Info Soldered RAM is becomingly increasing common in laptops, beware

[mikeymikec]

I'm kicking myself for not examining the specs of the Lenovo V15 G4 laptop more carefully, but I've just discovered that despite the fact that all three previous generations of Lenovo V15 laptops had upgradable RAM, the G4 does not. They're selling 15" screen Ryzen 3/5 laptops with 8GB DDR5 soldered RAM and no SO-DIMM slot.

I guess I should have seen it coming, because for example over the years the standard 2 slots gave way to 1 slot (with or without soldered RAM), but my impression was that entirely soldered RAM in PC laptops was almost exclusively the domain of super-cheap laptops.

The mind boggles that humanity is still making landfill fodder, but here we are. Like with the last 15" screen laptop that surprised me by having no SO-DIMM slots, I bet these DDR5 laptops have plenty of room internally to include such slots, but the manufacturers are like, "nah".

I'm sure I'll find another manufacturer that will sell a reasonably-spec'd laptop, but it's annoying having to get used to the foibles of a different manufacturer and being surprised by things that aren't on the specs, like "oops, no touchpad driver available" or "the touchpad driver for this laptop doesn't have half the usual settings".

 

[Justinus]

Lenovo usually clearly states when the ram is soldered and LPDDR5/X cannot be combined with sodimms. Also, soldered LPDDR5/X is all over the place, it is an easy way to get higher performance in a laptop. You'll find it used in high end laptops as well as mid range and low end. Until CAMM begins adoption in laptops, soldering is the only way to get higher speed ram.

 

[mikeymikec]

@Justinus IMO it's an *odd* choice to make to solder as little as 8GB RAM in a Windows laptop based on your logic, given that if the prospective buyer is satisfied that that amount should be sufficient at least in the short term, are they really looking at the best performance RAM (4800Mhz according to my supplier in this case, not exactly pulling out all the stops, is it)?

I'd understand the logic of let's say a gamer laptop with oodles of RAM but in order to achieve the best RAM performance possible it comes with the downside that it's soldered. However, the laptops I'm talking about are for basic needs, and RAM performance never has been relevant in that arena AFAIK.

 

[mindless1]

I can appreciate both sides of it, and yes if it didn't have any slot(s) then I'd rather at least 16GB.

However I could get along fine with 8GB for "basic needs" on a laptop, especially one with a 15" screen which I'd not want to use for long, but if I were a student and it was my only system in a dorm, using it with a larger monitor too, yeah that would be limiting.

 

[manly]

I thought it was more about form factor than lowest BoM? I agree it doesn't belong on any mainstream 15" laptop, unless you're talking about LG Gram/MacBook Air designs.

No reason to kick yourself, just return it to the retailer stat.

 

[mindless1]

Wait. This 15" laptop has only 1080p screen?

I'd rather drop to 4GB if it meant a higher res screen than that low res crap. IMO no point in buying a new laptop if it's only got 1080p unless it's smaller than 13" screen, SUPER-portable... unless of course, you have no laptop and it's really cheap.

 

[dr1337]

I'd rather drop to 4GB

I find it completely impossible to believe you can't see the difference between 60hz and 120hz yet the difference in resolution having 1080p at 15", let alone 21" like most monitors out there, is too extreme for you. And seeing as how my 16gb lenovo can really start to chug ram (granted I have 4gb set in BIOS for the IGPU), idk how you could possibly be resolution oriented and also somehow not think ram is useful.

IDK what the OP paid for their soldered RAM laptop, but I copped an ideapad with an RTX gpu over a year ago for ~$550 shipped. Its a creaky heavy brick of a laptop so IMO a brand new 8gb thin and light laptop for ~$500 isn't completely unreasonable. Form factors mean things like socketable ram aren't feasible, just like how apple literally can't put RAM/M2 sockets in current macbooks without having to make them thicker, give them a hump, or make them wedge shaped like past models. Same reason why cellphones don't have sockets.

