My personal thoughts: While there is overhead indeed, it is almost neglectable, and I am not sure about calling it “too much”… especially when it comes to HAOS in VM.
Intel has CPU lines from atom celeron pentium i3 i5 i7 i9. And I run my HAOS in VM on a celeron box, along with various nas related services and OPNsense and Plex and a dozen of other stuff - some in container some in VM… all in one Celeron box.
And my Celeron box comfortably handles those just fine.
And here we are talking about an i5 … which is 3 product lines above what I have. So at this point, I’d say let’s not let the overhead get into the way of your VM or container considerations - focus on other aspects / other factors vs your need / you skillset.