Question Laptop RAM is soldered in --- is 8GB enough ?

[TODDTH]

I recently, this past month, purchased a Lenovo YOGA 7 laptop for my wife. Her use of this will be web-surfing, email, facebook, word, excel, and that is about it. The laptop was 1/3 off on sale and for the screen quality and options it seemed a pretty good deal. I'm actually fairly impressed with the build quality over the plastic cheap feel of most less expensive laptops these days.

It comes with 8 GB RAM and I thought for her use it should be fine. Just starting to set it up for use and noticed that 8 GB becomes 4.7 GB due to "hardware reserved" ram and not even sure why that much would be taken away. Then as soon as you open edge or any web browser, RAM usage goes to 80-90%. (of the 4.7).
So now I'm thinking maybe 8 is really to little these days but it turns out the RAM is board-soldered so is not upgradable.
That took me by surprise, I've not seen a laptop I couldn't upgrade the RAM on in a long time and thought the Yoga was at the better end of build quality.

So the question at the end of that ramble, is whether or not 8 GB is really enough for her use and would you worry about it showing 88% used on web browsing?

I have a few days I could still take it back to Best Buy and do something else, but it would involve at least $100 more. That's an HP on sale this weekend which probably will have that same cheapy feel they all seem to these days.

Any thoughts welcome and appreciated.

 

[CountMike]

I recently, this past month, purchased a Lenovo YOGA 7 laptop for my wife. Her use of this will be web-surfing, email, facebook, word, excel, and that is about it. The laptop was 1/3 off on sale and for the screen quality and options it seemed a pretty good deal. I'm actually fairly impressed with the build quality over the plastic cheap feel of most less expensive laptops these days.
It comes with 8 GB RAM and I thought for her use it should be fine. Just starting to set it up for use and noticed that 8 GB becomes 4.7 GB due to "hardware reserved" ram and not even sure why that much would be taken away. Then as soon as you open edge or any web browser, RAM usage goes to 80-90%. (of the 4.7).
So now I'm thinking maybe 8 is really to little these days but it turns out the RAM is board soldiered. IE not upgradable.
That took me by surprise, I've not seem a laptop I couldn't change memory out on in a long time and thought the Yoga was on the better end of build quality.

So the question at the end of that ramble, is whether or not 8 GB is really enough for her use and would you worry about it showing 88% used on web browsing?

I have a few days I could still take it back to Best Buy and do something else, but it would involve at least $100 more. That's an HP on sale this weekend which probably will have that same cheapy feel they all seem to these days.

Any thoughts welcome and appreciated.

As long as it's not 100% usage and out of memory warnings there are no problems, Windows 10 and 11 dynamically adjust memory usage, compacting part of it and write overflow to disk, that might slow down everything a bit but as long there is enough free space on disk shouldn't make much difference.

 

[USAFRet]

For that stated use, 8GB is fine.

My spouses system is almost identical use case.
8GB RAM, i3-8100, 500GB SATA III SSD.

No issues with performance.

 

[TODDTH]

As long as it's not 100% usage and out of memory warnings there are no problems, Windows 10 and 11 dynamically adjust memory usage, compacting part of it and write overflow to disk, that might slow down everything a bit but as long there is enough free space on disk shouldn't make much difference.

For that stated use, 8GB is fine.

My spouses system is almost identical use case.
8GB RAM, i3-8100, 500GB SATA III SSD.

No issues with performance.

Thanks to both of you.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Her use of this will be web-surfing, email, facebook, word, excel, and that is about it.
Just starting to set it up for use and noticed that 8 GB becomes 4.7 GB due to "hardware reserved" ram and not even sure why that much would be taken away.
Any thoughts welcome and appreciated.

You may want to limit amount of system ram reserved for integrated graphics in BIOS.
Those tasks do not require gigabytes of memory reserved to iGPU.
64MB should be enough.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

8GB is "enough" for her usage now, however it's the bare minimum.

If you are in the return/exchange window and willing to spend a bit more for a machine with upgradeable and more RAM, I would do so.

 

[Bob.B]

I recently, this past month, purchased a Lenovo YOGA 7 laptop for my wife. Her use of this will be web-surfing, email, facebook, word, excel, and that is about it. The laptop was 1/3 off on sale and for the screen quality and options it seemed a pretty good deal. I'm actually fairly impressed with the build quality over the plastic cheap feel of most less expensive laptops these days.

It comes with 8 GB RAM and I thought for her use it should be fine. Just starting to set it up for use and noticed that 8 GB becomes 4.7 GB due to "hardware reserved" ram and not even sure why that much would be taken away. Then as soon as you open edge or any web browser, RAM usage goes to 80-90%. (of the 4.7).
So now I'm thinking maybe 8 is really to little these days but it turns out the RAM is board-soldered so is not upgradable.
That took me by surprise, I've not seen a laptop I couldn't upgrade the RAM on in a long time and thought the Yoga was at the better end of build quality.

So the question at the end of that ramble, is whether or not 8 GB is really enough for her use and would you worry about it showing 88% used on web browsing?

I have a few days I could still take it back to Best Buy and do something else, but it would involve at least $100 more. That's an HP on sale this weekend which probably will have that same cheapy feel they all seem to these days.

Any thoughts welcome and appreciated.

What is the complete model number of this pc?
Perhaps pick around the edges a little and skinny down unneeded startup stuff.

 

[Misgar]

4.7GB of Hardware Reserved memory is far too high and warrants investigation. I wouldn't be happy if it exceeded 512MB on any of my laptops.
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/hardware-reserved-memory-too-high

I've just booted up an old Lenovo Yoga 500 laptop which I upgraded to 8GB RAM (it has a SODIMM socket) and there's only 95MB of Hardware Reserved memory.

I was surprised at just how low Hardware Reserved was at only 95MB, but perhaps I set the amount of reserved RAM for the graphics processor to 64MB or thereabouts in the BIOS, when the laptop was still using a 4GB SODIMM.

With Windows 10 Pro installed, memory allocation in the Yoga 500 is as follows, with the system idling and no big programs loaded:-

Hardware Reserved 95MB
In Use 3176MB
Modified 150MB
Standby 4608MB
Free 1MB

My latest laptop has 16GB soldered in with no way to add more memory. It's cheaper for the manufacturer to leave out SODIMM sockets and they can maximise profits by charging significantly more for higher RAM capacities.