> Many cheap Windows laptops will struggle at this task
There's not a single cheap Windows laptop that will even vaguely 'struggle' at this task given that the video decode is hardware accelerated. Even a RPI can manage that task. I have set-top box PCs with dual core Celeron 1037U processors which are more than ten years old which don't 'struggle' at this task even if you throw them a x265 video which their hardware decode ASIC doesn't support.
There's not a single cheap Windows laptop that will even vaguely 'struggle' at this task given that the video decode is hardware accelerated. Even a RPI can manage that task. I have set-top box PCs with dual core Celeron 1037U processors which are more than ten years old which don't 'struggle' at this task even if you throw them a x265 video which their hardware decode ASIC doesn't support.