Heading to college in a few months and need something reliable that won't struggle with 20 browser tabs + Word/Excel. Don't need gaming performance. Is 8GB RAM still okay in 2026 or should I stretch the budget for 16GB? Leaning toward something with a Ryzen 5 or Core i5.
16GB is worth it if you can swing it - RAM is usually soldered now so you can't upgrade later. For pure browser + Office, a Ryzen 5 with 16GB will feel noticeably smoother than 8GB.
Yeah that's the part that gets me, no upgrade path later. Decided to stretch for the 16GB version, thanks.
Also check if it's NVME or SATA storage, makes a bigger day-to-day difference than people expect.