I just grabbed a Beelink S12 with N95 on amazon for pretty cheap with a coupon.
According to PassMark it is roughly equivalent in raw performance to the venerable old i7-2600 but with the better modern IGPU for video transcode tasks and it should be able to chug away at what I want it to do with less than 20w total system power.
Hopefully it means I can further downsize my main server to an i3 or pentium class CPU (went from dual Xeons, to a 6700k and looking to downsize further), and I’ll be able to decommission a couple of RPIs. to further clean up the rack.
There are also tons of Lenovo, Dell and HP mini PCs with 4th - 7th gen intel chips available on the used market for very little money, they are excellent homelab units too as they are reliable and spare parts are common on ebay if needed.