Buying a creative computing laptop in 2024 is more confusing than ever. Either you get flustered by the AI-buzzwords which OEMs throw at you or you get so bewildered with all the viral marketing material that you ultimately end up buying the wrong AI-driven design laptop. Before I move on with the list, here are some pointers you should keep in mind before buying an AI-powered design laptop. First thing is the processor, either you need AMD Ryzen 7000 APUs or Intel Core Ultra series processors. Moreover, at least 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD are another two most important factors in AI-powered laptops. Thirdly, it should have either a powerful discrete GPU or a capable iGPU to handle graphics related workload. Lastly, I would also recommend for the laptop to have a colour accurate display, but in case it doesn’t, you can always attach an external monitor.
Acer Swift GO 14 is probably one of the most affordable AI-laptops available in 2024. And since it also has a vivid OLED display, one can also use it to create and edit AI art. Powering the Acer Swift GO 14 is Intel Core Ultra 5 125H processor. By the way, the “H” in the processor’s name denotes that it is a performance oriented machine. Also featuring the superfast 16GB LPDDR5X and 512GB SSD makes this Machine learning art laptop highly capable. On top of that, it gets a bright 14-inch 1800p (2.8k) display with 100% DCI-PE colour space coverage. Meaning, the display can easily showcase a wide variety of colours.
The HP Pavilion Plus 14 is another affordable deep-learning art laptop on this list. It features an AMD Ryzen 7 7840U which has 8-cores, 16-threads and a dedicated NPU. The chip can easily perform AI-related workloads like voice and image recognition along with on-device image generation. To easily facilitate all these tasks, the device has 16GB LPDDR5X RAM running at 6400MHz, a 1TB SSD. The 7840U chip, being an APU or Accelerated Processing Unit, also has a fairly capable Radeon 780M iGPU, which can easily handle graphics design, light photo editing and gaming, at least to some extent. You can easily play older titles like GTA V, Counter Strike GO, and more at a respectable frame rate.
The long running ASUS Zenbook OLED series now comes supercharged with AI for all your creative and productivity needs. The laptop now gets an Intel Core Ultra 5 125H processor which has a discrete AI-chip with the ability to handle machine learning software frameworks like OpenVINO, WebGPU and more. The chip also features Arc graphics with support for XeSS (Xe Super Sampling), which is Intel’s AI-powered super sampling technology that improves in-game performance without any additional hardware. We noted the XeSS’ impact on gaming performance in our review of the laptop. Moreover, for creative use, the laptop has a gorgeous, vivid and colour accurate 14-inch OLED display and a 1TB SSD. Therefore, allowing you to create and store stunning AI-artworks.
When extreme portability and AI-prowess meet you get the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED. Weighing in at just 1 kg with 1 cm thickness, the Zenbook S 13 OLED is probably the most portable AI-powered laptop in the market. Powered by the Intel Core Ultra 5 7 155U, the laptop is primarily geared towards high efficiency. But that doesn’t mean that the chip is a slouch. Quite the contrary, the Core Ultra 7 155U features 12-cores and 14-threads with a max boost clock speed of 4.8GHz. And the chip also features support for AI software frameworks like OpenVINO, WindowsML, DirectML and others. Apart from the chip, the Zenbook S13 OLED stands out thanks to its 3K 13-inch OLED display with 600nits peak brightness and pantone validation for high colour accuracy. Making the device a great AI art laptop.
Anyone looking for a high performance art laptop cannot afford to miss the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i. For starters it features the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H series processor, which has 16-cores and 22-threads. In my review of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i, I highlighted the laptop’s high-performance AI-workloads, its super bright 14-inch FHD+ OLED display and the device’s overall amazing build quality. In terms of overall battery life, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i came up a bit short but only that’s due to its smaller battery size. The processor’s overall efficiency remained pretty good though.
Gaming laptops can function as a great graphics processing laptop mainly because of powerful GPUs. The Lenovo LOQ I am referring to comes with an AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS APU infused with Ryzen AI, the dedicated NPU that is. And as expected it can support a variety of AI-related workflows. Even better than most laptops mentioned on this list primarily because of a beefed up gaming-grade cooling system. But the reason why you’ll be really buying the Lenovo LOQ is due to the RTX 4060 laptop GPU, which has 8GB GDDR6 VRAM and 115W TGP. And it supports a wide variety of GPU-focused exclusive AI-features like Nvidia DLSS 3.0, Chat With RTX and frameworks like TensorFlow and PyTorch. The laptop also has 16GB DDR5 memory, 512GB SSD and a 15.6-inch FHD display with 350 nits of peak brightness. The display is not very colour accurate so I’d suggest getting an external monitor, in case you plan on doing colour correction work.
The MSI Prestige 13 is another thin and light AI-powered laptop with something unique to offer. For starters, it comes with support for Wi-Fi 7 for enhanced connectivity. Additionally, the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H powers the Prestige 13 and imbues it with a plethora of AI-capabilities. Like AI-art generation, voice recognition and more. The laptop is also very portable with just 0.99kg weight and is only 16.99mm thick. Apart from these features, the Prestige 13 also has an OLED display with VESA Certification as well for high quality colour reproduction.
The HP Spectre x360 14 is the combination of premium design engineering and AI-features. With an Opulent design and plenty of exclusive features, the HP Spectre x360 14 takes its spot on this list. Starting off, the x360 in Spectre 14’s name stands for a 360-degree hinge. Meaning you can use the tablet in a tablet or in a tent mode. The Spectre also has a touch screen to facilitate that kind of interaction as well. Moreover, the Core Ultra 7 155H powering the Spectre is heavily tuned to deliver silent-performance even under stress. The result is a laptop which runs very quietly and offers great battery life. Ofcourse, the chip also infuses the Spectre x360 14 with AI- features thus transforming it into an AI-powered art laptop.
I recommend the 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro featuring the M3 Pro SoC instead of the 14-inch variant because of two main reasons. The first reason is that many creative people, if given the option, may prefer a bigger screen size. And secondly, the 16-inch chassis has a lot of room inside as a result it can handle the heat generated by the M3 Pro SoC better. In my 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro review, I also highlighted the same issue. As for the laptop itself, the 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro is an amazing Digital Art workstation, be it battery life, CPU performance or display quality, the laptop exceeds its competition in all these areas. The The specific variant I recommend comes with 18GB unified memory and 512GB SSD, which should be enough for most creative workflows.