Even Microsoft couldn’t make Windows 11 work well on 8GB of RAM

Last year, Microsoft’s 13-inch Surface Laptop quickly became one of my favorite thin-and-light Windows notebooks. At $900, it was easy to recommend to anyone wanting MacBook Air–like build quality and battery life on Windows — I even convinced my sister to buy one on sale. Even Microsoft couldn’t make Windows 11 work well on 8GB of RAM The new entry-level Surface Laptop 13-inch is last year’s same great hardware with less memory and a higher price. But that was last year. This year, thanks to RAMageddon, that same laptop costs $950, and now that price gets you half as much RAM — just 8GB. It’s the same great hardware on the outside, but it’s not the same laptop on the inside. It’s been a long time since we tested a Windows laptop with so little RAM. We’ve been saying for years that 8GB isn’t enough. But this is Microsoft’s laptop, and Windows 11 is Microsoft’s operating system. Maybe it’ll be good enough. It’s not. The Good - Same great build, hardware, and battery life as last year The Bad - 8GB of RAM on Windows 11 isn’t enough - Costs more than last year’s model, and with worse specs - 256GB of storage feels more limiting now that SSD prices are through the roof All the good things I wrote about last year’s hardware still ring true: The keyboard is nice and tactile, the trackpad is great (only outdone by ones that allow you to click corner-to-corner), the webcam is sharp and clear, and the battery goes and goes — easily lasting 10 hours. The processor, an eight-core Snapdragon X Plus, is nearly identical to the one in the Surface Laptop I reviewed last year. In fact, it has a slightly faster boost speed. In last year’s Surface Laptop, it was a solid performer and could even handle light photo editing in Lightroom Classic. But last year’s model had 16GB of RAM. It turns out that makes a big difference. Component report card - Screen: B - Webcam: B - Keyboard: B - Trackpad: B - Port selection: C - Speakers: C - Number of ugly stickers to remove: 0 While the 8GB Surface was usually fine for basic web browsing or video streaming, I occasionally nudged it a bit too far in everyday use. I was on a Microsoft Teams call (using the app, not a browser) when the host streamed a brief video, which made the whole laptop hang for several seconds. At the time, I had about 10 Chrome tabs open across two desktops, alongside Slack and Signal — not an obscene level of multitasking. And we didn’t even have our webcams on. The Surface Laptop would hang for a few seconds like this several times a day, even when I thought I wasn’t pushing it too hard. I’ve had these temporary freezes while just working in some Google Docs — no Teams call running or anything streaming in the background. It’s only a couple times a day on average, but that’s still too often. Keeping the Performance tab open in Task Manager showed I was almost always using around 6.7GB of the available 7.6GB of available memory. After a fresh reboot with bare minimum startup apps running, Windows was us…