But no 4gb of ram on a brand new 2023/2024 device sounds basically unusable. I'm using 20gb on a desktop with a few browser windows open and various light apps open, on windows 10, just to type this reply. 4 gigs on a windows 11 laptop sounds truly hopeless to me. You definitely are joking.

edit: and I just wanna say, the used market has so much better value than buying brand new right now, even refurb deals beat out these 8gb thin and lights daily. For the spec conscious consumer, there definitely are avenues to get the form factor and good specs without completely breaking the bank.

 

[manly]

I find it completely impossible to believe you can't see the difference between 60hz and 120hz yet the difference in resolution having 1080p at 15", let alone 21" like most monitors out there, is too extreme for you. And seeing as how my 16gb lenovo can really start to chug ram (granted I have 4gb set in BIOS for the IGPU), idk how you could possibly be resolution oriented and also somehow not think ram is useful.

IDK what the OP paid for their soldered RAM laptop, but I copped an ideapad with an RTX gpu over a year ago for ~$550 shipped. Its a creaky heavy brick of a laptop so IMO a brand new 8gb thin and light laptop for ~$500 isn't completely unreasonable. Form factors mean things like socketable ram aren't feasible, just like how apple literally can't put RAM/M2 sockets in current macbooks without having to make them thicker, give them a hump, or make them wedge shaped like past models. Same reason why cellphones don't have sockets.

But no 4gb of ram on a brand new 2023/2024 device sounds basically unusable. I'm using 20gb on a desktop with a few browser windows open and various light apps open, on windows 10, just to type this reply. 4 gigs on a windows 11 laptop sounds truly hopeless to me. You definitely are joking.

edit: and I just wanna say, the used market has so much better value than buying brand new right now, even refurb deals beat out these 8gb thin and lights daily. For the spec conscious consumer, there definitely are avenues to get the form factor and good specs without completely breaking the bank.

It was a completely crazy statement, but there's an explanation. I think he meant you can buy a 4GB laptop and just upgrade the RAM. Nobody in their right mind would be okay using that amount today, it's pure insanity. Some people will say crazy stuff, but I can't imagine saying "I'm okay with 4GB soldered RAM, non-upgradeable" today unless you knew very little about computers.

And there's nothing inherently wrong about a 1080p panel on a 15" laptop. Yeah you can't easily upgrade it but it's not terrible if you tend to run apps full screen (instead of windows/tiled). Some older folks have bad vision, and don't even like high PPI/HiDPI displays. They zoom their text super big just to be able to read it. 1080p is fine as an entry-level option (the main problem with low cost nowadays is usually not crappy WXGA, but poor brightness and color).

 

[mindless1]

It's very simple. I only use a laptop for light use like office, internet, email, etc.

No gaming, so it would be silly to think I needed 4GB allocated to an IGP.

Haven't you ever bothered to check how much memory a system uses if it's not doing anything demanding and doesn't have a lot of bloated things running in the background?

Yes I was considering whether you could upgrade but given a choice, I'd rather run with 4GB memory at 1440p, than 32GB at 1080p. That's unless most of the time I had it hooked up to an external monitor at higher than 1080p.

There is something inherently wrong with 1080p on a 15" screen, that the PRIMARY interface is crippled.

It makes much less difference in this era of SSDs, whether you have a few hundred MB active on a pagefile, but there's no substitute for more vertical pixels.

I'm using 20gb on a desktop with a few browser windows open and various light apps open, on windows 10, just to type this reply.

That is extremely unlikely. Do you know what you're looking at? Memory used for caching the filesystem is not nearly as important as what the apps are actually using. Unless there is something wrong with your system, or by various light apps you mean a boatload of not light apps, real memory usage in that scenario should be closer to 3GB.

How is this not obvious? We've read countless times that windows itself doesn't need a lot more memory, and everyone used to have only 4GB system memory to do light tasks like internet, office, and email. I even recall people stating things like "my (4GB) system flies" from an upgrade from HDD to SSD.

 

[In2Photos]

It's very simple. I only use a laptop for light use like office, internet, email, etc.

