Top 4 Budget MacBooks for 4K Video Editing: Quality Picks

“I purchased this 16” MacBook Pro M4 Max with 48 GB and 1TB for $2,575.26 “Like New” from Amazon Resale while they were offering an extra 20% discount on 11/21/2025. On top of that I signed up for Prime to get the 2% back on my Amazon Visa (i.e. 5% instead of just 3%). I’ve been watching for a deal for a while, as this was not provided “free” through the Vine program, and I was finding it hard to justify such an expensive purchase. I would not typically write a review in that case, but I felt this transaction needed one.I certainly had concerns after reading some of the 1 star reviews, though my experience purchasing this through Amazon Resale was nothing but 5-star. What arrived on 11/25 in my case was treated as high value, and was handed to me by an Amazon driver, only after I provided a 6 digit code. It was sealed in a typical brown Amazon box with no sign of damage. I immediately opened the box, with my wife filming the unboxing just in case. I recommend this precaution, though fortunately all was fine. The box matched the order’s specs, and the SN of the laptop it contained matched that. As well as being as advertised; a scratch-free, perfect laptop.CONDITION:What I received was a mint laptop in an opened Apple retail box taped closed with packing tape. The Apple box had two extra barcodes stuck to its bottom (one was a “LPN” code). Additionally there was an orange “QC15 PASS” sticker signed with the initials “Fg”. The original Apple charger was in the box still sealed in the protective wrap, and the power cable was still coiled around the cardboard, clearly those had not been used. The laptop did not have the protective paper sleeve, nor was there a protective sheet between the screen and keyboard, though even so both the laptop body and the screen were perfect, with no sign of defect.A check of the serial number with Apple’s website confirmed it had first been activated on 10/26/2025, so I was free to activate AppleCare on it within the next 32 days, or just enjoy the standard Apple Warranty until October 26th, 2026. I then powered it up and checked the battery cycles (there were 2), and any signs of it being left tied to an account, or with device management active; there was not.Finally, I ran Apple’s hardware test; it passed. Then I verified all Thunderbolt ports with an external hard drive, as well as the SD slot, headphone jack, and power connector. No issues found. At this point all of my fears were gone, and I was overjoyed.ONE MINOR CONCERN:Other than the expected (open box, lacking protective wrap), it had an odd initial smell. I’m sensitive to smells, and the box and laptop emit what I would best describe as a strong “new car” odor, slightly fruity, but with no stain on the box or residue on the laptop. The smell was mainly from the outside of the box itself. I’d guess it was in close proximity to a leaking car air freshener during shipping, or the return process. My initial concern was that the laptop might have been wiped down with a disinfectant to clean it, which would have the potential of damaging the screen coating. I suppose it is possible the original owner, or Amazon used a deodorizer to sanitize or mask other odors, but I think it is far more likely that another package leaked near it, and the laptop was never exposed to anything directly. I’ve been using it for two days now, and there is no longer any noticeable odor. The Apple box it came in however still smells of it, so I’ve relegated it to the garage.CONCLUSION:Certainly, buying an open box return carries some risk over picking one of these up from the Apple Store. However, the significant savings made it worth that. Fortunately I did not have to deal with a return. However, I’ve always found Amazon to make that easy at my Whole Foods drop point. In the end I now have a high spec version of my dream laptop, as opposed to a base model, which is all my budget would have allowed had I gone with new.FINAL THOUGHTS: My last MacBook Pro lasted me over 10 years, and I’m hopeful that given the high specs of this one, it will enjoy a similar life. I was not expecting to use this for games, as I have a Windows gaming laptop for that, but out of curiosity, I loaded up Cyberpunk 2077 on it, and wow! Running the laptop in clamshell mode with an ultra-wide Samsung gaming display (5120×1440) and two 4K LG monitors on either side showing other work, it does not seem to struggle. Around the rear vents, the MacBook Pro does get warm, but not as warm as my “gaming laptop” does when running the game. The selection of games supporting Apple Silicon is small, but this one definitely makes the MacBook Pro shine! If you are on the fence about buying a MacBook Pro, I would say go for it, especially if you can find a good deal on Amazon Resale. Just be sure to inspect it carefully when it arrives.”

