7 Best Laptop for Adobe Illustrator

Looking for the best laptops for adobe illustrator? Find the right fit for you below

People hold different opinions about different products. And to no surprise, the options available in the market have increased a lot even for choosing adobe illustrator laptops.

With that, you might end up asking yourself: What features are actually important for a Laptop best suited for Illustrator? Well, this would be the correct track. Without any delays, let’s get to the list, followed by a buying guide to help you look at the necessary features to look out for when using software like illustrator.

Top Picks

Best Laptop for Adobe Illustrator in 2021

Asus Zenbook Pro Duo: Premium Pick

Asus ZenBook Pro is hands down one of the Best Laptops for Adobe illustrator available currently. All thanks to the thin and portable design, coupled with a gorgeous display and power-packed cpu performance.

If you are genuinely interested in purchasing a laptop for Adobe illustrator and increase your productivity go for the Asus Zenbook Pro Duo laptop.

This laptop combines some of the top features to give you better productivity. Also, if you are a mouse-friendly right-handed user, you won’t mind using the trackpad located on the user’s right-hand side. However, this turns out to be a drawback for lefties.

The hand rest is another scope of relief that you get. And you may use touch pens on the screen.

Since most illustrator artists and graphic designers work for about 7-8 hours a day, the battery life of 9 hours is ideal for being taken at workplaces.

I love this laptop because it can also be used with any other apps in the creative cloud. The display is so good!

The display is sharp, and the brightness is balanced. The design is smooth textured and comfortable to touch. If you still need additional screen space, especially for photo editing, you can always pick an added monitor alongside this laptop.

With Dual Screen Technology, you might use it for multiple tasks at the workplace. However the main reason behind its being, so professionals favorite is the i9 processor and an Nvidia RTX 2060 GPU.

Pros:

• Strong processor
• Dual Screen facility
• Beautiful Touchscreen display with balanced brightness
• Optimum Battery life
• RTX 2060 GPU

Cons:

• Slightly heavy for being portable.
• The display is not very bright for such users who require the same.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 3: Best 2 in 1 for illustrator

This elegant design is sure to catch your eyes as soon as you look at it. The laptop comes with thick sides, but that doesn’t compromise the screen size. It’s lightweight and portable too. This laptop’s features are Illustrator specific; they revolve more or less around being convenient for Adobe illustration.

The inbuilt camera is upgraded with IR technology to recognize faces. The surface pen is so interesting to be used on the display screen. And with that, we are reminded about the absolutely stunning display screen which is vibrant and yet not straining to the eyes.

The 13.5 inches screen is styled with the Alcantara fabric. The features are classy and come with intel i7 processors. You also have a type C port for diverse connectivity options.

One of the main reasons why people often purchase Surface laptops is because of the superior build quality and durability these laptops offer.

You can also use Photoshop without any sort of lags or bugs with its tools. That’s why it’s the best laptop for illustrator and photoshop.

Thus, if you are ready to pay the price, you are certainly getting a beast.

Pros:

• Strong processor
• Vibrant display
• Lightweight model
• Optimum Battery life
• Specified features for Adobe Illustrator 
• IR webcam technology

Cons:

• Lack HDR and OLED

MacBook Pro (M1 Chip) – Best mac Laptop for Adobe Illustrator

It would be unfair if one mentions laptops preferred for Adobe illustration and forgets to mention the famous MacBook Pro M1 Chip by Apple. The laptop gets charged within the blink of an eye. There you get 128 MB of a DRAM, to be exact. The M1 Chip is known for providing the fastest performance to the MAC lineup.

The display is best suited with high resolution and pronounced colors. For more screen space, you can pick any kind of ultrawide monitor ensuring that you will get more space for your designs, ultimately resulting in a better portfolio in the years to come.

This is extremely lightweight and hence very portable. The eye-catching retina display is full of vibrant colors. The 10 hours of battery life lets you work non-stop with the illustrator and designing app workload.

Portability and lightweight is one of the main reasons why illustrators and freelancers love Macs.

Coming to the screen size, Apple laptops have screen sizes of more or less between 13 inches to 15 inches; so this laptop has a 13-inch screen which is obviously having a gorgeous display with the most vibrant colors.

I feel that If you use an additional computer monitor side by side, the 13 inch screen is sufficient.

The laptop’s main feature is the latest M1 chip and up to 32 GB DDR4 RAM and it is capable of running all ios apps that you want to use.

Pros:

• Excellent processor
• Colorful and Vibrant display
• Ideal Battery life
• Enhanced features for Adobe Illustrator 
• Extremely lightweight and portable

Cons:

• Very Costly

Asus Vivobook 15

This laptop absolutely deserves to be among the laptops on our list. It is very affordable, and at the same time, it is equipped with all the essential features required for Adobe Illustrator.

That’s why its the best budget laptop for illustrator currently.

You won’t mind typing for long hours with the beautifully designed keyboard providing an ErgoLift hinge that lets you set your angle comfortably while you type.