No gaming, so it would be silly to think I needed 4GB allocated to an IGP.

Haven't you ever bothered to check how much memory a system uses if it's not doing anything demanding and doesn't have a lot of bloated things running in the background?

Yes I was considering whether you could upgrade but given a choice, I'd rather run with 4GB memory at 1440p, than 32GB at 1080p. That's unless most of the time I had it hooked up to an external monitor at higher than 1080p.

There is something inherently wrong with 1080p on a 15" screen, that the PRIMARY interface is crippled.

It makes much less difference in this era of SSDs, whether you have a few hundred MB active on a pagefile, but there's no substitute for more vertical pixels.

Every laptop I have used in the last 5 years that had less than 8GB of RAM was SLOW. Even just to go online and pay bills or check email. My work laptop uses 8.8GB of RAM with nothing open. Yes there are a few things that run in the background that most people won't also have running, but no way would I ever want 4GB of RAM in ANY PC. Heck, almost all smart phones have more than 4GB of RAM these days.

And if all you are doing is light office work, internet, and email what good is the extra resolution? That text must look so good at 1440p!

 

[manly]

Guess I shouldn't have given him the benefit of the doubt. Nobody is saying 32GB/1080p is a standard config, so that comparison is a straw man. I personally wouldn't want to slum it with 8GB of system RAM today (IGP or dGPU), and I certainly would hate to be stuck with a 4GB system. Sure in a pinch, you could run a few browser tabs and MS Word but that's a very limited use case. Unless that is your primary use case, 4GB and frequent thrashing is just too painful. That's an absolute deal-breaker.

I get that everyone has personal preferences, and I certainly don't mean to impose mine on anyone else. As for a relative lack of vertical pixels? I found that scrolling was invented for some reason.

As for actual RAM usage, I only noticed this about a month ago but when you hover over a Chrome tab, it now displays the RAM used by that tab. In Linux terms, I'm sure it's resident size and not virtual size. A typical tab uses less than 100MB (Gmail 343MB right now), but I've seen some tabs bloat to 1GB. Some of us like to leave a lot of browser tabs open for a long time (I use them as informal bookmarks or "read it later").

 

[mikeymikec]

Haven't you ever bothered to check how much memory a system uses if it's not doing anything demanding and doesn't have a lot of bloated things running in the background?

Windows 10 and 11 with no extra software installed and no apps running frequently runs low on memory with 4GB just by sitting there. That's even after disabling Edge in the background, switching off OneDrive and widgets.

It didn't used to be the case with Win10, but it certainly has been for a few years now.

 

[manly]

Windows 10 and 11 with no extra software installed and no apps running frequently runs low on memory with 4GB just by sitting there. That's even after disabling Edge in the background, switching off OneDrive and widgets.

It didn't used to be the case with Win10, but it certainly has been for a few years now.

But SSDs are so fast now! 4GB system RAM is the new 8GB.

 

[mikeymikec]

But SSDs are so fast now! 4GB system RAM is the new 8GB.

Yeah, it's tricky for me to feel like I'm honestly recommending a memory upgrade to basic users. It seems to need to hit about 95% before there's an unquestionably noticeable drop-off. A customer with 3.4GB addressable RAM (laptop with iGPU and no option to configure the graphics allocation) was absolutely crawling until I upgraded it, that was hitting like 99% usage.

 

[mindless1]

Windows 10 and 11 with no extra software installed and no apps running frequently runs low on memory with 4GB just by sitting there. That's even after disabling Edge in the background, switching off OneDrive and widgets.

It didn't used to be the case with Win10, but it certainly has been for a few years now.

How much windows uses depends on how much memory is installed.

MS own requirements are 1GB 32bit and 2GB 64bit. The key is what other apps get added, and of course how it is being used.

It's not hard to exceed 4GB needed for many uses, but I can easily get by with 4GB for what simple things I would want to do on a laptop. If it had a 1080p screen, I'd use it for near nothing because of how terrible that is.

