It starts with a creeping sense of digital claustrophobia. You’re not a video editor juggling multi-terabyte files, nor are you running an AI research lab out of your studio apartment. No, you’re just an ordinary Windows laptop user with a desk plant and a bruising collection of browser tabs—plus, of course, the everyday assortment of Slack pings, occasional spreadsheet marathons, and the eternal hum of Spotify pouring out productivity playlists. You’ve heeded the sacred advice of reviewers everywhere: 16GB of RAM, they said. That’s the Goldilocks zone. Or at least, it used to be.
In the halcyon days of 2012, 16GB of memory was the badge of future-proofing. You could operate virtually guilt-free, knowing your system had the muscle for whatever Windows threw its way. Fast forward a decade, though, and your daily digital diet has ballooned. Every application out there seems to have acquired a taste for memory bloat: Slack, Wordpress, Discord, and even good ol’ Outlook, each one eager to gobble up a gigabyte or three—sometimes for no discernible reason, other than "being helpful."
For the casual multitasker or the ambitious tab hoarder, what once felt lavish is now, at best, the barest minimum. It's not about whether your PC runs—it's about that constant background anxiety as your RAM meter hovers at 95%, threatening to spill over the edge when you have the audacity to open Photoshop, or (heaven help you) attempt some light video editing.
But here’s the kicker: The leap up to 32GB of RAM feels like overkill for most mortal use cases. Unless your full-time job is virtual machine wrangling or you genuinely believe Chrome will one day eat all of your RAM, those extra gigs go to waste. The gap between 16GB and 32GB is as real as it is infuriating. What’s missing, it turns out, is a Goldilocks solution: that oft-overlooked 24GB sweet spot.
Apple can afford to do this because, frankly, they control everything. The chips, the assembly, the pricing, and the narrative. When you’re inside the walled garden, customization options spring up solely at the discretion of Cupertino. But what about the wild, wild world of Windows laptops?
Here, things get patchier. A 24GB RAM configuration on a Windows PC is the unicorn of laptop specs, rarely sighted and often the stuff of rumors. More often, you’re forced into a binary: 16GB or 32GB, nothing in-between. If you don’t want to feel shortchanged, you shell out for 32GB—but spend your days eyeing your unused memory with buyer’s remorse. If you stick with 16GB, you’re haunted by Chrome’s hunger and the knowledge that, come 2026, your laptop may feel as cramped as a phone with 1GB RAM in the 4G era.
And when soldered RAM entered the fray a few years ago, the idea of swapping out sticks or adding just a bit more yourself became an endangered practice. Suddenly, your choices are defined the moment you click "buy." One memory size—or the other. Laptop makers, historically, haven’t seen enough market pressure to offer a third, middle-way configuration, so they simply don’t.
But the times, they are a-changing. Apps bloat, workflows diversify, and AI begins to graze more regularly on our RAM pastures. A 24GB option starts to look less like an extravagance, and more like a necessity.
The problem compounds if you have any interest in multitasking. Video calling on Teams, background OneDrive syncs, and the inexorable sprawl of browser tabs create a perfect storm. Swap files trigger, performance tanks, and everything slows to a crawl. All you wanted was to check your email while listening to Tame Impala and updating a spreadsheet. Now your laptop fan sounds like a jet engine announcing its frustration.
Already, those eyeing "AI laptops" will notice 16GB of RAM is listed as the minimum, not recommended. The same is true for more complex programming workflows, design software, and almost anything that straddles between productivity and creative work. There’s a silent pressure pushing everyone off the comfortable plateau of 16GB, yet precious little support for the in-between.
But the thin-and-light mania of ultrabooks has had a deeply negative side effect: soldered memory. In an effort to shave off millimeters and build slimmer, more portable devices, laptop manufacturers have all but banished user-replaceable RAM from their top-tier models. When Apple made this move, rivals soon followed for fear of appearing "old-fashioned." Now, even premium Windows laptops—your Surface line, your HP Spectres, your Dell XPSes—often come sealed, RAM locked to the board, and your fate decided at purchase.
This shift has sucked much of the joy from the incremental upgrader—the ones who waited for Black Friday deals and poked around in BIOS menus on a slow Saturday afternoon. It makes your initial choice not only vital, but irreversible.
