3 Best Laptops for Instructional Design in 2024
From this article, you will know what are, in our opinion, the best laptops for instructional design you can buy and use in 2024.
Instructional design is the process of creating learning materials to help people acquire knowledge and skills. The learning materials can be in various forms (e.g. modules, exercises, videos, etc.) depending on which learning methods can give the best learning experience for the intended audiences.
Some tools can help us do instructional design work much more easily. Among those tools, however, a laptop is probably one of the most important ones for many instructional designers. This is because a laptop can help instructional designers do their work with much flexibility in terms of time and place. However, the laptop that is used to do instructional design work should have the right specification quality so we can create learning materials more productively.
If you are an instructional designer but you don’t have a laptop yet to support your work, you might be interested in buying a new laptop. It can be confusing, nevertheless, to pick the right laptop to do instructional design work with from many laptop models and specification choices out there. This is why Innovation Infinite has tried to compile a list of the best laptops for instructional design that you can use as your laptop-buying reference.
Want to learn more about the laptops we recommend? Let’s get on the list right away.
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| Image | View on Amazon | Product |
|---|---|---|
| Dell XPS 15 | ||
| HP Omen 16 | ||
| Apple MacBook Pro M3 14 |
Table of Contents:
What are the Best Laptops for Instructional Design?
Now, let’s take a deeper look at the laptops that make it into our list of excellent laptops to use for instructional design work. Using one of these laptops should give you the laptop support you need to create learning materials more optimally.1. Dell XPS 15
Dell XPS 15 is the first laptop that can be very suitable for your work as an instructional designer. It is an excellent laptop from Dell with the specification quality that seems right to help you design the learning experience you want.To run its operations, this laptop uses a 13th Gen Intel Core i7 processor and 32GB RAM capacity. These are splendid specifications to have for a laptop and should run software like Storyline without much problem. The RAM capacity, in particular, is large so you shouldn’t run out of memory space during heavy multitasking.
This laptop has an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 GPU with 6GB VRAM and 40W TGP that should help you render instructional videos you make faster. When you need to use external displays to enhance your work productivity, this laptop’s two Thunderbolt 4 ports should help you connect to them easily.
This laptop’s design is professional-looking and its build is a premium one so you should feel confident to work with it in any professional setting. Overall, this Dell XPS 15 can be the ideal laptop choice for you to do your instructional design work with.
Key Features
- Screen Size, Resolution: 15.6 inches, 1920 x 1200 pixels
- Processor: 13th Gen Intel Core i7 with 14 cores and speed in the range of 2.4-5 GHz
- RAM Capacity: 32GB
- Storage: 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD
- Battery Life (Estimation): up to 9 hours of usage capacity
Pros
- Excellent specifications to support instructional design work
- Premium build
- Sleek and professional-looking design
- Dedicated GPU (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 with 6GB VRAM and 40W TGP)
- Two Thunderbolt 4 ports
- Quality speakers
- Comfortable keyboard to type on
Cons
- No USB-A and HDMI ports
- Average webcam quality
2. HP Omen 16
HP Omen 16 is another laptop that can be great to support the work of an instructional designer. Considering its specification quality, this laptop should perform well as you create your learning materials with it.The processor of this laptop is an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS processor. It is a high-quality processor that can run the software you need for your work fast and stable. As for the RAM capacity, this laptop has 16GB and you can upgrade it to up to 64GB later should you feel you need more memory space.
To render your videos and process graphics, there is a powerful NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 GPU with 8GB VRAM and 140W TGP that should do its tasks well related to that. When you need to work on your learning materials for long hours, this laptop’s friendly-to-the-eye display shouldn’t give you much eye strain so you can work more comfortably.
This laptop has USB-A, USB-C, and HDMI ports as well so connecting to external devices should be simple if you use this laptop. Overall, this HP Omen 16 can be just the laptop you need to work optimally as an instructional designer.
Key Features
- Screen Size, Resolution: 16.1 inches, 1920 x 1080 pixels
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS with 8 cores and speed in the range of 4-5.2 GHz
- RAM Capacity: 16GB
- Storage: 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD
- Battery Life (Estimation): up to 4.5 hours of usage capacity
Pros
- Excellent specifications to support instructional design work
- Good-looking design
- USB-A, USB-C, and HDMI ports
- Dedicated GPU (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 with 8GB VRAM and 140W TGP)
- Friendly-to-the-eye display
- Comfortable keyboard to type on
Cons
- No SD card reader slots
- Less-than-average battery life
- Average webcam quality
3. Apple MacBook Pro M3 14
Apple MacBook Pro M3 14 is the last laptop we have on this list. If you don’t use or don’t mind running some Windows software programs that an instructional designer usually uses like Storyline through a Windows virtual machine, then this laptop can be an excellent laptop choice for you.This MacBook is powered by an Apple silicon chip in the form of an Apple M3 Max chip. With this powerful chip in charge, you should run any software you want to use fast and stable. To provide you with the memory space you need for your work, this MacBook has 36GB RAM available for you to use.
The battery life of this MacBook is incredible as it can last 1-2 days on a single charge. This means by using this MacBook, you should be able to work on your learning materials anywhere and anytime you want. You can also use four external displays to help you work if you use this MacBook thanks to the three Thunderbolt 4 ports, one HDMI port, and the Apple M3 Max chip that it has.
This MacBook’s excellent display and sound quality should also allow you edit the learning materials you create accurately. All in all, this Apple MacBook Pro M3 14 seems to be a splendid laptop for an instructional designer to use.
Key Features
- Screen Size, Resolution: 14.2 inches, 3024 x 1964 pixels
- Processor: Apple M3 Max with 14 cores and a speed of 4.05 GHz
- RAM Capacity: 36GB
- Storage: 1TB SSD
- Battery Life (Estimation): up to 18 hours of usage capacity
Pros
- Excellent specifications to support instructional design work
- Sleek and quite lightweight
- Three Thunderbolt 4 ports and one HDMI port
- Long-lasting battery
- Excellent display and sound quality
- Excellent webcam and microphones
- Comfortable keyboard to type on
Cons
- No USB-A ports
- Notched display
What are the Things We Should Consider When We Want to Buy a Laptop for Instructional Design Activities?
Here are the things we think you should consider when you want to buy a laptop to support your instructional design work.- Processor. You should have a good processor in the laptop you buy so it can run the software you need for your work smoothly. We recommend a laptop with at least a late-generation i5 or Ryzen 5 processor or an Apple silicon chip for this
- RAM capacity. The RAM capacity in the laptop you buy should be adequate to provide the memory space needed for your instructional design work. We recommend a laptop with at least 16GB RAM for this
- GPU. Instructional designers sometimes need to create creative learning materials like videos to make the best learning experience for some topics. A dedicated GPU in your laptop can help you process those kinds of learning materials quickly. Thus, we recommend you buy a laptop with a dedicated GPU as one of its specifications
- Storage. You may need to store some files related to your work as an instructional designer internally on your laptop so you can access them much more easily later. Thus, the laptop you buy should have adequate storage space to accommodate those files. We recommend a laptop with at least 512GB SSD storage space for this
Wrap Up
When you want to buy a laptop, you may want one that can help you create learning materials smoothly. However, it can be confusing to pick the right laptop from many laptop choices out there. This is why Innovation Infinite has created a list of the best laptops for instructional design to help you.To summarize, here are three laptops we think can be excellent for an instructional designer to use.
We hope our list can help you buy the best laptop to support your work in creating the best learning experience for people!
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