Which Notebook Beats Them All for Photographers?

Like most professionals, photographers have an absolute need to have quality hardware when dealing with their photos, the most important being the display. In fact, many professional displays can run at least twice the cost of a regular monitor, and it’s for good reason. When you take your photos seriously, accurate color reproduction and a bright, yet glare-free, screen is important.

But, the mobile photographer has a few factors working against them. There’s no official “photographer” notebook, so it’s a matter of finding one that has a few characteristics that suit your fancy. Well, popular Canadian photographer Rob Galbraith tries to take the hassle of out of finding the best mobile PC for photography use, and the results are a little bit surprising.

Although only four notebooks are compared, one happens to be Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9, a $300 netbook. Odd choice for a photographer, but believe it or not, Rob actually seemed to prefer the display on the netbook than the display on the latest MacBook Pro 15″. The true winner has to be the Lenovo ThinkPad W700 though, because it actually contains features to cater to the professional, including a small Wacom tablet and even a screen calibrator built into the palm-rest. Just don’t expect to toss this one in your camera bag (like you can with the Dell netbook)… it’s huge.

Photo Credit: Rob Galbraith / Little Guy Media

If you yearn for a laptop display that rises above acceptable, one whose colour accuracy matches a good desktop display, there’s only one in this test: the ThinkPad W700. In fact, for us, it could just about replace a desktop display for colour critical work and even soft proofing for print in Photoshop (a task that lays bare any weirdnesses in a screen and its monitor profile).