Microsoft’s latest 8GB Surface Laptop appears to be highly limited by its reduced memory pool, causing it to freeze whenever you saturate it. According to The Verge, which has tested the machine, while the 8GB Surface is fine for basic web browsing or video streaming, loading it with multiple tasks causes it to hang periodically.
Introduced by Microsoft last month, the Surface Laptop 13in 8GB was an attempt to lower the lineup’s entry price amid the ongoing memory shortage. By dropping the base model from 16GB to 8GB of RAM, Microsoft was able to offer an option at $949 instead of $1,149, although this was still $50 more expensive than the pre-shortage 16GB model. While a $200 saving may sound enticing, especially since the Snapdragon X Plus processor and 256GB storage remain identical, it looks as though your day-to-day experience will suffer significantly.
During its review, The Verge found that Windows Task Manager reported 4.2GB of memory usage even after a fresh restart with few startup applications enabled. In other words, Windows 11 alone consumes over half the available memory. During normal use, the system frequently consumed around 6.7GB of the available 7.6GB.
While the system worked fine when lightly loaded, whenever the reviewer tried multitasking with several apps open, Windows began to hang for a few seconds. And we’re not talking about heavy workloads such as video editing here – just opening a bunch of Chrome tabs, along with a video call, plus Slack and Signal in the background, was enough for the 8GB pool to become a bottleneck.
The Verge noted that limiting Chrome to six tabs while closing the Signal chat app kept memory usage at about 5.5GB, indicating that the machine is perfectly usable for light users. However, if you tend to load a bunch of apps at the same time, you would be better off with the 16GB model. This is an important question to ask yourself before pressing the buy button, since Surface Laptops use soldered LPDDR5X memory that can’t be upgraded.
RAM constraints aside, the laptop itself received praise for its build quality, tactile keyboard, and great trackpad. The webcam is also reportedly sharp and clear, and the battery can last for 10 hours. In other words, the laptop is fine overall, but 8GB of memory isn’t enough for basic multitasking any more.