Consider the Surface Laptop 7, which forced buyers to weigh a full £400 premium for the privilege of doubling their RAM—even if they didn’t need double, just a little bit more. When notebook makers won’t sell you "just" the memory you need, every purchase feels like wrestling with a bundle you can’t break up.
Apple, infamously, applies its own form of financial pressure (the "Apple Tax"), but it may be more palatable to pay for 24GB—right between the chasm of too little and too much.
It’s not only about splitting the difference. It’s a reflection of how most people now work—multitasking across resource-hungry apps, dabbling in creative work, maybe firing up the occasional virtual machine or AI-powered app, without running hundreds of Chrome tabs lined up like cars on the M25.
24GB grants breathing room. It future-proofs your laptop, making slowing down a late-game event, not a soon-to-be inevitability. And frankly, it just feels right—especially when those extra eight gigs can spare you hundreds in unnecessary upsells.
There’s also practicality. Many memory modules (think DDR4 and DDR5) are available in both 8GB and 16GB sizes. With two slots (a dying breed, but not extinct), it’s easy to spec a laptop to 24GB. But doing so requires manufacturers to enable such offers, or, at the very least, stop soldering both sticks directly to the motherboard.
But as savvy consumers demand more nuanced choices, and as the upper-middle class of user workloads explodes, retailers have a golden opportunity. Offer 24GB as the middle tier, the default choice for those who see 16GB as tight but 32GB as a splurge. Who would benefit? Creators, developers, students, even office workers hedging against the ever-growing appetites of modern apps.
In rare configurations where only one slot is soldered and the other is free, bumping up to 24GB is sometimes possible. But those models are rare enough to be newsworthy when they appear. For most, you’re stuck choosing between builder’s remorse and upgrade anxiety—with very little room for middle-ground satisfaction.
When resources run short, you’ll feel it in slowdowns, stutters, and weird anomalies—apps refusing to launch, browser tabs vanishing and needing to reload, and the kind of vague digital irritability that sends you hunting for Chrome’s hidden memory stats at 2AM.
The reality is clear: No matter how efficient, there really is no substitute for just having more RAM, especially as software bloat becomes the norm and memory-guzzling AI workloads loom on the horizon.
But every year, workloads creep up. Software gets "smarter," often in ways that mean "uses more memory." If a single poorly behaved browser extension or an AI sidekick tips you over the edge, you're one spinning-SSD icon away from regretting your decision.
Eventually, the dam could break: one big player makes it a signature selling point, and the rest must follow. Given the way Apple has once again led the field here, it’s not a stretch to predict that others may soon discover that not everyone wants an all-or-nothing approach to laptop optimization.
It’s not about giving every consumer every possible option—but about recognizing that the modern digital lifestyle has evolved. The person who preps multi-gig video projects in the morning and sits through Zoom meetings in the afternoon doesn’t want to pay a premium for memory that will mostly sit idle. But they also can’t afford to risk stutter and lag every time Microsoft rolls out a shiny new AI widget.
If soldered memory is the only game in town (which it often is), grit your teeth and think a couple of years ahead. The cost may sting now, but nothing matches the frustration of having a laptop that gasps for air under your daily load. If you can, let manufacturers know—by letter, by social media, by skywriting—that the 24GB option matters, and that you’re ready to vote with your wallet.
Finally (and this is the radical option): keep an eye on up-and-coming PC makers, boutique brands, and even the DIY laptop movement. The more we reward companies willing to break the mold, the sooner we’ll see 24GB become as routine as the 256GB SSD or the backlit keyboard.
For now, 24GB is the Goldilocks configuration that makes sense. Not too little. Not too much. Just right—if only anyone would let you buy it.
Will Windows OEMs catch the hint and offer what users clearly want? Time will tell. Until then, may your browser tabs be ever in your favor, your swap files small, and your laptop fans silent.
