"Chris Green"  wrote

| Cheap to run as well as to buy initially, a Pi consumes a lot less
| electricity than even a modern 'desktop' machine.  However as the Pi
| gets bigger and PCs get smaller and more economicial the difference is
| diminishing.  Unless you need the processing power of a Pi 4 then some
| of the lesser versions maybe somewhat cheaper in the long term.
|

   My impression is that Pi4 made a big jump in functionality.
Loading the latest Firefox, streaming movies or videos to
a TV... unless you've done that easily with a Pi3 it might be
best not to recommend it. Electricity usage is hardly a top
concern when there might be issues with CPU power, RAM,
etc.

  For example, the ability to install Widevine to the Pi's ARM
Chromium seems to be Pi4-only. That may not matter to you,
but for me it was the main reason I bought the Pi. And the OP,
similarly, wants the Piu for video streaming.

https://blog.vpetkov.net/2020/03/30/raspberry-pi-netflix-one-line-easy-install-
along-with-hulu-amazon-prime-disney-plus-hbo-spotify-pandora-and-many-others/co
mment-page-1/#comment-458345

(At this moment I'm unable to load that page, but I expect
it's a temporary server glitch.)

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