# Minimum laptop specs to play 1080 HD video ? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 19, 2014, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimum-laptop-specs-to-play-1080-hd-video/688712 "2014-05-19T03:41:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![simple\_homer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@simple\_homer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simple_homer)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimum-laptop-specs-to-play-1080-hd-video/688712/1 "2014-05-19T03:41:49Z")
My current laptop does not have the processing power to be able to play 1080 videos. What are the minimum specs needed to be able to play those HD videos ? I am just looking for a cheap laptop. ---
**Author:** ![busterpickle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@busterpickle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/busterpickle)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimum-laptop-specs-to-play-1080-hd-video/688712/2 "2014-05-19T05:45:10Z")
A Google Chrome book should do it. But, that’s vague as I have no idea what else you’d want the laptop to be capable of. Do you want a DVD-ROM or anything? DO you have a phone? It might be a better idea to invest in a phone that support HD playback and but the cable you need for your TV (or whatever). Just a thought. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimum-laptop-specs-to-play-1080-hd-video/688712/3 "2014-05-19T08:00:01Z")
These days, most modern systems use a separate chip to play back video. They usually have hardware H.264 decoders, which most online videos use. Laptops with Intel Core (or newer Pentium, Celeron, and Atom) CPUs or Nvidia or ATI graphics cards will have this capability built-in, and the CPU won’t even be used much for playback. Not sure about AMD CPUs. To give you an idea of how widespread this stuff is, even the $40 Raspberry Pi computer can decode 1080p video because even it has its own decoding chip. The one issue you might run into is with homebrewed 1080p videos (like from a digital SLR), because those are often not encoded in standard playback codecs – being optimized instead for editability and quality – and result in huge files that slower laptops can have trouble keeping up with. But for YouTube, Netflix, etc., any laptop or Chromebook should be fine. EDIT: Also, keep in mind that most laptops don’t have 1080p monitors, especially the cheaper ones. If it doesn’t, playing 1080p video just wastes bandwidth and electricity. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimum-laptop-specs-to-play-1080-hd-video/688712/4 "2014-05-19T08:12:57Z")
And keep in mind that you need approximately a 10 megabit internet connection to smoothly stream 1080p video from YouTube. Most public places and some home connections don’t offer that much bandwidth. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2014, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimum-laptop-specs-to-play-1080-hd-video/688712/5 "2014-05-23T09:24:53Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > And keep in mind that you need approximately a 10 megabit internet connection to smoothly stream 1080p video from YouTube. Most public places and some home connections don’t offer that much bandwidth. I’ve not had any problems with my 6Mbit connection. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2014, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimum-laptop-specs-to-play-1080-hd-video/688712/6 "2014-05-23T16:30:43Z")
The requirements to play HD video aren’t all that great. I do it on my old Celeron 750Mhz laptop. (Though at 1080, the fan really revs up and the noise is not good.) A lot of people have devices so loaded with with crapware that they _think_ their device can’t play HD videos. For a modern laptop, anything dual-core, 2Ghz or better will do it with a _very_ large margin to spare. Just uninstall or disable all the garbage software. ---
**Author:** ![sweat209](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc348/32.png) [@sweat209](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sweat209)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2014, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimum-laptop-specs-to-play-1080-hd-video/688712/7 "2014-05-23T18:30:21Z")
Any laptop after 2006 should play that no problem. I have laptop from 2006 and it gets very hot and fan loud.All the laptops after 2006 do not seem to do that. ---
**Author:** ![michael2019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@michael2019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/michael2019)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2019, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimum-laptop-specs-to-play-1080-hd-video/688712/8 "2019-02-22T23:20:00Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > The requirements to play HD video aren’t all that great. I do it on my old Celeron 750Mhz laptop. (Though at 1080, the fan really revs up and the noise is not good.) > > A lot of people have devices so loaded with with crapware that they _think_ their device can’t play HD videos. > > For a modern laptop, anything dual-core, 2Ghz or better will do it with a _very_ large margin to spare. Just uninstall or disable all the garbage software. Can you please explain how you are able to get a 750mhz laptop to do this as I cant even play HD video on a 2.0Ghz dual core … ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2019, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minimum-laptop-specs-to-play-1080-hd-video/688712/9 "2019-02-23T13:37:39Z")
> [@michael2019](#): > > Can you please explain how you are able to get a 750mhz laptop to do this as I cant even play HD video on a 2.0Ghz dual core … To a certain extent I already gave the info: clean the crap off your computer. But I’ve lately been coming across stuff encoded with H.264 and similar that have been _incredibly_ compressed. Decompressing that would be more than my old 750MHz laptop could handle. OTOH, the resulting video is very far from “HD” quality. Yeah, it might have the line count but the effects of such over-compression ruin the video.