2017 MacBook 4K HEVC and General Computing Questions

[lsquare]

I'm seriously considering buying the 2017 MacBook. This year's option allows me to buy it with 16GB of RAM. I know last year's model used Skylake processor and that its 4K HEVC decoding capability isn't as good as Kaby Lake processors. Is the Core i5 Y series processor in the MacBook as capable as the Kaby Lake processor on the 13" MacBook Pro when it comes to decoding 4K 10-bit HEVC videos? Apple's webpage shows the MacBook have a HD 615 graphics compared to the MacBook Pro's HD 640/650 graphics.

I mainly need an ultraportable laptop for email, general web browsing, iMessage, and the occasional photo editing with Adobe Lightroom. Is the 2017 MacBook finally capable of doing this with ease? Is it fast enough?

 

[EugW]

The actual decode is done in hardware but since the regular CPU is still utilized for stuff like windows server there is still CPU usage.

For my Kaby Lake Core m3 for complex 4K HDR 10-bit HEVC there is about 25% CPU usage, but it would be somewhat less for a MacBook Pro. For the same video my Kaby Lake iMac i5 will use less than 10% CPU.