Source: Windows Central I don’t need 32GB of RAM in my laptop, but 16GB just isn’t enough — 24GB is the new sweet spot, and Windows OEMs need to catch up
The RAM Squeeze: When "Just Enough" Isn’t Enough
In the halcyon days of 2012, 16GB of memory was the badge of future-proofing. You could operate virtually guilt-free, knowing your system had the muscle for whatever Windows threw its way. Fast forward a decade, though, and your daily digital diet has ballooned. Every application out there seems to have acquired a taste for memory bloat: Slack, Wordpress, Discord, and even good ol’ Outlook, each one eager to gobble up a gigabyte or three—sometimes for no discernible reason, other than "being helpful."For the casual multitasker or the ambitious tab hoarder, what once felt lavish is now, at best, the barest minimum. It's not about whether your PC runs—it's about that constant background anxiety as your RAM meter hovers at 95%, threatening to spill over the edge when you have the audacity to open Photoshop, or (heaven help you) attempt some light video editing.
But here’s the kicker: The leap up to 32GB of RAM feels like overkill for most mortal use cases. Unless your full-time job is virtual machine wrangling or you genuinely believe Chrome will one day eat all of your RAM, those extra gigs go to waste. The gap between 16GB and 32GB is as real as it is infuriating. What’s missing, it turns out, is a Goldilocks solution: that oft-overlooked 24GB sweet spot.
The Mac Factor: Customization Envy and Apple's RAM Dilemma
Let’s pull up the inevitable comparison with Apple devices, where things get interesting. Apple, with their signature control-freak energy, lets buyers spec their Macs with 8, 16, 24, or even 32GB of RAM. That 24GB option isn’t just an arbitrary number—it’s a direct response to users who need more than 16GB, but would rather spend their extra cash on a vacation instead of an unused slab of memory silicon.Apple can afford to do this because, frankly, they control everything. The chips, the assembly, the pricing, and the narrative. When you’re inside the walled garden, customization options spring up solely at the discretion of Cupertino. But what about the wild, wild world of Windows laptops?
Here, things get patchier. A 24GB RAM configuration on a Windows PC is the unicorn of laptop specs, rarely sighted and often the stuff of rumors. More often, you’re forced into a binary: 16GB or 32GB, nothing in-between. If you don’t want to feel shortchanged, you shell out for 32GB—but spend your days eyeing your unused memory with buyer’s remorse. If you stick with 16GB, you’re haunted by Chrome’s hunger and the knowledge that, come 2026, your laptop may feel as cramped as a phone with 1GB RAM in the 4G era.
Why Are Windows Laptops So Rigid with RAM?
The answer is an infuriating blend of economics, engineering, and ecosystem inertia. Unlike Apple, most Windows laptop makers assemble their machines from an array of off-the-shelf parts. Their supply chains are built around volume and cost effectiveness, not surgical precision or custom memory modules. RAM sticks come in nice, neat packages: 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB per module. Want to go off-menu with 12GB or 24GB? That usually means mixing and matching, or compromising on performance and dual-channel memory speed.And when soldered RAM entered the fray a few years ago, the idea of swapping out sticks or adding just a bit more yourself became an endangered practice. Suddenly, your choices are defined the moment you click "buy." One memory size—or the other. Laptop makers, historically, haven’t seen enough market pressure to offer a third, middle-way configuration, so they simply don’t.
But the times, they are a-changing. Apps bloat, workflows diversify, and AI begins to graze more regularly on our RAM pastures. A 24GB option starts to look less like an extravagance, and more like a necessity.
Real-World RAM Rage: What Does 16GB Actually Get You Now?
If you run a Windows laptop on 16GB of RAM today, let’s play a little game of "Where did my memory go?" Start with your operating system: Windows 11, for all its visual niceties, will eat up 2-4GB right out of the gate. Throw in a handful of apps—Telegram, Slack, Outlook, Word, Chrome, Spotify—and it’s not long before you’re staring down single-digit megabytes of free memory.The problem compounds if you have any interest in multitasking. Video calling on Teams, background OneDrive syncs, and the inexorable sprawl of browser tabs create a perfect storm. Swap files trigger, performance tanks, and everything slows to a crawl. All you wanted was to check your email while listening to Tame Impala and updating a spreadsheet. Now your laptop fan sounds like a jet engine announcing its frustration.
AI On The Desktop: RAM’s New Reason for Being
Suddenly, a new digital force has entered the ring. It calls itself Artificial Intelligence, and it’s ready to demand your storage, your processing, and—most hungrily of all—your RAM. Microsoft’s forays into onboard AI with things like Copilot+ and other intelligent assistant features are only the beginning. AI-enhanced applications, from productivity to creativity tools, are already dabbling with local inference. If any of those tools want to avoid pinging the cloud every time you want to summarize an email or edit an image, they’ll want a heaping serving of RAM.Already, those eyeing "AI laptops" will notice 16GB of RAM is listed as the minimum, not recommended. The same is true for more complex programming workflows, design software, and almost anything that straddles between productivity and creative work. There’s a silent pressure pushing everyone off the comfortable plateau of 16GB, yet precious little support for the in-between.
