Recommended Laptop Specs

The Media Arts program at York University is very interdisciplinary and focussed on helping you develop an understanding of media as a social, political, and cultural process as well as a technologically-mediated practice. Having the right equipment is important to make the most of your studies and to allow you to create independent work. Learning by doing, making, experimenting is a fundamental way that we learn. To this end, we are making recommendations for laptop purchases that will allow you to use the wide range of software we will be using in courses. By having an appropriate laptop you will be better placed to collaborate on team projects, learn remotely (from home), and continue exploring when you have the time and space to do so.

Laptops used for the creation of time-based media (movies, videos), interactive experiences (apps, games), visual design (artwork, posters, publications) are required to have higher capacity than laptops used primarily for writing, web, and watching videos. The most important characteristics of the laptops we recommend for Media Arts students are memory (RAM), processor (CPU), video processor (GPU), and storage (main hard drive). We have found that Windows-based laptops tend to be a better deal than Apple Mac-based laptops. The vast majority of software that we use in Media Arts is available on both platforms.

If you are in the process of purchasing a new laptop for this fall we encourage you to consider models that are intended for media-creation or higher-end gaming (these have similar technical specifications).