Since my educational content and training production career started on YouTube—and later grew into a community, courses, webinars, and physical/hybrid sessions—I get one question every now and then: What’s the best laptop? Which graphics card is recommended? What machine should I buy? All kinds of questions. Some go for style despite the price, while others hate Apple so much they wouldn’t even consider it.

I took the time to do some research and made it simple. The reality is, budget is the key word in these situations. So, I put together 4 separate VJ kits based on my recommendations—actually 8, if you count both PC and Mac versions of each.