Laptop Makers Are Determined to Promote You PCs With 8GB of RAM. Keep away from at All Prices

There’s a hell awaiting any poor saps attempting to purchase a laptop computer in 2026. When you’re requested to grasp the labyrinthine digital retailer pages from PC makers like Dell, Lenovo, and Microsoft itself, you’ll discover extra lower-cost PCs with conspicuous specs. More than ever, they’re proposing you should purchase a laptop computer that prices near $1,000 filled with solely 8GB of RAM.

Before Windows 11, within the pre-2020 period, 8GB of RAM would have been sufficient. It’s not the identical case in 2026. Laptop makers are being screwed at each ends by reminiscence costs, and so they’re passing prices on to customers. Some of the few “cheap” laptops obtainable this 12 months include bare-minimum RAM specs. So you must know if a typical PC person could make do with 8GB of reminiscence. I’m right here to inform you, it’s definitely doable. Is it the sleek expertise you actually need? No, under no circumstances.

I already reviewed the $900 model of the Dell XPS 13 with its 16GB of RAM. I loved the laptop computer fairly a bit. It grew to become a routine companion, and it’s one among my prime solutions for incoming college students who want a low-key back-to-school PC. But there’s a model of the XPS 13 that prices solely $700 ($600 with a scholar low cost) and comes with solely 8GB of single-channel LPDDR5x, 7467MT/s RAM.

It’s the one model of the laptop computer that may match the present worth of Apple’s $700 MacE book Neo. Apple pushed a laptop computer with solely 8GB of unified reminiscence (a shared reminiscence pool between the CPU and GPU). While that’s sufficient RAM for a Mac, Windows 11 suffers by that reminiscence spec. I spent the final two weeks with the Dell XPS 13 with 8GB of RAM as my primary day by day driver. If you need to know the way it went, I wrote, blogged, edited photographs, and accomplished all of the duties I must each day. The actual drawback is the small, unavoidable hiccups and slowdowns that flip a mean day right into a slog.

Today’s net browsers can simply eat up a ton of RAM by themselves. But if I’m operating Chrome with a dozen or extra tabs open, I nonetheless must have my Slack open to bombard my coworkers with drips and drabs of tech information. I might also need to have my Discord app open to—I’m positive my editor will take pleasure in listening to this—speak to my pals about something that doesn’t contain work. That stack of apps alone is sufficient to max out system reminiscence and trigger random seizing and different points when multitasking.

I might really feel this sluggishness take maintain throughout a mean work session. Pages that I count on to load shortly took seconds longer than they need to. Other apps loaded slower as effectively. This performed out in CPU benchmark assessments like Geekbench 7. The XPS 13 with 8GB of RAM carried out 9% worse than the 16GB mannequin. In Cinebench 2026, which assessments how effectively the CPU handles rendering duties, the laptop computer carried out 6% worse.

You don’t should look far to establish the wrongdoer. Microsoft designed lots of the menus and widgets of Windows 11 across the WebView2 engine. It’s based mostly on Chromium, the identical infrastructure that powers virtually each browser obtainable. It’s additionally laborious to gauge how a lot reminiscence Windows is definitely utilizing, for the reason that OS pre-loads reminiscence that’s not actively in use.

It’s not simply Microsoft consuming away at reminiscence. Dell additionally mechanically runs Dell Core Services and Dell Instrumentation, which handle the pre-installed safety and optimization apps like Dell SupportAssist. While the PC maker claims its apps don’t impression common CPU efficiency, they definitely eat on the reminiscence pool. You can delete a few of these apps and disable most apps on startup, nevertheless it received’t cease Windows 11 from tanking the PC’s efficiency.

Microsoft is working to repair these points, however that requires reinventing entire facets of the working system to rely much less on WebView2. So you find yourself in a scenario the place I can advocate the Dell XPS 13, however for a constant expertise it’s a must to settle for the necessity to spend extra. Qualcomm is engaged on new, low cost Snapdragon C chips for Windows 11 PCs that may probably come specced with solely 8GB of RAM. I’ve but to make use of any of these laptops, but when nothing adjustments with Windows 11, I doubt any laptop computer with minimal reminiscence may be price your time.