Laptops for Designers | Photography / Videography

Lenovo Laptops for Designers Under £1000 | Photography & Videography

If you are a photographer, videographer or designer in 2025, choosing the right laptop is essential to your creative workflow. The correct machine for the task is a must in order to reduce the time spent frustrated staring at a loading screen, and maximise your time spent creating beautiful digital content. 

Whether you’re working on complex photo edits or video projects, you need a laptop that can handle demanding creative software like Adobe Creative Cloud™. This guide will help you find the best Lenovo laptops for digital creators under £1000, ensuring you get excellent performance without breaking the bank.

Why Under £1000?

As a creative professional, you already know the importance of having a high-performance machine. You need a laptop that can handle large files, run powerful software, and process graphics without constant lag or crashes. However, high-performance laptops for designers can come at a premium price. Fortunately, there are plenty of options under £1000 that deliver excellent value for money. These laptops strike the perfect balance between performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency, allowing you to speed through your creative projects without frustration.

The Software Gold Standard

Most creatives rely on Adobe Creative Cloud™. It is the gold standard for most, so we'll focus our attention there. It's designed for a Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac environment; so we'll rule out Chromebooks for now. The minimum and recommended specifications for each individual Adobe desktop app varies, but we'll take a good average from their desktop apps. 

Adobe Creative Cloud Minimum Specifications

  • Processor: Intel 6th Gen or AMD Equivallent
  • Operating System: Windows 10, Windows 11
  • Memory: 8GB RAM
  • Graphics Card: DirectX 12 & 1.5GB of Graphics Memory
    - GeForce GTX 970 or Higher
  • Display: HD 720p or Full HD 1080p 
  • Storage: 10GB of Free Space

Adobe Creative Cloud Recommended Specifications

  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 9000 or Intel Equivallent
  • Operating System: Windows 10, Windows 11
  • Memory: 16GB RAM
  • Graphics Card: DirectX 12 & 4GB of Graphics Memory
    - GeForce GTX 1660 or Higher
  • Display: Full HD 1080p or Higher
  • Storage: 10GB SSD Storage

Performance

Adobe and other creative applications will run on a lot of computers. When starting out, you can compromise on performance in favour of price. As a baseline, we'd highly suggest you start with something that will at least last a few years of updates. Typically this would mean pushing for the recommended specs or above, rather than settling for the minimum. It will work at the lowest end; but you will likely find it goes out of date quickly. 

Top Lenovo Laptops for Creatives Under £1000

Lenovo offers a range of product lines, multiple of which are suitable creatives. To simplify, the main ones that stand out are Lenovo ThinkPad, Lenovo IdeaPad and the Lenovo Legion range of laptops. 

Lenovo ThinkPad Series

The ThinkPad series is traditionally targeted at business professionals, but some models in this range are actually perfect for creatives too. ThinkPads are known for their excellent build quality, comfortable keyboard, and high-resolution displays. The models within the ThinkPad E and L series often feature capable processors. 8GB or more of RAM and good amounts of storage space making them a viable option for designers.

A lot of products from this range don't include a graphics card, while we definitely recommend picking one that does, you'll be able to get by, at least for your photos and digital artwork on integrated graphics. Video rendering really does benefit from the inclusion of a graphics card. 

Lenovo IdeaPad Series

The IdeaPad series is Lenovo’s most budget-friendly line, offering great value performance. While IdeaPads are not traditionally designed for professional creatives, certain models, like the IdeaPad Gaming 3 or higher-end Slim series, come with dedicated GPUs and powerful processors. These devices can handle creative software without difficulty. This series is particularly attractive for those who want a balance between affordability and capability. There are plenty of models in this range that sit below the £1000 price point. 

Lenovo Legion Series

Although primarily marketed as gaming laptops, Lenovo’s Legion series packs powerful hardware that is equally useful for design applications. Many of these laptops come with high resolution displays, dedicated GPUs, and reliable cooling systems. While some Legion models exceed the £1000 budget, a lot of them don't. Plenty of options offer a great combination of power and affordability, making them an excellent choice for designers who also need high GPU performance. Plus, as gaming laptops, the dedicated graphics will significantly improve video editing especially, as well as 3D rendering or image work in general.