“Best for video editing. Best for photoshop. Best for photographers who travel. Best for anyone who uses a computer for work…unless you are a gamer. But gamers already know this, so no worries. This computer is better than any PC because of stability and power savings. If I’m not using Adobe, this thing goes all day easily. The screen? Legendary. Colors are spot on. Keyboard? Always lit, easy to type on. It has an SD card slot that you could use for an extra hard drive, but I always dump my work onto an external drive anyway, so my onboard drive is always over 50% free. I have a Ryzen desktop built for video work. This beats it, easily. So glad I got this! My social life is back! If you get the reference, you need this machine. Get it, you only live once.”

“I absolutely love this monitor; it works flawlessly with my M2 MacBook Air. The monitor I had previously just wasn’t playing nice, but this one is the perfect Mac companion. Just plug it in, and you’re all set. Best of all, even though my MacBook Air uses the MagSafe charger (not USB-C), this monitor charges it via the USB-C! connector cable Also, I love that when I turn my MacBook Air on, the monitor almost immediately turns on (my previous monitor had to be manually turned on). The quality is amazing; everything is crisp, and it has vibrant colors.”

“I was using a 27″ iMac with a 5k screen. Thinking that moving to a 4k screen would be a big step down, I ordered the Asus 5k screen for $800. Did not like it at all. Weird green ghosting when scrolling text. Very dark. So I sent that back to Amazon and got this screen (my wife has had one for years). It cost about 1/3 as much, and for my money, is perfect. It charges my laptop, provides crisp text, great colors. It’s a little slow to wake up, but I can wait a few seconds in the morning. I’m not editing videos or photos, so I can’t comment on the color calibration, but everything looks good to me. For a reliable, sharp, reasonably priced monitor, this seems a great choice.”

“This MacBook Pro is a powerhouse. The 2024 model is incredibly fast, with apps opening instantly and multitasking handled with ease. The display is stunning — bright, sharp, and with amazing color accuracy that makes everything from work documents to movies look incredible. Battery life is excellent, easily lasting all day with normal use, and the build quality is exactly what you’d expect from Apple: sleek, solid, and premium. The keyboard is comfortable to type on for long stretches, and the trackpad remains the best in the business. I’ve used both Windows laptops and Macs, and this machine is easily the smoothest computing experience I’ve had. Perfect for business, creative work, or just everyday tasks. If you want a laptop that delivers performance, reliability, and design in one package, this is it.”

“Very fast laptop, very long battery life. For the graphically interesting games natively compatible with it, very good graphics performance. The display is amazing and is capable of twice as many pixels as it shows you. It was a good value in a Black Friday sale (~$1400), but this (M4 Pro 12/16) chip is on par with or under performance of the prior generation M3 Max 14”, so if it can get one of those for a good deal refurbished or open box, there is no shame in it. As with all M1/2/3/4s, there are dedicated neural cores for Apple Intelligence to run, which allows for a personalized Siri who listens to you and watches you all the time, without sharing this information. You can disable Apple Intelligence and Siri, but after I got past the creepiness, I configured Siri as an Irish Female, and it makes everything lovely. There is a lot of integration with other Apple devices, like you can operate your iphone from a distance on your MacBook. You can also receive texts and Messages from your iPhone, and easily use it for tethering, as a substitute for your webcam (the webcam is pretty solid nonetheless). This model supports linking hearing aids and also supports airpods much in the same way the iPhone does. You can easily use your living room TV as a second monitor on the fly, and if you can plug in via HDMI, you can get the whole 4K@120hz. MacOSX is a great operating system, built on Unix, and with tons of room for customization for beginners to super users. Time Machine backups with your own plug-in hard drives and iCloud are incredibly convenient. Safari gets better and better, but the Mac versions of Chromium and Firefox also dazzle.For most programs that aren’t games, macOSX is widely supported, but if you just *need* it, parallels desktop and vmware can run windows for you.New users ought to pay close attention to Tips and go into settings and learn all the trackpad gestures. You won’t want to come back to a different trackpad, and until you want to game, you will not care to use a mouse.Anyway, I got this for my wife as a gift, partly because she needed a new computer and partly because I wanted to convert her. She seems pretty converted.”

“I’d say that for the price, these are great monitors. The menu button on the back are poorly designed; but that’s a minor thing. I’m using the Display Port and the only annoying thing is the extra audio interfaces that are added even though there is no audio device attached. This is more of a DP protocol issue than a monitor issue.”

