So as it seems that 4K is getting popular these days, but some people who have older computers may have some trouble playing 4K videos. Especially 10bit HEVC (x265) format. But the support for hardware decoding of HEVC 10 bit videos has been added few years ago. First of all lets see whether this hardware decoding is better than normal software(CPU) decoding compared with power. We won't be playing a game while watching a movie of course, at least not with a single monitor setup. So we can stop worrying about GPU usage going for 100% while watching a movie. But you could be doing many tasks with CPU while watching a movie. It is very practical. So lets turn into power consumption. This is very important for laptops. The following details are from a laptop with Intel Core i5 8250u with Intel HD graphics 620. File details. I used VLC media player latest version. All the Nvidia and Intel drivers used here are uptodate. Make sure you have the latest software and driv