Looking for a labtop for a specific purpose, your recommendations appreciated.

[Bryangtr]

I am looking for a labtop that I can simply broadcast 1920x1080 video files to a TV (broadcast them well without any problems at all). I don't know anything about labtop's beyond what I know from having a desktop PC. A gaming labtop would be easier for me to pick out then what I am trying to find right now.

So right now I use my desktop PC to watch movies connected to my TV through Steam Link. I have steam link wired via ethernet cable to my PC, and steam link is hooked to my TV. I find it works pretty well. I need a labtop that can do as well as my PC does for video files. Then obviously browsing the internet, and downloading/storing music. A large hardrive is a plus. Maybe a 17" screen at largest.

My budget, and or what I am willing to spend is around $600 for a labtop. Ideally $600 and under. Also I will be taking the labtop with me everywhere I go.

Right now, and I know its from Best Buy but I am looking at this: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspiron-15-6-laptop-intel-core-i5-8gb-memory-1tb-hard-drive-matte-silver/4952902.p?skuId=4952902 because it has a i5, 8gb, 1TB hardrive. Likely this is fine, but if there is a better deal, and or better labtop for $600 and under someone would recommend then let me know. Thank you.

 

[JeffDaemon]

This is pretty simular to my plight. I purchased a MSI Cubi mini PC for the sole purpose of playing video on my tv, because the formats my video files tend to be in can't be direct streamed using the hardware chips on media players like chromecast and amazon fire stick. I went the mini pc route because I did not want to deal with dead or exploding battery issues down the road.

Pretty much I found any PC with a CPU benchmark score of 3000+ at https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ is more then enough for any 1080p file. If you want h265 HEVC for 4K then you will need a skull canyon CPU, or a bad ass i7. In short, I found i3 processors to meet this minimum requirement. Only one pentium came close, and while some AMD APUs come close to 3000 points they have loud fan issues.

The MSI cubi I picked up has an i3 and works wonderfully. You don't need a laptop with a fancy gpu, igpu is fine for just movie playback.

 

[Bryangtr]

This is pretty simular to my plight. I purchased a MSI Cubi mini PC for the sole purpose of playing video on my tv, because the formats my video files tend to be in can't be direct streamed using the hardware chips on media players like chromecast and amazon fire stick. I went the mini pc route because I did not want to deal with dead or exploding battery issues down the road.

Pretty much I found any PC with a CPU benchmark score of 3000+ at https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ is more then enough for any 1080p file. If you want h265 HEVC for 4K then you will need a skull canyon CPU, or a bad ass i7. In short, I found i3 processors to meet this minimum requirement. Only one pentium came close, and while some AMD APUs come close to 3000 points they have loud fan issues.

The MSI cubi I picked up has an i3 and works wonderfully. You don't need a laptop with a fancy gpu, igpu is fine for just movie playback.

Thanks for the reply!