Using the Netflix 1080P AV1 2Mbps Test clip, my old Macbook 2015 with a Intel Core i5-5287U ( Broadwell Dual Core 3.3Ghz ) just manage to play that at about 70% of the total CPU.
An AV1 example at 1080p50: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhXtJWi2PjI
You can verify if YouTube videos are playing back in AV1 by right clicking on the video and choosing Stats for Nerds. The codec is av01 for AV1 video.
I know so little about this space so not sure how helpful the comparison is, but it is like magic what we are able to do with math.
I'm using Chrome on macOS, which seemingly supports this as well: Codecs av01.0.08M.08 (398) / opus (251)
What decoder is Chrome using?
How are you testing? Is that dav1d 1.0? 8bit or 10bit content?
If you tested before 1.0 and 10bit content, you should run it again, since we pushed new optimizations for this.
I should have included in the original comment this machines needs 60% to 70% CPU to play VP9 on similar bitrate / bit / frames. i.e Decoding on VP9 and AV1 are on a similar level of CPU usage. Considering the complexity of AV1, I thought this was an incredible achievement. ( It actually blows my mind this can be done )
I tested it on with 8 and 10 bit content the result aren't that much different. ( This is just eyeballing CPU usage in Activity Monitor ) The 3.3 Ghz was turbo, so it really should be 2.9Ghz Dual Core Broadwell CPU.
I didn't see benchmarks mentioned in TFA, please let me know if I've missed or overlooked something.