The best-animated laptops will give you the functionality and a nice big display so you can see what you’re doing. While that used to mean bulky devices or even desktop computers, now you can opt for thin, powerful, and versatile laptops to save some desk space and make them more portable.
There are plenty of modern laptops capable of handling animation tasks, with huge screens hiding in compact and portable designs. You can even get a 2-in-1 model that can handle all your rendering and processing needs. While this is positive, it does mean that, with the plethora of products on the market, it can be tricky to choose the best-animated laptop for your needs. We’ve selected the laptops below based on our own testing or the good authority of industry experts and our sister sites. You can see how we tested laptops for more information, and we also have some deeper insights into the best laptops for animation at the bottom of this article.
Each laptop on this page can run the best animation software out there, including After Effects, Blender, Maya, and more, but will vary in cost, screen size, and other important features.
Looking for the best 3D animation laptops? Then check out the shiny new 2023 MacBook Pro. This 16-inch laptop runs all of your high-end animation programs with ease, powered by Apple’s latest M2 chip.
The rugged 16.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display is perfect for capturing accurate color and detailed artwork. Apple claims the M2 chip is also 40 percent faster than its predecessor, so it can handle many difficult rendering jobs with ease.
In our MacBook Pro (2023, M2) tests, we found battery life to be impressive, lasting more than 15 hours, which is great for creatives on the go who don’t necessarily have access to a power outlet. choose.
Looking for a slightly more affordable option? Check out the 2021 MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro is powered by Apple’s choice of M1 Pro or M1 Max chips, which can easily handle the most complex animations.
Not only does it offer tremendous power, but when we tested it we found that it had one of the best screens you’ll see on a laptop thanks to the mini-LED technology that will make your Animation looks the best.
Apple has slightly increased the screen size on the older 2020 models and increased the selection of ports, including HDMI and a memory card slot, so you can easily plug in other peripherals such as graphics tablets and external monitors. We found it to be very comfortable for working at a desk, but it’s quite large, so if you want something more portable, check out the 14-inch model below.
The Razer Blade 17 is an excellent animated laptop that combines Razer’s well-known build quality with some of the most powerful mobile components around. This includes cutting-edge Intel 12th-gen processors, as well as Nvidia’s latest Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti laptop GPU.
This is the most powerful GPU you can get in a laptop without spending a fortune, and we found that even the most complex and detailed 3D animations ran brilliantly. You can also add realistic lighting effects using ray tracing, taking your animations to a whole new level.
It’s pretty expensive, but for your money, you get some of the best mobile tech you can get. Combined with great build quality and a stunning 17-inch screen, this is a great creative workstation for anyone who needs a lot of power. However, for someone making 2D animations for the web, this might be overkill.
When you look at the Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16, one thing is immediately clear (except for a mouthful of the name) – this is no ordinary laptop. That’s because it has a second touch-enabled screen, located above the keyboard. But far from being a gimmick, this panel makes it a great laptop for animators.
You can move apps and windows down to the touchscreen below, while animations are handled on the main display. This is great for multitasking or just clearing the app’s workspace and moving tools and panels to the lower screen. It can change the way you animate forever.
But let’s not let that overshadow the rest of the device. There are two options for the main screen – 4K or Mini LED – and both cover 100% of the P3 color gamut. You can power it with a powerful AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX CPU and Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti GPU, and fill it with 32GB of memory and 4TB of storage. Sure, it’s expensive, but you can get a great animation laptop for your money.
Yes, another MacBook on this list, but the 13-inch MacBook Pro is a worthy addition. It’s equipped with Apple’s new M2 chip and can be configured with up to 24GB of unified memory, meaning it’s a great, easy-to-port laptop for animation.
It features the Touch Bar across the top of the keyboard, giving you quick access to tools and shortcuts, and can dramatically speed up your workflow.
The newer MacBook Pro 13-inch also boasts an incredibly long battery life. We’ve tested it ourselves, and it’s impressive enough to keep you working all day, and it also has battery life. It’s not as powerful as the MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch models, but it’s more affordable, making it a great choice for many animators
If you want a sleek laptop with Apple-like build quality but don’t want to use macOS, Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 4 is a great Windows alternative. While Microsoft may be better known as a software company, it’s been churning out some great laptops that are thin and light and easy to carry around.
We were impressed with the PixeSense touchscreen, which comes with cutting-edge integrated graphics from either Intel or AMD, depending on which configuration you choose. It also has very decent battery life – we found it lasted about 13 hours in our testing.
How to choose a laptop for animation?
With the increasing popularity of GPU rendering engines such as Redshift and Octane, you should also consider whether to use the GPU or the CPU to render animations.
For CPU rendering, you’re specifically looking for high clock speeds so that the machine can animate in real time and handle the complex calculations required to render the animation.
For more complex 3D animations, you’re probably best off with a GPU, so we recommend looking at a laptop with a dedicated graphics card – especially if you’re trying to get final-quality rendering. While these will inevitably be more expensive, the huge impact on workflow speed is well worth the investment.
However, the current increase in the cost of living makes this kind of investment harder to swallow – which is why we’ve made sure to include laptops in a wide range of price points in our guide that can still meet your animation needs.
