The extra 8GB costs $200 on the XPS 13, which is much cheaper than replacing the laptop.
If you were lucky enough to have fallen asleep around this time in 2019 and had just woken up this week, you might think that not much has changed in the laptop space. You'll still see Dell's XPS 13 with 8GB of RAM (though not 4GB, yet), with Apple's cheapest MacBook offering the same amount. But once you see the price, you'd soon figure out that something went wrong.
Dell released its XPS 13 with 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage at $699 this year, a price that has since gone up by $100 for the same specs. The $699 starting price is still available, but limits you to just 256GB of storage. Meanwhile, Apple's MacBook Neo went from $599 to $699, along with a slew of other price increase in June.
TrendForce reckons that CPU, memory and storage now make up 68 percent of a mainstream laptop's bill of materials, and expects that manufacturers will cut memory to preserve their margins next year. So you can expect more 8GB machines, not fewer. But don't be tempted into buying one.
8GB of RAM was the unofficial baseline for laptops until 2024. That May, Microsoft launched the Copilot+ PC program and issued a diktat that 16GB was now the minimum for any laptop sold under the label. That October, Apple doubled the base MacBook Air's RAM from 8GB to 16GB without increasing its $999 price tag.
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