My editing rig in 2026 — and why hardware is a business decision, not a hobby

I have been asked about my setup enough times that it is easier to write it down. But a list of parts is a boring post and, worse, a useless one — because the interesting question was never what do you own. It is how do you decide what to buy next when money is finite, which is the position almost every freelance editor is actually in.

So this is the rig, and it is also the reasoning. Where I think a purchase was obviously right, I say so. Where I think I bought something because I wanted it rather than because I needed it, I say that too.

Why kit is a business decision, not a hobby

Here is the shift that changed how I buy things. Stop asking “can I afford this?” and start asking “how many hours a year does this give back, and what is an hour of my time worth?”

An editor billing client work has a real hourly rate, even if they have never written it down. If a purchase removes two hours a week of waiting, that is roughly a hundred hours a year. Put your own rate against that number and most sensible upgrades stop looking like spending and start looking like buying back time.

But — and this is where most gear advice fails — that logic only holds if the thing you buy addresses the bottleneck you actually hit. A faster processor does nothing if your real bottleneck is waiting on a slow drive, or redoing a grade because you could not trust your screen. Buying against the spec sheet instead of against your own week is how people end up with a fast machine and the same working day.

The machines — desk and bag

Two machines, doing two genuinely different jobs. If I had to keep one, it would be the desktop, and it is not close.

Main workstation

Mac mini M4 Pro

The most editing performance per peso I have ever bought, for one boring reason: you are not paying for a screen, a battery or a chassis. It sits under the monitors, it is silent, and it handles multicam property edits and long-form dubbing timelines without drama. If you work at a desk most days, this is the machine to buy before you consider a laptop.

Apple siliconDesk-boundSilent under load

I don't have an affiliate link for this one — buy it wherever it's cheapest.

Mobile workstation

MacBook Pro (M5 Pro)

This earns its place the moment work happens away from the desk — on location, at a client's office, or in an airport. It is a luxury right up until the day it isn't, and then it is the reason a deadline gets met. If your work is entirely desk-based, skip it and put the money into storage and a display.

TravelsFull edit + gradeBattery-critical work

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What you look at, and the one screen I trust

Here is the thing nobody tells you early enough: every colour decision you make is only as good as the screen you made it on. You can own the fastest machine in the country and still deliver a grade that falls apart on the client's laptop, because your display was quietly lying to you the whole time.

I run three screens, and they do three different jobs.

Primary display

Lenovo Legion R27q-30

1440p at 27 inches is, for my money, the sweet spot for an edit bay — enough panel to keep a timeline, a program monitor and an inspector visible at once without the scaling headaches of 4K. This is a working display, not a grading display, and I am careful not to confuse the two.

27″ 1440pTimeline + panelsWorking display

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The one that actually changed my work

A BON BPM-170L multi-format broadcast monitor, fed from the timeline. It is the least glamorous object on my desk and the one I would replace first if it died.

The reason is simple. On a normal display you are grading against an unknown — you make a call, you deliver, and the client's screen is the first honest test of whether you were right. A reference monitor moves that test to your desk, before the file goes out. Your scopes and your eyes finally agree with each other.

Storage, and the mistake that actually costs money

If you take one thing from this post, take this: a slow machine costs you hours, but lost footage costs you the job, the client, and every referral that client would have sent. Storage is the only category where the downside is not inconvenience, it is your reputation.

It is also, unglamorously, where I found my real bottleneck. For two years I thought I needed a faster computer. I needed faster drives.

Internal / working storage

Samsung 9100 PRO 2TB (PCIe 5.0 NVMe)

Working media lives here. The jump you feel is not in export times — it is in ingest, cache and scrubbing a heavy multicam timeline, which is where the waiting actually happens in a normal day. This is the upgrade I should have made two years before I did.

PCIe 5.0 ×42TBWorking media

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Field & delivery storage

Samsung T9 Portable SSD

This is the drive that goes in the bag. Shoots come home on it, client deliverables go out on it, and it is fast enough to cut directly off it when I am working away from the desk. If you are choosing between an internal upgrade and a good portable, and you shoot as well as edit, buy the portable first.

PortableEdit off it directlyField ingest

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The desk stuff that only matters after the rest

Everything from here down is comfort and convenience. Genuinely useful, and genuinely last in line. Do not buy any of it before the storage and the display are sorted.

Connectivity

UGREEN dock for Mac mini

The Mac mini's port situation is fine until you have two displays, three drives and an audio interface, at which point it is not. This is the slab sitting directly under the mini in the photo further up — it turns a daily cable dance into one cable. Pure quality-of-life — it makes nothing faster, it just stops the day being annoying.

Hub + SSD enclosureSits under the miniOne-cable desk

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Input

Keychron K5 Max

Let me be straight with you: this will not make you a faster editor. Not one frame. I bought it because my hands are on a keyboard eight hours a day and I wanted those eight hours to be pleasant, and by that standard it was worth every peso. The full-size layout matters more than the switches — the number pad is genuinely useful for timecode entry. Buy it as the comfort purchase it is, after the things that affect your output.

Full sizeLow profileWireless

Keychron store →Buy on Shopee PH →

Monitoring: M-Audio nearfields

Monitoring

M-Audio nearfield monitors

Audio is half of what your client experiences, and it is where amateur work gives itself away fastest — a muddy mix reads as cheap long before a soft grade does. Here is the part nobody selling speakers will tell you: you do not need expensive monitors. You need monitors instead of laptop speakers, and then you need to learn how a good mix sounds on the pair you already own. A cheap pair you know well beats an expensive pair you don't.

Powered nearfieldsOne either sideMix reference

Check price →Mine are an older model — any honest nearfield beats laptop speakers.

Software: where the money goes now

This is the part of the post that has changed most in the last twelve months, and it deserves its own thought.

All three major NLEs shipped a major release inside eight days this September, and they now price fundamentally differently: DaVinci Resolve is $295 once, Media Composer is a subscription, and Adobe Premiere is a subscription plus per-generation AI credits. That last one is new, and it changes the maths — software used to be a fixed annual cost you could quote against. For AI-heavy work, it is now a variable one.

I run all three, because my ABS-CBN work and my freelance work do not use the same tools. If you are choosing, I wrote the whole comparison up separately:

What I’d buy first on a limited budget

If someone starting out asked me to spend their money for them, this is the order, and it is deliberately not the order most people buy in.

The honest verdict

FAQ