Dell Outlet on Ebay has the Latitude 3140 laptop, an excellent Home Assistant platform on sale for $176. A Raspberry Pi 5 or NUC with the hardware needed for these features would cost far more. The same machine is nearly 2x more on the regular Dell Outlet site.
Debian 12 supported out of box - no additional drivers needed
Fast N200 Intel processor - ~60% faster than a Raspberry Pi 5
256gb SSD
8GB ram
Advanced BIOS options
OpenVino support for Frigate
BIOS battery management. Can limit charge to 75% for years of battery life
6 hour indicated battery life at 75% charge
Very low power usage - ~6 watts when running Home Assistant with several USB devices
Fanless and completely silent
Built like a tank
Negatives:
Built like a tank. Chunky for a small laptop
No integrated Ethernet port
Mediocre screen
I bought one of these last year when it was on sale from another vendor and have been really happy with it, especially for the cost.
At the same time, you’ve got a baked in UPS. I’m not sure what the normal power refresh cycle is on them compared to a laptop battery but it seems like it might be negligible?