Please bear with me while I explain what I’m after.

I have my main desktop windows 10 pro PC that is being upgraded later in the year, I have all my Audio on this, my S88 mk3, Keylab 61 mk2, Maschine mk3, Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 and Presonus M7 Mic

I also do electronics as a hobby, they used to be next to each other hence could use PC for both. My electronics lab has now been moved to our spare room.

Last year I had a couple of major and serious operations, spent 12 days in intensive care and a month in hospital in total.

I’m still recovering, it’s not terminal but it’s going to be a long process and I’ve been told I will be in pain for life and full recovery is going to be a slow process, anyway I won’t bore you with the details.

Often I don’t feel like sitting at my PC, or for that matter sitting in my electronics lab, I just want to sit in my comfy electric recliner and have a tinker.


I’ve recently bought a Novation Launch key 37 mk3 that I can happily connect to my iPad and sit in my armchair having a play, I have a few nice synths on my iPad, but I’d much rather be able to use my NI, Arturia etc software and also my DAW (studio one).

I’m not expecting to be able to run a huge DAW project, I have my desktop for that, more I want to play around, learn a particular synth inside out, maybe record an idea or two. Or maybe use my Maschine instead of the Launch key etc.

I have an over the chair table (bit like the over bed ones) that can fit both my Launchpad and my iPad.

What I want is a smallish (in physical size) laptop that I can use instead of my iPad so I can access all my music software. I can then also use it in my electronics lab.

For my electronics, anything will do, it’s mainly looking up diagrams and watching the odd YouTube vid etc.

But as said, I would also like it to be able to run my music software from my armchair.

Haven’t got a huge budget for this around the £600 - £800 mark, although if say spending another £100 gave me a huge jump (like my examples below), I dare say I could go for it

Been building my own desktop PC since the 90s but know very little about the laptop side of things, except that whichever ones people I know have bought over the years (usually from PCworld/Currys in UK) seem to run like a snail.

I’m open to suggestions, also going to post this in both the Arturia and Presonus forum.

As I do like both my iPhone and iPad, I was thinking about a second hand Mac, not older than 2020, with 16GB Ram and an M1 CPU?

For example, for £820 I can get:

MacBook Air 10,1/M1 (8-CPU 8-GPU)/16GB Ram/1TB SSD/13"/SG


or for £875 I can get

MacBook Pro 17,1/M1 (8-CPU 8-GPU)/16GB Ram/512GB SSD/13”/SG

I’ve read that as the Mac air is fan-less it can throttle the CPU, although I’m not going to be writing whole/huge things on it.

Going the pro route adds £55 and halves SSD space

But then I wonder if for the same price could I get a more powerful windows laptop? I know Apple stuff is usually very overpriced for what you get. And of course the one thing with Macs is you can’t upgrade RAM/internal SSD etc, but for all I know, windows laptops might have gone a similar way by now?

Anyway, I’m open to suggestions, will need to buy in next couple of weeks

Many thanks