Best laptops for design, graphics, video and photography

Apple's professional users -- especially those working in the creative industries -- have welcomed the company's renewed focus on its professional Mac products in recent months, following the long-awaited introduction of the newMac Prodesktop, and the 16-inch revamp of its flagshipMacBook Prolaptop. But there's no doubt that Apple took its eye off the ball in the Mac market while it spent years concentrating on the iPhone, and that has given rival PC manufacturers a real opportunity to capture a slice of Apple's creative pie.

Intel got the ball rolling back in 2018 with itsCreator PCinitiative, which was further boosted by Nvdia'sStudiocampaign the following year, which aimed to extend the company's graphics technologies beyond its traditional gaming audience and into the creative industries.As a result, all the main PC manufacturers, including market leaders such as Dell, HP and Lenovo, now offer extensive portfolios of laptops and desktop PCs that are specifically aimed at creative users in fields such as graphic design, photography, video editing and animation. The involvement of Nvidia, with itsRTXray-tracing graphics technology has also attracted gaming specialists such as Razer and Gigabyte, whose expertise with high-end gaming graphics has allowed them to design some impressively powerful laptops for professional users.

So creative users are now spoilt for choice, with dozens of laptop and desktop systems now vying for their attention. This month we'll focus on some of the latest laptops for content creation; we'll follow up with a look at desktop PCs in July.