“The main drawback I’m experiencing, and imagine most customers would also, isn’t a fault of this product which would be better on other 27″ 4K monitors, but nonetheless if you’re considering buying it you should know this. I got this to upgrade from using a M4 Mac Mini with 3x 1920×1280 monitors; before that I had a 27″ 5K Retina iMac which had a beautiful, highly-rated screen similar to what’s still in their $1599 Studio Display Monitor and the transition back to FHD was too frustrating in terms of screen real estate, how much I could fit onto the monitor. I don’t know if the increased PPI of the display to show more detail in playback of video was an important benefit for me of having the 5K iMac, and admittedly the 5K iMac did take some getting used to because everything was smaller than on the FHD monitors (as to be expected) – but it had incredible flexibility of resizing elements. I always had wondered why Apple went to 5K for just a 27″ monitor, when there’s barely any content available streaming at 4K, as far as I’m aware there isn’t content available in 5K and ofc 5K is a far cry from 8K. NOW I’m pretty sure I understand why they did the 5K retina in 5K – it speaks to the drawback I’m experiencing in 4K at 27″, its because if you want to scale the resolution to make windows not appear tiny and harder to read on these high-resolution monitors compared to the FHD 1080p monitors. I can’t speak to the experience with Windows, but the principle should hold, so the bottom line here is that upgrading from a 1920×1280 (or 1920×1080) monitor WILL ABSOLUTELY result in the title bars, menu bars, all icons etc being SMALLER, much smaller. On MacOS you can set the resolution to be scaled to 1080p – but then not only are you reverting to the pixel density from which you just upgraded, to me at 2x scaling everything looked too big which compromised my goal of being able to fit more on the screen. Some Reddit posts suggested that selecting the 1080p (scaled) resolution in MacOS would still allow 4K video to be displayed at the high PPI so if that’s true it would be a good solution for customers who only wanted the 4K for the increased detail in video playback.I have decently-young eyes and am sitting just a few inches from the screen, so while annoying I’m going to accept the stuff being smaller because of the terrific newfound ability to fit twice as much on my 27″ screen compared to the 24″ screen it replaces. But if I had the money, I’d instead get the 32″ size – not because 27″ isn’t big enough, it is, and frankly a 32″ monitor would feel overwhelmingly large on my desk, but that size would allow me to use this 4K resolution without the title bar of every window being tiny.Now I will discuss elements of this monitor in the context of comparisons to other 27″ 4K monitors. It is INCREDIBLY thin, and lightweight, that’s a huge plus. I paid a small premium compared to the other 27″ 4K monitors because at $199 to get a Samsung brand monitor seemed smart, in case there is trouble requiring warranty support. The bezel is so thin that – I kid you not – this 27″ monitor’s total size makes it sit side-by-side next to a NEC 24″ and a HP 24” and they’ve all got approximately the same exterior dimensions! It’s like when I upgraded iPhones recently to one with a slightly (but signifigantly) bigger screen – sitting next to the old iPhone, their exterior dimensions are very similar.I am very bothered about one thing – what’s the deal with the USB-A port? It’s marked as being “Superspeed” (USB3), yet its not mentioned ANYWHERE in the manual! On a Thunderbolt or USB-C monitor (or if it had a USB-B uplink port, like older monitors with built-in hubs) it would make sense to me what it does and how it works, but I’m pretty sure USB data can’t be transfered over any HDMI or DP connection which leads me to assume, given its placement adjacent to the 1/8″ analog headphone output, that its for USB audio. The monitor is so barebones-featurewise that all functionality is controlled by just a single button (stick) on the backside of the monitor (you must reach under, and around, which is OK except that you may not know its there) and yet they opted to have audio outputs. Perhaps this is for devices that don’t have 1/8″ analog audio output, or USB-A supporting audio, if you connect say a new iPad or iPhone to it and want your audio to come out of headphones/speakers, I suppose that would be very appreciated.The image is really nice. I read countless reviews complaining that each time the monitor turns on, or wakes from sleep, that it would show some stupid OSD or other unwanted functionality, but I have yet to see any behavior that bothers me. The OSD message goes away pretty quickly from a cold start. There was a complaint by someone who intended to use the monitor with two devices (such as a computer AND a video game console) always plugged in, expecting to be able to easily switch between inputs using the monitor’s controls as is very easy to do on many monitors, and I agree this isn’t the best model for that.It seemed inconsequential that the monitor comes with a HDMI cable included, but this is actually an important aspect because I realized quickly that all the HDMI cables I already had couldn’t supply it with 4K video (FHD max). It’s annoying that HDMI cables aren’t labeled for which version they are, but suitably the included cable is HDMI 2.0 at least.”