The Soldered Scarcity: Why Upgradability Is Vanishing (and Why It Matters)
Let’s dwell, briefly, on the ghost of upgradability past. Once, RAM was the ultimate cheat code for extending a laptop’s lifespan. Crack open the back, unclip the old, pop in the new. For a while, if you wanted 24GB, you could just mix an 8GB stick with a 16GB stick and pat yourself on the back (as long as your motherboard played nice and supported it).But the thin-and-light mania of ultrabooks has had a deeply negative side effect: soldered memory. In an effort to shave off millimeters and build slimmer, more portable devices, laptop manufacturers have all but banished user-replaceable RAM from their top-tier models. When Apple made this move, rivals soon followed for fear of appearing "old-fashioned." Now, even premium Windows laptops—your Surface line, your HP Spectres, your Dell XPSes—often come sealed, RAM locked to the board, and your fate decided at purchase.
This shift has sucked much of the joy from the incremental upgrader—the ones who waited for Black Friday deals and poked around in BIOS menus on a slow Saturday afternoon. It makes your initial choice not only vital, but irreversible.
Laptop Pricing: The RAM Tax
There’s a subtle, almost diabolical calculus to laptop upgrades. Jumping from 16GB to 32GB on a Windows laptop is rarely just the cost of memory—often, it comes bundled with generational jumps in storage, CPU, and color choices. The result? Steep upgrade penalties that can stretch into several hundred dollars (or pounds, or euros).Consider the Surface Laptop 7, which forced buyers to weigh a full £400 premium for the privilege of doubling their RAM—even if they didn’t need double, just a little bit more. When notebook makers won’t sell you "just" the memory you need, every purchase feels like wrestling with a bundle you can’t break up.
Apple, infamously, applies its own form of financial pressure (the "Apple Tax"), but it may be more palatable to pay for 24GB—right between the chasm of too little and too much.
The Case for 24GB: More Than a Compromise
Let’s make an unabashed case for the new, neglected champion: 24GB of RAM.It’s not only about splitting the difference. It’s a reflection of how most people now work—multitasking across resource-hungry apps, dabbling in creative work, maybe firing up the occasional virtual machine or AI-powered app, without running hundreds of Chrome tabs lined up like cars on the M25.
24GB grants breathing room. It future-proofs your laptop, making slowing down a late-game event, not a soon-to-be inevitability. And frankly, it just feels right—especially when those extra eight gigs can spare you hundreds in unnecessary upsells.
There’s also practicality. Many memory modules (think DDR4 and DDR5) are available in both 8GB and 16GB sizes. With two slots (a dying breed, but not extinct), it’s easy to spec a laptop to 24GB. But doing so requires manufacturers to enable such offers, or, at the very least, stop soldering both sticks directly to the motherboard.
OEMs: Are You Listening? (Spoiler: You Should Be)
So what’s stopping Windows laptop makers from embracing the glorious middle ground? The inertia of old habits and the simplicity of fewer configurations certainly play a part. Fewer SKUs mean fewer headaches for inventory and support. And there may even be a whiff of planned obsolescence—if you’re pressed into buying more than you need, or forced to upgrade your entire laptop sooner, that’s sweet music for the bottom line.But as savvy consumers demand more nuanced choices, and as the upper-middle class of user workloads explodes, retailers have a golden opportunity. Offer 24GB as the middle tier, the default choice for those who see 16GB as tight but 32GB as a splurge. Who would benefit? Creators, developers, students, even office workers hedging against the ever-growing appetites of modern apps.
DIYers and the Shrinking Hack Zone
Old-school tinkerers may pine for the days when you could buy the cheapest configuration and juice it up yourself. Today, that’s an option mostly reserved for chunky gaming laptops or business workhorses, not sleek ultrabooks. The solder-and-seal era is in full swing—and unless there’s a populist backlash (fueled by the Right to Repair movement), the days of easy RAM upgrades are numbered.In rare configurations where only one slot is soldered and the other is free, bumping up to 24GB is sometimes possible. But those models are rare enough to be newsworthy when they appear. For most, you’re stuck choosing between builder’s remorse and upgrade anxiety—with very little room for middle-ground satisfaction.