Yet a drawback might be the dull display as reported by many users. It is only while one plays graphic-intensive games or movies that one might notice such discomfort. Moreover, you get a 720-pixel webcam. Dell Touchpad is very spacious and does not limit your movement. It is equipped with a fingerprint reader facility.

NanoEdge Display alongside perfect connectivity options with WiFi + Bluetooth 5.0 is why we prefer this laptop for illustration artists and graphic designers to use for Adobe illustrator.

If you are on a budget and don’t want to spend too much on your machine, we would recommend you this one for illustrator.

The design of the laptop is sleek and lightweight. You would love to flaunt this portable laptop which looks very stylish. It comes in some attractive colors like sea green too.

The laptop’s main features are 15.6 inches screen, 8th Generation Intel Core i5 processor, 256 GB SSD, and 8 GB memory. This intel processor is more than enough to work alongside creative cloud in general and illustrator in particular.

The connectivity options are enough for working daily even though it lacks a thunderbolt 3 port.

Overall, if you are looking for something budget-friendly, this is the best laptop for adobe illustrator that you can get.

Pros:

• Strong processor
• Vibrant colors available 
• Sleek and stylish model
• Optimum Battery life
• ErgoLift Hinge
• 720p webcam

Cons:

• The Keyboard is not backlit
• Lacks TB3 port.

Microsoft Surface Book 2

We feel absolutely obsessed with the GeForce GPU and 17 hours of battery life, and hence, it’s hard to forget mentioning it in the first place. You need not worry about the battery drainage while working on graphics. The touchscreen is detachable, and the display quality is boosted with 3240×2160. You get a gorgeous and tempting display.

It is also one of the Best Tablet for Illustrator as the keyboard can be detached.

The touch pen adds to the glamour of the laptop. Other amazing features include 16 GB RAM, 8th Generation of intel i7-8650U processor, 256 GB SSD, and Microsoft Surface Platinum pen. The downside however is that you don’t get the touch pen together with the laptop. You will have to purchase it separately.

Moreover, on this laptop, you get to work without lags and hindrance. You hardly get to hear technological complaints about Microsoft laptops.

The features are best suited for expanded workloads and designing. Thus, many illustration artists, designers, and freelancers often pick the Surface Book as their go-to purchase owing to the quality Microsoft is known to provide.

NOTE: Unless you are on a budget, we strongly advice you to go with it successor, the Surface Book 3

Pros:

• Strong processor
• Gorgeous display
• Exclusive Battery life
• Upgraded features for Adobe Illustrator 

Cons:

• Costly

Apple MacBook Air

It feels painful to keep Apple products in the conclusive part of the list, just because they are super pricey. That’s neither fair for the buyers nor the sellers. Having said that, I hope we do not mind another product by Apple, which is the Apple MacBook Air.

Undoubtedly Macs have the best displays available in the market which make it easy to edit even the smallest details with accuracy and proper colors.The laptop has secured a soft corner in many Adobe Illustrator users’ hearts. After all, it packs as much as 4 million pixels sharp in its 13 inch display, simply amazing, isn’t it?

The laptop’s attention-grabbing features are a powerful processing unit, stylish design, backlit keyboard, and extremely lightweight model. The resolution of the display is 2560×1600 at 227 PPI. The design is so modern, and it weighs less than 3 pounds, making it extremely lightweight and portable.

The M1 chip with 8 cores with 8GB RAM and 256 GB SSD is sufficient for beginners. Experts should go for the 512GB variant. You also get two stereo speakers and a fingerprint recognizer.

Like the Macbook Pro, the Macbook Air is extremely portable as well, which is often one of the top most priorities of a illustration artist.

Thus, we can say that this list of the best laptops for adobe illustrator would be incomplete without the inclusion of the Apple Macbook Air.

Pros:

• Excellent processor
• Vibrant display
• Ideal Battery life
• Relatable features for Adobe Illustrator 
• Extremely lightweight and portable

Cons:

• Extremely Costly
• Limited Storage makes it hard for storing your designs and portfolio

Dell Precision 3540

Dell Precision 3540 laptop is widely known to be a mobile workstation by many Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop users.

It is such a lightweight and mobile laptop that it hardly seems like you are working on a system. With a long-lasting lithium-ion battery, you can spend hours working without worrying about the fast battery drainage.

The beautiful Full HD Display is simply the best and brightest for visuals and comes with a resolution of 1920× 1080 pixels. The 15.6 inches display comes with an Intel Core i5-8365U processor, 8GB RAM, and 256 GB ROM.

So you may remain assured that your tasks are going to be carried out smoothly without hiccups and lags. And if you noticed the lightweight quality did not compromise on the screen, it still carries an eye-opening display of 15 inches.

I also recommend that you have computers by your side to get better out of this device.

Thus, I strongly suggest that you go through the Best laptops for photo editing under $500, if you are on a budget, or if you are a student who is just starting out with Adobe Creative suite apps such as illustrator.

