Is there a best laptop to run Sonar?
John

I am about to buy a laptop and build a secondary DAW system. Rather than being about a good laptop for Sonar maybe it should be about a good laptop built for music production.
 
Is there one right out of the box that is well setup to do it.  I have observed a few things. Some mechanical drives are only running at 5400 rpm so they may be a bit slow. Also it could be good having the two drive concept here as well. One SSD for the OS and apps and perhaps a fast mechanical drive with lots of capacity for audio.
 
Is the CD ROM drive still needed? Many laptops are leaving them out. The mini HDMI connection could also be a pain too. You will always need an adpator etc..Quad core machines are going to be better than dual cores etc..
 
 

All highest performance laptops are currently using a Clevo shell running a desktop CPU (i7 6700k).
They're not small/light... and they're not cheap... but it's the only way to get desktop performance in a laptop.

I'm running an i7 Asus G751 with 32gb memory and 2tb of h/d. My last project was 50+ tracks of audio and loads of plug ins- the Asus wasn't even slightly bothered by it. It's not a cheap laptop but pretty powerful and very chunky and hard wearing and it has a decent screen size.

I've had a CLEVO P150EM i7 based laptop for over three years now and it copes well with what I do with it. Having said that, I guess I don't do much... Mainly VST and a bit of audio recording. I did a test project some time back using power hungry VSTi's, like Absynth, and was impressed at how many instances, over twenty, that I had running in real time.
 
As Jim says, they're not cheap, especially if you go for the latest i7 chip. Back in 2012, I went for the 3820QM @ 2.7GHz, and it saved me quite a chunk.
 
I went all SSD from the outset and have since upgraded to a 500Gb system drive and a 1Tb data drive. In order to give me the extra drive bay I had to ditch the optical drive, which, to be frank, I do not miss. I have an external USB optical drive, just in case I need it, and it hardly ever gets used in this age of downloaded media/software.
 
 
So, yeah, CLEVO, for me, was a good call

I have the slightly older I7 960 ADK laptop (model 9000X) that runs Platinum just fine with 6GB of memory.

I'm Running an ADK that is 4 years old. Have never had a problem. Solid units, IMO the best. Should I ever upgrade ADK would be my 1st choice again. Id much rather spend the extra $ then have to worry about PC performance.

Testing a Lenova Yoga 900 with I76560U. Best Buy had a sale on them. It's very light and a 2 in 1 and right screen size (13 or so) to read music from. Unfortunately the sound card in it is so bad that Sonar won't use it at all. I have all ancient sound cards that won't run in windows 10 so now I'm stuck with nothing. Focusrite Saffire won't run at all and M-Audio Delta 92 will only handle output... no input. Windows 10 says it isn't running at all. I hate to invest in new card for the desktop if I'm going to a laptop but I can't test the laptop without some sort of usb card for it or something. Old Gigabyte motherboard and i7950. I never hooked up the motherboard sound and now don't know how. Built the computer myself.
 
Guess my question now is what sound gizmo should I get that is small, light, and will easily hook up to a laptop. Just 2 in 2 out is enough for me. I am toatlly new at this.
 
John

I have a clevo p170 in the form of a sager laptop and am very happy with it. As far as I'm concerned the sager lappys are about as good for price/performance as I've seen. Highly configurable on their web site at http://www.sagernotebook.com/
 
They pretty much all run $2K plus to get what you need. I have a 17" with i7 4810 (older, now the same machine would be a 6700), 32 gig ram, and dual ssd.  It's a dedicated machine for music production, it's not a sleek thin laptop, more of a luggable. But it works very well and I've been very happy with it. 
 
gabo