 

[Torn Mind]

It's very simple. I only use a laptop for light use like office, internet, email, etc.

No gaming, so it would be silly to think I needed 4GB allocated to an IGP.

Haven't you ever bothered to check how much memory a system uses if it's not doing anything demanding and doesn't have a lot of bloated things running in the background?

Yes I was considering whether you could upgrade but given a choice, I'd rather run with 4GB memory at 1440p, than 32GB at 1080p. That's unless most of the time I had it hooked up to an external monitor at higher than 1080p.

There is something inherently wrong with 1080p on a 15" screen, that the PRIMARY interface is crippled.

It makes much less difference in this era of SSDs, whether you have a few hundred MB active on a pagefile, but there's no substitute for more vertical pixels.



That is extremely unlikely. Do you know what you're looking at? Memory used for caching the filesystem is not nearly as important as what the apps are actually using. Unless there is something wrong with your system, or by various light apps you mean a boatload of not light apps, real memory usage in that scenario should be closer to 3GB.

How is this not obvious? We've read countless times that windows itself doesn't need a lot more memory, and everyone used to have only 4GB system memory to do light tasks like internet, office, and email. I even recall people stating things like "my (4GB) system flies" from an upgrade from HDD to SSD.

Windows uses 1-2 GBs automatically and it is very easy to break the memory limits of a 4GB ram system. Light, superficial office use might be fine for guys with little real paperwork, but if someone processes a bit more than just a intermittent bill, the extra ram becomes valuable. Browsers employ a "cheat" with low RAM, where they just shut off the tabs due to the memory constraints.

 

[mikeymikec]

How much windows uses depends on how much memory is installed.

MS own requirements are 1GB 32bit and 2GB 64bit. The key is what other apps get added, and of course how it is being used.

It's not hard to exceed 4GB needed for many uses, but I can easily get by with 4GB for what simple things I would want to do on a laptop. If it had a 1080p screen, I'd use it for near nothing because of how terrible that is.

I suggest you try to use Win10 22H2 64-bit on 2GB RAM (and a boot HDD if you're willing to put that much stock in the official system requirements) rather than imply that's all Windows needs.

The fact of the matter is if you fire up Win10 22H2 64-bit on 2GB RAM, it will use less than 2GB RAM; it will frequently hit at least 85% usage and back down to 80%. The same happens on 4GB RAM, just less often (and I am talking about no other apps installed or running).

What you're willing to put up with is down to personal preference, but the reality is that Win10/11 obviously works better with >4GB RAM.

 

[DeathReborn]

I finally replaced my holiday laptop (Lenovo Z50-75 A10-7300, 8GB) with a Dell G15 5530 i5-13450HX, 8GB (added 8 more) & 3050 6GB. Upon first booting into Windows 11 (eww) I checked the RAM usage at 7.2GB out of 7.7GB with nothing running except the default bloat (now removed). I kept finding similarly price laptops with better specs but soldered RAM of 8GB or rarely 16GB.

I don't recommend anything less than 8GB with 16GB preferred especially if a Chromium browser is going to be used. If it's soldered then get as much as you possibly can, avoid 8GB soldered.

 

[mindless1]

It's not that windows doesn't work better with more than 4GB memory, rather it is that a 1080p screen is much worse when on a laptop without tasks that require a high memory load.

 

[manly]

Yep, one guy's personal opinion supersedes a vast chorus of evidence. We're talking about entry-level laptops here; 1080p on 15" panel is more than suitable. No evidence is provided to the contrary except it's "crippled" without more vertical pixels. As @dr1337 already pointed out, 1080p was and is a very typical resolution for basic 21" LCD monitors. If it works for that panel, it's fine for a 15" screen. Not everyone needs or wants tons of screen space or high PPI.

OTOH most of us recognize that 4GB of RAM is an absolute show-stopper if you're doing tabbed web browsing. We're not talking about power users, of which many of us likely are. We're talking about for everyday normal use if you don't want to pull out your own hair.

