5 Best Laptops For Streaming Videos: Netflix, YouTube & More

Laptops For Streaming Videos Compared 

What Kind of Laptop Do You Need to Stream Videos?

As mentioned earlier, you don’t need a powerhouse. Forget about trying to seek out the most powerful hardware there is. You don’t need a Core i7 or a large 16 GB of RAM.

As such, any good budget laptop would suffice. You can also choose to go for mid range laptops IF you also have somewhat heavier demands like working on designing or need a laptop that can handle photo editing software.

Battery and Portability

Battery and Portability is quite useful not just for any laptop, but for the best laptops for streaming videos in particular.

If you move a lot or if you love to hang out in cafes and want to watch videos from everywhere, you need a laptop that is portable and also has a long lasting battery life.

Fortunately, the laptops we review here all offer power efficient processors that promise long battery life.

Processor and RAM

You can go for a Core i3 or an equivalent AMD processor and you will certainly be more than happy. In fact, streaming videos is also possible on weaker processors like Intel Pentium.

The issue with weaker than Core i3 processors is that they tend to show their limits as soon as you start multitasking or perform marginally difficult office/school work on them.

If you have a decent budget to spare for a new laptop, we still wouldn’t recommend that you go for machine that has a faster processor than a Core i5. Otherwise you will be wasting your money on hardware that you really don’t need at all.

Related: How Much Ram Do You Need For Streaming?

List of Top Laptops for Streaming Videos in 2021

We have selected the following as highly recommend laptops in this category.

1. HP Pavilion X360 – 15.6″ – Recommended Best Laptop for Streaming Videos

HP Pavilion is not just a top seller ion Amazon.com, we personally recommend this as well. This is a very reasonably priced laptop.

For some, this would be considered a budget laptop, whereas others may consider this a mid range machine.

The bottom line here is that this is an affordable laptop that offers highly coveted features in a laptop.

For starters, this is a convertible laptop. Therefore, not only does it have a touch screen, its screen rotates 360 degrees to become a tablet. While a feature like that isn’t too useful on a large 15.6″ screen, it still gives you all the bragging rights.

Besides the convertible mechanism, what we truly like is the form factor as well as the overall hardware configuration. There is no doubt that this sleek and slender notebook is gorgeous for its price.

It measures at only about 0.75 inches in thickness. It also some of the slimmest screen bezels for the price category. Speaking of the screen, it offers a beautiful 15.6″ display with FHD resolution and IPS panel.

IPS panels offer the best color reproduction and have the widest viewing angles as compared to the conventional TN panel screen.

As far as the core hardware is concerned, this laptop features a well rounded Intel Core i3-8130U processor. Core i3s are generally built for multitude of tasks.

They are more than ample for trivial tasks such as video streaming. In fact, you can even perform low levels of editing and designing work on it.

Lastly if offers a large 1 TB of HDD as well as a peculiar combination of 4 GB static DDR4 RAM and 16 GB of the latest Intel Optane RAM.

All in all, if you are looking for an all rounder laptop that offers a good value for its design and is built to last a long time, then this is one of the best laptops for streaming videos online.

2. HP 14 Chromebook – 14″ – Affordable Large Screen Chromebook

HP 14 Chromebook costs almost half as much as the HP Pavilion X360 above. However, when it comes to performance, it can truly surpass your expectations.

Granted it has a basic hardware featuring the entry level Intel Celeron processors, a mere 4 GB of RAM and only 32 GB of internal SSD storage, you cannot simply look at Chromebooks with the same lens as Windows or Mac laptops.

Chromebooks are different in the way they function. Chromebooks are highly internet based machines. They encourage you to use cloud services for almost all kinds of tasks.

So for example instead of Microsoft office for word processing you would instead use cloud based service like Google Docs.

The benefit of Cloud services is that it saves you from spending on a powerful machine. This is because the majority of the heavy lifting when it comes to processing is done by the serves of the web service.

This particular Chromebook is a large 14″ variant from HP. It is one of the latest to hit the market and it is excellent for those who want to enjoy their movies on a larger screen.

Chromebooks are basically highly optimized for the operating system that they use and for the function they intend to perform. As such, they are excellent for video streaming.

You can download your favorite apps such as Netflix just as you would download an app via the Google App store on an Android Smartphone.

In the end, Google Chromebooks cater to a very specific category of people – those who have a robust internet connection all the time. Besides that, if you are looking for an affordable large screen laptop that is highly streamlined, then this is one of the best laptops for streaming videos.

3. Acer Aspire E5-576-392H – 15.6″ – Budget Windows Laptop

While Chromebooks like HP 14 above are cheaper, not everybody is into trying out an entirely new operating system.

Plus Chromebook does not have the same familiar software that we are so fond of using. Therefore, there is a learning curve involved.

If you want to save yourself from the hassle and want to go for the budget Windows based laptops for streaming your videos, then Acer Aspire E5-576-392H is, hands down, one of the best budget laptop in the market.

It offers the same Intel Core i3-8130U processor as we saw in HP Pavilion X360 above, yet it manages to fit that at a much cheaper price tag.

Besides that, it offers an ample 6 GB of RAM and a good 1 TB of HDD. 1 TB is more than enough if you have a large archive of multimedia files to store.

6 GB of RAM is also an overkill for the simple task of streaming videos.

While this laptop has an excellent hardware and price, it does have its drawbacks. For starters, this is not an aesthetically appealing laptop. It has a very mundane and basic design that will give you absolutely no bragging rights at all.

