Update: The Dell XPS 13 deal has now sold out, but the Macbook Air deal is still going strong.
If you’re serious about astrophotography, you’re going to want an amazing laptop for photo editing to get the best out of your work, and these Black Friday laptop deals are perfect for photo editing.
First up, you can get the Macbook Air M1 13.3” laptop for just $849.99 at Best Buy - that’s a $150 saving on the usual price of $999.99. Sadly, there was an even better deal on the same laptop over at Amazon earlier today, but it’s already sold out. If it comes back in stock, we’ll let you know though. Still, $150 is a huge discount and if you prefer Apple devices, this is a great price for an outstanding photo editing laptop.
If you’d prefer a Windows laptop for your photo editing needs, then we have another deal that might be right up your alley.
Right now, you can get the Dell XPS 13 laptop for just $979.99 in the Dell Black Friday sale. Be quick though, stock is disappearing fast. This is a huge $320 discount on the usual price of $1299. You’re getting plenty of bang for your buck too, with an 11th Gen Intel i7 CPU, 16GB or RAM, and a 512GB NVMe SSD for storage.
When you’re looking for a photo editing laptop, you’ll need to look for a number of key things. The speed of your processor and the amount of RAM is vital - go with anything less than an i7 (Windows) or an M1 (Mac) and you’re going to struggle with the best photo editing apps, like Adobe Photoshop CC and Lightroom. You’ll also need at least 8GB RAM in the MacBook, and 16GB in the Dell. If you have the opportunity to upgrade to 32GB, that’ll definitely help when you’re stacking multiple images in Photoshop, or switching between the two apps for a full edit.
While you’d struggle to notice with most laptops, the Dell XPS series also have 100% sRGB color, which is perfect for accurate color reproduction in your photos. The screen on this particular model has a 1500:1 contrast ratio too, which is very, very handy when you’re editing dark images, like photos of stars. And if it all goes wrong, a year of Dell’s Premium Support - for free - is a neat bonus.
Be sure to check out Space.com's Black Friday Space deals, or our guide to the Best Black Friday Camera deals.
