New laptop vs external monitor

Cody'sCaptures

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So I have an pretty old Toshiba machine, I think it's going on 6 years old. I put some new ram 16g ddr3 and a 120g SSD in it semi recently. It runs Photoshop and Lightroom okay, not great. The big problem is the monitor, it's complete junk. The monitor has a couple hot spots in it and just isn't very bright anymore. The laptop has never been properly calibrated (only color grommet images/software). The issue I'm running into is just basic editing is becoming impossible to get correctly (WB, saturation, RGB,curves...).
The computer barely leaves my house so I was considering a desktop but its still my personal computer so couch time is nice. I would go crazy and buy a nice new laptop but I just bought a house and all my money is getting dumped into renovations.
So the question is what's the best option, try to calibrate existing laptop, buy new laptop, build a desktop or just add a decent external monitor for edits?

Thanks for your time
 
When I was in that situation I bought the monitor and am happy with how it worked out for me. If you later upgrade your laptop or buy a desktop, the monitor will still be useful. As long as your laptop is running the programs that you need, why buy another?
 
So I have an pretty old Toshiba machine, I think it's going on 6 years old. I put some new ram 16g ddr3 and a 120g SSD in it semi recently. It runs Photoshop and Lightroom okay, not great. The big problem is the monitor, it's complete junk. The monitor has a couple hot spots in it and just isn't very bright anymore. The laptop has never been properly calibrated (only color grommet images/software). The issue I'm running into is just basic editing is becoming impossible to get correctly (WB, saturation, RGB,curves...).

Basic editing was always impossible to do correctly on that display, calibrated or not.

The computer barely leaves my house so I was considering a desktop but its still my personal computer so couch time is nice. I would go crazy and buy a nice new laptop but I just bought a house and all my money is getting dumped into renovations.
So the question is what's the best option, try to calibrate existing laptop, buy new laptop, build a desktop or just add a decent external monitor for edits?

Thanks for your time

I have an old Toshiba laptop that I use for teaching. Same as you I've upgraded the hardware and it runs WIN 10 and Photo apps no problem. However I don't use it to edit photos because of the display. Calibrating the display doesn't improve the display's physical inadequacies. My favorite analogy to explain that is this:
You can buy this Martin guitar: OMCPA4 Rosewood Acoustic Guitar | C.F. Martin & Co.
and you can buy this Kona guitar: Acoustic Guitar for Dummies Bundle: Kona Acoustic Guitar, Accessories, Instructional Book & CD - Walmart.com

Once you get them tuned they should both sound great, right? It does help to tune the Kona guitar as the pain of listening to it is reduced.

With cost an issue given the new house you can get a modest size external display between $200 - $300 that will make a world of difference. You're looking for an IPS or IPS variant panel display (avoid TN displays) and you need a hardware calibrator for it like this: https://www.amazon.com/X-Rite-CMUNS...910345&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=colormunik+smile

Joe
 
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