Secondly, it is one of the thickest and heaviest 15.6″ laptop in the market. Measuring at 1.2 inches and weighing 5.27 pounds, this isn’t something that you would be able to carry around so easily.

However, while it is bulky, it does offer a long 10+ hours battery life.

All in all, if you do not care much for looks and portability, but you still want a fairly powerful laptop at a budget, then this is one of the best laptops for streaming videos.

4. Lenovo Chromebook C330 – 11.6″ – Small and Portable Chromebook

Next up we have another Chromebook. However, instead of offering a 14″ screen like the HP Chromebook 14 above, this offers a smaller 11.6″ screen.

This has its pros and cons. The obvious benefit here is that an 11.6″ laptop is smaller and lighter. Therefore, it is a lot more convenient to carry it around and a great laptop for school.

The drawback is that you can’t watch movies from a distance. You will have to keep the laptop close to you to enjoy the movie watching experience. This also means that it’ll be very difficult to watch videos with a friend or two.

With that said, this laptop in itself is an absolute beauty. This is one of a few Chromebooks that offers convertible mechanism. As such, this laptop can essentially turn into an Android tablet as soon as you rotate it 360 degrees.

Besides that, the internal hardware is typical of a Chromebook: extremely weak. It offers an entry level MediaTek processor designed for compact mobile devices. In addition to that, it offers a decent 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of eMMC.

As mentioned earlier when we reviewed HP 14 Chromebook, you cannot judge Chromebooks the same way as Windows or Mac laptops. They are highly specialized laptops for cloud services.

Chromebooks encourage you to work, store and watch online. They don’t need a powerful processor or a large storage, since all the processes and storage is done online – by the servers of the web service.

In the end, we have listed this as a compact, lightweight and a convertible Chromebook option. For those who want portability, this is one of the best laptops for streaming videos.

5. ASUS Vivobook S15 – 15.6″ – Robust Mid Range Laptop

Lastly we have a true mid range laptop that offers a highly capable hardware.

You must note that for mere video streaming, this laptop is definitely an overkill.

We have listed this here in case if you have other hobbies such as designing, photo editing, video editing etc. Perhaps you are a student who needs a powerful laptop for various software.

In addition to that, we decided to list this laptop because this is a future proof machine. It is powerful enough to last for years to come.

Requirements from a laptop change. If you foresee a time where you would want a laptop that can do a lot more than video streaming, then you can consider this notebook.

On first glance, you can tell that this is a gorgeous machine. From its slim bezel screen to a mere 0.7 inch thickness, this is a premium laptop.

Besides the stylish looks, this laptop offers a highly capable hardware with a powerful Quad Core Intel Core i5-8265U processor, a large 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB of SSD drive.

It goes without saying here that if your requirements are ONLY limited to streaming videos, then we would note recommend that you invest on an advanced laptop as this.

This Asus laptop has a great lifespan, good power, and great style, making it one of the best laptops for streaming videos.

People Also Ask (FAQs)

What Kind of Speed Do I need to Stream Videos?

There is not doubt that if you want to stream videos using the laptops mentioned here, you will need a robust internet connectivity.

You can use the following standard for choosing your internet speeds for streaming

You can read up more about this here and also read the Netflix Resource on UHD streaming.

Do You Also Need a High Upload Speed?

The simple is: No, you don’t need a high upload speed. For streaming videos, download speed is what matters.

Upload speeds matters if you are going to be streaming YOUR videos live on the internet. It also matters during video chat and in other instances where face time is required.

What should be Preferred Resolution?

Depending on your budget, we recommend that you at least go for FHD resolution. FHD or 1080p is also the Blu-Ray resolution.

Most of the streaming platforms like Youtube or Netflix readily offer FHD videos.

You must note that a higher resolution means your video streams will be sharper and more detailed, which might make 4k worth the money for some people.

You must also note that you CANNOT stream 4K videos on FHD display or FHD videos on HD (720P) displays.

Can you Connect your TV to your Laptop?

You most certainly can. You will need to make sure that both your TV and your laptop have the required compatible ports.

Generally, TVs and laptops are connected via the HDMI ports.

However, some laptops ditch the HDMI and instead offer Thunderbolt 3. In this case, you will need to find a Thunderbolt 3 to HDMI adapter to make it compatible with your TV.

Note that while USB Type C shares the same form factor as the Thunderbolt 3, not all USB Type C can be used to connect display devices. Therefore, do not confuse USB Type C with Thunderbolt 3.

Conclusion

Here we looked at the best laptops for streaming videos that are great for your favorite services like Netflix or YouTube etc.

The bottom line here is simple: you don’t need an extremely powerful laptop for a task as simple as Video streaming. All you need is a laptop that is reliable and has sufficient power to perform all the basic tasks seamlessly.

For us HP Pavilion x360 is a highly recommended Windows based laptop. We find its overall configuration and its portability worth it for streaming videos.

Besides that, we also love the Chromebooks. Chromebooks like HP 14 and Lenovo C330 are two that we recommend. Chromebooks are great since they are particularly designed for online services. In addition to that, they are also some of the cheapest laptops out there.

However, if you want a Windows based laptop on a budget, we recommend the Acer Aspire E5-576. This definitely is the crown jewel of budget laptops in the current market.

Lastly, we recommended ASUS Vivobook S15 for those who need something that is more than just capable of video streaming.