Windows Memory Management: Myth, Magic, and Reality
Some defenders of the status quo will argue: "But modern memory management is so good, you don’t need more than 16GB for normal work!" There’s limited truth to this. Windows is clever about juggling memory, paging idle apps to disk and using what it has aggressively for caching. But swapping to SSD, while better than spinning drives of yore, is still far slower than having enough RAM in the first place.When resources run short, you’ll feel it in slowdowns, stutters, and weird anomalies—apps refusing to launch, browser tabs vanishing and needing to reload, and the kind of vague digital irritability that sends you hunting for Chrome’s hidden memory stats at 2AM.
The reality is clear: No matter how efficient, there really is no substitute for just having more RAM, especially as software bloat becomes the norm and memory-guzzling AI workloads loom on the horizon.
What Happens If You Just... Settle for 16GB?
There’s always the stoic option: grit your teeth, close a few browser tabs, and accept an occasional dip into swap hell. If your needs rarely crest the 13-14GB mark, you could limp along for another couple of years—especially if you're disciplined about background apps and aren't moonlighting as a Blender hobbyist.But every year, workloads creep up. Software gets "smarter," often in ways that mean "uses more memory." If a single poorly behaved browser extension or an AI sidekick tips you over the edge, you're one spinning-SSD icon away from regretting your decision.
The 24GB RAM Option: Wishful Thinking, or Next Industry Standard?
The market has a habit of ignoring the middle option—until suddenly, it doesn’t. As more professionals and power users recognize the utility of 24GB, and as the price of memory falls, laptop sellers might just start to take notice. The few laptops (especially in the gaming or workstation category) that do offer this configuration gain a vocal fanbase.Eventually, the dam could break: one big player makes it a signature selling point, and the rest must follow. Given the way Apple has once again led the field here, it’s not a stretch to predict that others may soon discover that not everyone wants an all-or-nothing approach to laptop optimization.
It’s not about giving every consumer every possible option—but about recognizing that the modern digital lifestyle has evolved. The person who preps multi-gig video projects in the morning and sits through Zoom meetings in the afternoon doesn’t want to pay a premium for memory that will mostly sit idle. But they also can’t afford to risk stutter and lag every time Microsoft rolls out a shiny new AI widget.
Closing the Memory Gap: What You Can Do (For Now)
If you’re shopping for your next Windows laptop today, here’s the unfortunate truth: unless you hunt carefully, your choices are limited. If upgradability is essential, look for those rare models with replaceable RAM. That way, you can try out 16GB and see if you really need more—without paying a built-in premium upfront.If soldered memory is the only game in town (which it often is), grit your teeth and think a couple of years ahead. The cost may sting now, but nothing matches the frustration of having a laptop that gasps for air under your daily load. If you can, let manufacturers know—by letter, by social media, by skywriting—that the 24GB option matters, and that you’re ready to vote with your wallet.
Finally (and this is the radical option): keep an eye on up-and-coming PC makers, boutique brands, and even the DIY laptop movement. The more we reward companies willing to break the mold, the sooner we’ll see 24GB become as routine as the 256GB SSD or the backlit keyboard.
The Future of RAM: More Than Just a Number
In the end, RAM is less about cold gigabyte statistics than it is about your quality of experience—about how many ideas, projects, meetings, and distractions you can juggle without the machine beneath you collapsing in protest. While tech progresses and memories (both personal and digital) expand, it’s clear that the old rules no longer apply. As AI and ever-fatter software elbow their way onto your desktop, the next RAM sweet spot will keep moving.For now, 24GB is the Goldilocks configuration that makes sense. Not too little. Not too much. Just right—if only anyone would let you buy it.
Will Windows OEMs catch the hint and offer what users clearly want? Time will tell. Until then, may your browser tabs be ever in your favor, your swap files small, and your laptop fans silent.
Source: Windows Central I don’t need 32GB of RAM in my laptop, but 16GB just isn’t enough — 24GB is the new sweet spot, and Windows OEMs need to catch up
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