I looked it up the other day, and 20 years ago, the 23" Apple Cinema Display was marketed for graphics pros. It sported 1920x1200 resolution, DVI connectivity and originally retailed for $2000. Granted two decades is a very long time, but that was considered cutting edge for content creators at the time. If they could navigate Mac OS X and be productive at that time, your non-technical PC user isn't going to suffer with 1080p today. UIs have changed somewhat over that time, but they are not fundamentally different.

Anyway, my last post on this topic. DDR4 is dirt cheap so you'll find at least 8GB RAM on all new systems anyway. Now if only Apple would ship 12GB on its entry level configs.

 

[mindless1]

^ Except you have it backwards. The evidence is that everyone is moving on to higher resolutions, even on a much smaller phone screen!

That's just it. People weren't very proficient using 1080p, and the matter has gotten far worse for browsing in particular in recent years with so many sites having a larger % of horizontal pixels wasted, and even worse when the site tries to pull a 2-in-1 where the GUI looks like it belongs on a phone browser.

Frankly, 1080p shouldn't exist on laptops larger than ~12" or costing over $180.

I looked it up the other day, and 20 years ago, the 23" Apple Cinema Display was marketed for graphics pros. It sported 1920x1200 resolution, DVI connectivity and originally retailed for $2000. Granted two decades is a very long time, but that was considered cutting edge for content creators at the time. If they could navigate Mac OS X and be productive at that time, your non-technical PC user isn't going to suffer with 1080p today.

... and they had over 4GB system memory, at the time right? No.

 

[VirtualLarry]

OTOH most of us recognize that 4GB of RAM is an absolute show-stopper if you're doing tabbed web browsing. We're not talking about power users, of which many of us likely are. We're talking about for everyday normal use if you don't want to pull out your own hair.

This. Totally. And I have a lot of expertise with lower-end laptops. At those price-points, 1080P is a blessing, not a curse. (1366x768, OTH, really sucks.)

Unless your laptop has an AMD APU, and can take the standard Adrenaline drivers, then you can install those, Enable Virtual Super-Resolution in the drivers, and then double your desktop resolution.

 

[Torn Mind]

The screen being conducive to reading matters more than resolution. The cheapest 4GB laptops that are common on the market, often packing an Atom N4000, are not just 1366x768, but they are also a washed out grey mess.

Having used a Dell G5, yes I did want a little more pixel density than 1080p for the $900 I paid for it. It's better in colors than the cheapest laptops.

1080p isn't great at 15 inch, I get it. But I still wouldn't want 1440p(and it would be the cheapest, bottom of the barrel monitor with all the flaws if they actually made such a laptop) and 4GB RAM.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Having used a Dell G5, yes I did want a little more pixel density than 1080p for the $900 I paid for it. It's better in colors than the cheapest laptops.

Yikes! That's a lot of money for not-even-OLED. Hope it's at least 120Hz but in the specs on Dell G5 laptops, that refresh rate seems to be associated with crappy 45% NTSC color gamut screens, not 100% sRGB minimum. As far as I can tell from having checked the specs of a LOT of gaming laptops, you don't get a good screen unless you go 165Hz minimum. I guess when a manufacturer is making at least that level of panel, they figure "better make the colors vibrant to make these screens stand out".

 

[igor_kavinski]

I just got a cheap 13.3 inch laptop with 8GB RAM/256GB SSD. While the laptop design is nice (touch screen, comes with stylus, rectangular slab with really nice to touch plastic and lovely build quality), the little known Middle East manufacturer, Onsor, skimped on the RAM quality and SSD. The SSD is a name I've never heard of and seems to be some Chinese brand. The RAM is LPDDR4-3200. Yes, you read that right. It's like they made that crappy version of LPDDR4 while DDR4-2666 was around. I had no idea that LPDDR4 started at that low a speed. So not only is it soldered, it's no better than plain as jane DDR4-3200 SODIMM and actually much worse due to the higher latency for LPDDR4. It's like the manufacturer ran out of budget including all the nice stuff and figured RAM and SSD would be the least of a prospective buyer's concerns.