I guess YMMV. Used OBS a couple of times on macOS and was impressed with how smooth it ran.

Yeah, this is news to me too - we’ve been using it on a Mini (granted, it’s an i7 - but still, it’s a laptop in an aluminum case) with zero issues. Integrating NDI, no less!

Do you do any picture-in-picture of other apps with heavy CPU utilization, or apply any filters (chroma key/crop) or animated overlays? Multiple cameras or input sources? Multiple audio sources?

The framerate was terrible, the entire machine would lag, and the audio would constantly glitch out at best. Saved recordings were unwatchable.

I tried tweaking everything with the process priorities in OBS and the other apps, and could never get an acceptable result. AMD ThinkPad worked out of the box, did everything I described above, and CPU utilization stayed around 2-3%, and I couldn't even notice it was running while using other apps. All of this while I had it hooked up to extend the desktop onto 3 monitors. Streams and recordings are flawless.