Laptops for digital art

Recommended specs

These are based my experience doing on doing 2D illustration using Krita and Clip Studio Paint.

Memory
- NOT ENOUGH: 4GB
- OK: 8GB
- GOOD: 16GB
- EXCELLENT: 32GB
I/O Ports
- If you want to connect a modern pen display with a USB-C cable should have a USB-C port that supports DP-Alt mode and that is available for use to connect with your pen display.
  - All Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 ports support DP alt mode.
  - Remember: Your USB-C cable ALSO needs to support DP alt mode.

Before you buy a laptop, please ensure that you are clear how you intend to connect it to your pen display. More here: Connecting a pen display

If your pen display is going to draw power from the laptop it is going to limit the time your laptop can work on battery power.
So in these cases
- (1) the laptop should be connected to a power from the wall.
- (2) or the pen display should be getting power from another source.

I'm sure Macs are fine, but I only on December 2023 did I start playing with a MacBook Pro. So I haven't really used on enough to have an opinion yet. But many people have great experiences with them.

Chromebooks

I don't recommend Chromebooks for use with drawing tablets. More here: Using a drawing tablet with a Chromebook.

I've been using a Surface Pro 8 with 32GB of RAM and 500GB of storage for two years now.

I connect it the Microsoft Surface Dock 2 for power and network connectivity.

I use two Thunderbolt 3 cables from the Surface Pro 9 to connect two 4K 60Hz displays (one of those will be the a 4K pen display)

Even though the Surface Pro can be used for drawing with it's own pen, I prefer to use attached drawing tablets.

Connected tablets

Most often, I use these tablets with my Surface Pro 9:

Though I've used every kind successfully: Huion, XP-Pen, and Xencelabs.

Last updated 1 month ago