[Suggestion] Laptop vs MiniPC, Canada

My laptop died recently after many years of service and considering I never really carried it around much, I am thinking of getting a Mini PC to replace it. I would like to keep the total cost including the peripherals around 600-700$ CAD. The usage will be mainly for browsing and streaming TV shows and sports.

Any suggestions or good ressources to look at as I am not very familiar with Mini PCs and hardware specs in general or is a laptop generally better value?

Your listing computing demands are fairly light, and you should not need a dedicated GPU (which does help reduce cost). With that said, here's a good starting resource I dug up is:

The Best CPUs with Integrated Graphics (iGPU) | CGDirector

To step a little further than the above article, my recommendations would be:

• At least 8GB of memory/RAM
• An SSD
-- Some systems feature an SSD (e.g. 128GB, 240GB, 256GB) for use as the main drive and include an HDD for additional storage capacity. Getting one of these hybrid setups is fine. A system with only an HDD nowadays is very crippling.
• A 10th generation Intel Core CPU, AMD Ryzen 3000 series, or better/newer.
-- Technically, something older (e.g. 8th gen. Intel Core) should be okay. However, if you intend to keep the computer for more than a few years, investing in several year old tech is not a great value (unless it's substantially discounted versus the latest models).

After a few quick searches via Best Buy (CA) and Newegg (CA), the only item I came across that I would recommend as a long term replacement is:

Gigabyte U4 UD-50US823SO

To me, that's somewhat unexpected. Budget/lower end desktops appear to be not as affordable as they were.

Of course, you are probably aware of far more local retailers/resellers.

*** For desktops (except AIO (all-in-one)) models, I filtered the maximum price to $500 CAD to allow for monitor and peripheral budgeting.