Believe it or not, I haven’t owned or used a laptop since before the pandemic. In 2019, I bought a 27-inch iMac and it has been my main machine for several years. Then I ended up buying a 12-inch iPad Pro some years ago hoping that it would replace my need for a laptop. And like many professional working photographers, I do things in a pretty digital yet antiquated way. I still use a big screen to edit images and I still want to be tethered down at a desk with my RAID to back up images. And the truth is that I can’t really do that as a digital nomad at all. Years ago, Apple sold us the idea that we could do everything wirelessly and that we wouldn’t need all those cables anymore. Yet the truth is that photographers embraced the dongle lifestyle. And now in 2026, I’m considering a laptop again. But there’s a big problem.
The truth is that there are so many good laptops on the market. I obviously only want something from Apple and I have no need for a 16-inch Macbook Pro. I also don’t shoot or edit videos and I rarely edit images off of anything else but my iMac. In fact, I rarely need to do any editing of images beyond just applying a preset. You see, I’ve developed a workflow that starts in-camera and that doesn’t need me to spend hours behind a computer editing my life away.
Photographers used to love the darkroom process and found it romantic — but I never loved that part of image making. Instead, I prefer to be out and about so much more.
With that said, if you’re really focused on pure photography as an experience and editing images for the web and print, there are loads and loads of great laptops out there. I could easily go for something that’s Windows based, but it wouldn’t integrate into the rest of the products I own at home.
The truth is that any computer from the past few years will be more than good enough. And that says something about photography as a whole. In the past decade, it hasn’t really advanced all that much. Overall, technology hasn’t advanced all that much either.
This is great for me when trying to buy a refurbished laptop. But I can’t really say how good it is for the rest of photography.
For a few years, I wanted the Phoblographer to be a place that tests laptops and computers for photographers. But after some time, I realized that it didn’t make any sense. The truth of capitalism is that all of these companies really stopped trying. And anything that they make will probably be good enough for most photographers who shoot with intention and with experience.
That’s a longer way of saying that I don’t shoot with continuous burst rates to bring home over 1,000 images at a time. I also don’t need to shoot several variations of an image. Often, I can do a shoot with fewer frames. In fact, I pride myself on basing the frames I shoot on rolls of film. If I shoot over 36 frames, then it means that I’ve got over a roll of traditional 35mm film. And after the shoot, I’d look at the images and try to understand why. Then based on my conclusions, I’ll make modifications in a future shoot.
Let’s be honest: if you bought a camera, computer, and storage within the past few years, you’ll be perfectly fine for a few more years to come. And the fact that I’m still working on a 2019 iMac says a lot, too.
We truly are in the era of peak photography computer.