Pros:

• Core i5 processor with enough power
• Beautiful display with bright visuals
• Ideal Battery life
• Enhanced features for Adobe Illustrator 
• Extremely lightweight and portable

Cons:

• Costly and Expensive for its specifications
• No touchscreen

That covers our list of laptops. Now let us have a look at the few things that you should always look at before buying a laptop. The features lying below are the ones that you would need to look for choosing the Best Laptop for Illustrator!

System Requirements for Adobe Illustrator

Software performance is directly proportional to the quality of your hardware. So, having the right functionality will help you modify and optimize your workflow.

Update: We have now made a separate blog post covering all the Illustration Requirements for Windows and Mac. For Complete information, check Adobe’s Official Requirements for illustrator here.

Many people often complain of the lags and the bugs that come up every now and then while working with adobe illustrator.

Did you know that up to 90% of bugs in illustrator are actually because of the laptop’s hardware?

Thus, we made sure to cover up all of those factors under a suited budget which will help you excel in creating drawings, illustrations, and artwork. Also, it is good to remember that apps such as illustrator, photoshop have certain specifications that your PC or laptop must meet.

The most important ones can be screen resolution, GPU, and CPU utilization. If you are working a lot using the internet, we would also make sure that you have the latest WiFi drivers which will help you utilize your laptop to its utmost potential.

Things to look for before choosing one of the Laptops for Adobe Illustrator

Processors:

Keeping in mind that Adobe illustration requires intensive software processing; if your processor is not up to the mark, your work might experience occasional lags. The entire outcome might slow down.

Hence, it would be great if you always opted for the best possible processor that you can afford. Starting from 1.4 GHz to 4.0 GHz, processors are made available in the market.

You can choose according to the price range that you can afford with ease and comfort. But since processors are the key changers for Adobe Illustrators, investing in the best would be our suggestion.

If you are specifically looking for a number, go with at least 2.4GHz.

Battery:

If the battery is non-swappable, it needs to have a longer life, like 14 to 17 hours, but if the battery is swappable, you could adjust even in short battery life.

But it is always a good idea to look for the best possible outcome from the battery life.

For battery life, our suggestion is to go with a laptop that can survive at least 6-8 hours of light usage on a single charge.

Storage:

It is hard to explain the importance of Storage for Adobe illustration, so keeping It concise and simple explanation, I would say that if you invest in good storage, i.e., good RAM and ROM of the laptop, then it will be straightforward to circulate the data that you already have in the system.

Display

Size:

Coming to the size of the screen, if the screen size is too large, then you might face problems like unnecessary weight, or you might report problems in handling the screen.

On the other hand, if the screen size is too small, you might need to zoom frequently, resulting in work errors.

You might not have clarity of vision with the smaller screen sizes. The ideal screen size is 15 inches. This screen size is found to be ideal for Adobe illustration and other purposes too.

Resolution:

The better the resolution, the better the display clarity. If your pocket allows, do not miss the 4K display options currently available in the market. For purpose of display, we recommend getting a minimum of 1080p display.

Glossy vs Matte

The display of a laptop comes in either glossy or matte finish. Glossy displays have better and more vibrant colors in comparison to a Matte display, but that is not something that will affect your prints or outputs.

Matte displays on the other hand turn are very good at protecting eyes from the external light around your workspace. Thus, they prevent light from messing with your on-screen work.

Between a glossy and matte display, the call is yours. Glossy displays will give you more vibrant colors but that’s not necessarily what you’ll see on print or your final work.

Thus, any thing you pick is good to go. If you’re asking for personal suggestions, we use Matte displays as they are easier on the eyes.

IPS vs TN

IPS panels have a much wider color space as compared to a TN display. However, the point to note here is that you won’t really find any noticeable changes on a Laptop screen.

If color accuracy is something that you are really after, it will be our strong suggestion to get an external display. Check this link to find $500 monitors that focus on color accuracy.

RAM:

Adobe’s official site recommends a minimum of 3GB RAM to run illustrator smoothly. But this is not at all sufficient according to us. The reason being that Windows alone occupies about 2 gigs of RAM.

Thus, we recommend getting a laptop with at least 8GB of RAM to anywhere up to 16GB.

Additional RAM will help you work faster with bigger files and more effects, as they will be loaded directly in the RAM.

Bonus

Check out some cool Adobe Illustrator Tips and Tricks that will heavily reduce your working time and save some energy.

Conclusion

There are laptops available for specific purposes at varying prices. Starting from less pricey stuff to extremely costly laptops, you get a vast range of laptops.

For example, selecting a laptop, specifically Adobe Illustrator and similar apps like Photoshop requires a special set of features.

At times all this becomes confusing. You might toggle yourself in thoughts such as what should I do, should I invest in a premium look or a normal laptop will do the same purpose?

Should I save money or invest in a long-lasting laptop with a good CPU and GPU?

To answer such questions, we came up with our list of the best Adobe Illustrator laptops in the market.

We have kept in mind to keep the requirements close to Adobe illustration features specifically instead of randomly stuffing our list. With this, we conclude and hope that you found it helpful.

Over to you: Do you use laptops with an AMD processor for graphic designing? If so, which are the best AMD laptops for adobe illustrator? Let me know in the comments below.