You want to work with 6k or 8k so you can do crops and still output 4k or 6k. This means shorter productions.

8k also future-proofs the footage. In the future we'll be wanting more than 8k for this.

My point stands: Very few people edit 8K video, yet it is a popular benchmark.

It’s used because it’s a consistent workload to ensure a fair comparison, and long enough to make sure the performance seen is not just burst. Someone who plays games, edits smaller videos or photos all day, uses heavy web apps, compiles code, etc., can apply the result of a large video render to their purchase decision even though their work doesn’t aggressively use the battery as fast as possible.

Hopefully that helps. In your original example, you cited someone editing FHD doing fine with a five year old laptop, and now we’ve talked about why larger formats are used, and why someone upgrading a laptop would look at a benchmark of an intensive process, even if they themself don’t plan to run that specific process.

4 years ago “why do we care about 4K” 8 years ago “why do we care about 1080p” etc...

We'll see about that (with respect to pixel density and efficiency). I'm typing this on a 4k xps 15, and while the display is great, the battery cost is extreme. There would be no meaningful advantage in an 8k-display of the same form factor, so there is far, far less incentive for manufacturers to race to 8k.

there will be 8k tvs, sure, but lets be real - the step to 1080p was massive, the step to 4k already couldn't fit in those shoes.

> the step to 1080p was massive,

the step to 1080p I'd say that, for some, could have been seen even as a downgrade. It was possible to use 1600x1200 back in the late 90s and early 2000s, with CRTs. The concept of "high definition" was already known by PC users (gamers and professionals, that is)

4k is a nice upgrade, and I'd say that many professionals already were using it with proper monitors

8k eeh, we'll get there

We're talking about video editing, not screen resolutions.

The step to 1080p wasn't from 1600x1200, it was from PAL/NTSC (640x400 or 720x576). It was the biggest step by far.

I think diminishing returns will stop 8k from getting mass adoption.

Same thing happened to audio players with "better than CD quality". They never caught on because there was no need.

65" 4K TVs start at 74 Watts (max is 271 Watts). 65" 8K TVs start at 182 Watts and go all the way to 408 Watts. For what? An improvement you won't notice unless you get off the sofa?