has a remarkable battery life of up to 15 hours. It comes with an 8GB RAM that can store operations that its CPU will take up easily.

It comes with NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphics that give the laptop superb performance—even though it has some lagging issues sometimes.

We can’t deny that the laptop is slim or lightweight. It’s heavy when you compare it to other competitor laptops. But, it has an LED-lit IPS display that presents videos and images in bright colors at wider viewing angles.

What We Like:

• The processing power is impressive
• It has an excellent battery life
• It displays videos and images in bright colors
• It has a full-HD display

What We Don’t Like:

• It has a poor webcam
• It has some lagging issues

Choosing a Laptop for 3D Animation: Things to Consider

Here are things you should consider before you buy the best laptop for animation:

CPU

As an animator, you should find laptops with a high CPU clock speed. The CPU clock speed is more crucial than getting a specific brand, or lots of Cores.

A low clock speed translates to a slow system that reduces your productivity. A good example of CPUs for animation is Intel i7 8850H or i78750H because they have a high Base-Clock and Turbo-Boost Clock.

RAM

After the speed, comes the RAM. When the size of your laptop RAM is large, it allows you to work on high resolutions and images, long animations, complex scenes, and multiple characters.

If you don’t have Real-time playback, a large RAM will allow you to keep preview Playblasts to compare and check the current animation state. It’s ideal to opt for at least 8GB but, go for 16GB or 32GB—for a better experience.

Graphics Card

The GPU or Graphics Card is responsible for displaying to your monitor or any attached device. The GPU also helps to show textures and other graphical effects—for an experience that’s closer to the final rendered image.

Memory

You may be familiar with HDDs, also known as Hard Disc Drives—but they are bottle-necked and slow when it comes to running a system. So, an animator needs a laptop with SSDs (Solid State Drives)—which comes in most new laptops produced today.

The SSDs help you boot your system, save your scene updates, and boot your OS faster. Interestingly, they are more secure and almost completely shock resistant. If you want higher speed in storage-related workloads the new PCle M.2 NVMe SSDs are ideal.

Expandability

Your laptop for animation should be expandable. What that means is that your laptop should have the capacity to accept an upgrade within its hardware components. For instance, your laptop comes with 500GB, and you need more storage in the long run—your laptop should have the capacity for an upgrade of 1TB.

How to Maintain the Hardware of Your Laptop

Here are three tips on how to protect the hardware of your laptop:

• Clean the internal and external parts of your laptop to avoid dust accumulation. You can use air blowers to ease the procedure.
• Ensure that your laptop battery is connected to a power source when possible. And you have to shut down the laptop when the battery level reaches 10%. The practice will extend the lifespan of your laptop battery.
• A cooling pad is a necessary accessory, particularly if you use a lot of graphically demanding software. Doing this helps to provide extra cooling to the laptop alongside the built-in fans—and increases the lifespan of the laptop.

Wrapping Up

At this point, we draw the curtains. We hope that the buying guide helped—and that the list of laptops for 3D animation matched your requirements.

Which of the gadgets do you plan on trying out first? Did we leave out any of your faves on this list? We’d be more than glad to hear your thoughts in the comments section.