Sunspear

I second the miniPC suggestions, I have a Dell Optiplex 9020M (bought used for about €70 some two years ago), put an SSD in it plus 8 GB RAM, and it handles anything I throw at it (minus real-time video transcoding).

I use it in a headless way, so YMMV with the video displaying part, but I doubt a Pi would be stronger in this regard.

In any case, I think it's worth looking around before committing to a Pi, these micro pcs are quite convenient to carry/store/service, and they are self-contained unlike a Pi.

https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimicro-home-lab-revolution/

Here's the article that started me down this path ^

Edit: I see you're more into electronics, and I don't know much about GPIO on these machines, so the laptop may be the simplest solution then - in any case, it's nice to have options