Is 4GB ram enough for a laptop? this is the most common question that comes to mind while looking out for laptops in the market and rightly so spending on the right machine determines the operating experience.
In the last few years, the laptop demand has advanced especially due to the working home culture and online classes for students emerging, it is a great choice for companies and employees to enjoy the phase.
As an outcome all of a sudden laptop has taken over PC main reason is their portability however not every organization provides laptops for remote working and budget is another factor for users so in this case, it’s quite obvious to get confused about Is 4GB ram good for laptop?
No worries in this post we are going to discuss everything about the 4GB ram laptop and whether is it really worth it. We have also done testing on 4GB and 8GB laptops we will share all our experiences, so let’s begin.
Topics covered:
- Is 4GB ram good for a laptop?
- Is 4GB ram enough for students?
- 4GB vs 8GB laptop
- Is 4GB ram good for gaming
- is 4GB ram enough for a Chromebook?
- Can you upgrade the 4GB laptop?
- Is 4GB ram good for windows 10?
- Conclusion.
Also Read: How much ram do I need in a laptop
Is 4GB ram good for laptop?
The low-budget user can consider a laptop with 4GB ram this is suitable for running 2-3 web browsing tabs including word, and PowerPoint files anything above this slow down your device drastically.
The working professional needs to be very proactive during office hours you have to open multiple tabs, and a lot of data, and also at times have to attend online meetings.
Even though you can manage with 4GB yet 8GB definitely boosts the performance of the machine during heavy usage.
The work such as programming, coding, and editing videos and images, all are power-hungry tasks that take a lot of resources not only from ram but also other hardware like CPU.
So for any kind of demanding work, you need to keep a good blend between ram and processor, overall ideal choice is 8GB DDR4 ram as almost all laptop comes with windows 10 which consumes about 2-3GB so you are left with nothing.
In fact, windows 11 takes about 3-4GB so ideally, your laptop demands 8GB to run your workflow smoothly.
Also Read: Is MacBook air good for programming
Is a 4GB ram laptop good for students?
This is depending on what kind, of course, you are doing and how often you need to use a laptop.
Overall if you are someone who has to make presentations only or you want to attend classes 4GB is a decent option.
In fact, Chromebook is another choice for you as they are quite user-friendly and cheaper yet the drawback of the Chromebook you need continuous internet support.
Moreover, for coding, and programming students, at the beginning 8GB ensures a smooth experience, and for engineering, and designing aspirants more than 4GB is a must, even 16GB is recommended for you.
As you have to run heavy applications there are a lot of computing tasks involved like drafting, planning, editing, and rendering including research on assignments.
Also Read: Best laptop for computer science students
Laptop 4GB vs 8GB what is the difference?
In this segment, it’s time to discuss our findings during testing we have hands-on both memory 4GB and 8GB laptops we have some interesting facts to share so let us begin with 4GB and later 8GB laptops.
For instance, experience on different laptops may vary as there are many factors depending on how old your laptop is.
The performance of the device is not specifically dependent on memory other factors like processor, graphics card, and cooling system define the quality of any laptop.
Laptop with 4GB ram + 1TB HDD
I had a Dell laptop featured with 10th gen intel core i3 with 4GB memory and 1TB hard drive, this laptop I have been using it for 3 years so I have spent a lot of time on this device.
The first thing is the booting system since it has HDD support the device took a lot of time to start working, it takes around 3 minutes for me to access my files and web browsing which is quite annoying.
However, if the laptop had an SSD drive the entire boosting system would have been much better, (read more for SSD performance)
Anyway, I use it initially for blogging purposes only because of the tight budget at the start, moreover, 4GB functioned fine while working on 2 tabs with 1 word and excel file open.
As soon as I commenced and open photoshop on the laptop, the device started lagging and it is not operatable.
Moreover, it allows me to edit small images on paint yet with a lot of difficulties and the overall experience was shady.
So, upon testing, I found that memory usage quickly goes up by 95% which is very high on a laptop, because I also uploaded windows 10 to my system and it takes around 2-3GB.
Overall a 4GB laptop is decent enough to do basic work and does not expect to do multitasking you can run one or two files at a time with 2-3 tabs open.
Laptop with 8GB ram + 256GB SSD
Now due to slow and laggy performance, I decided to upgrade the laptop’s hardware to see the difference as any day upgrading is more affordable than buying a new laptop.
Fortunately, my existing old laptop has an upgradeability function and the results were astonishing.
The SSD drive increased the booting system 10 times faster. the heavy video editing application loaded far more quickly within seconds and the machine booting system similarly took a lot less time overall it helped me to become more productive while researching any topics.
I tested the efficiency of the laptop by opening 7-8 web browser tabs with MS word files, photoshop, and video editing applications running in the background.
Overall performance stayed good without much strain and slowness, and the ram consumption stayed around 70-80%.
Furthermore, I decided to check the video game, even though my laptop is not meant for gaming yet the games like Valorant, GTA 5, Minecraft and Roblox are playable on a nongaming laptop overall all the games performed pretty well.
The GTA 5 is a slightly hardware-demanding game, this video game needs a dedicated graphics card as well to run it smoothly, especially for FPS yet it was decently playable at lower settings with few hiccups.
For instance, gaming puts a heavy load on the machine so the laptop started to heat, as the nongaming laptop has a pretty average venting system, in case you want to play the game then it’s best to get a proper gaming laptop.
Also Read: How much storage do I need in a laptop
Is 4GB ram good for gaming?
Gaming is an intense task even though ram does not help you to increase FPS on your game.
However to run gaming applications on a laptop needs strong memory support, for instance, for playing a single-player game 8GB is more than enough.
So 4GB is not a very superior choice for playing games, additionally, if you ever tried playing the game on a PC with 4GB memory support and the game ran decently.
That is because the inbuilt component’s capacity in laptops is underclocked and is less efficient than desktops, this is done by the manufacturers to maintain laptop cooling and efficiency.
There are quite a few video games you can play on it like Minecraft, and Roblox is playable on 4GB, still doesn’t accept running at high settings you can play at low settings with 30FPS.
Lastly, every gamer must prioritize processor and graphics card when choosing a laptop for playing games, as FPS is largely dependent on these two hardware, additionally higher refresh rate screen also plays a vital role in a gaming session.
Also Read: Best gaming laptop under 750
Is 4GB ram good for Chromebook?
Chromebooks are gaining popularity thanks to their user-friendly interface and light operating system, especially for students’ preferred choice is Chromebook.
However, Chromebooks are meant for very light working, and it is equipped with their own operating system that is Chrome OS, which ensures you work easily with 4GB ram.
Moreover, there are not many benefits you get like small storage space and in case you go outdoors your work stuck due to an internet connection, overall it’s a good option for very basic usage like attending online classes and watching videos.
Can you upgrade a 4GB laptop to 8GB RAM?
This is depending on each laptop mostly modern laptops do come with an extendable slot where you can easily extend the ram support up to 8GB, read more about it, is 4GB ram good for laptop?
However, older devices might offer you soldered ram that you can not remove from the motherboard so make sure to read the specifications carefully.
Now, this is the best possible situation in case have a low budget as you can always extend memory support if needed.
Additionally, try to choose a machine that has two slots, known as dual channel ram, this can eventually push your execution faster on the machine.
There are not many laptops with dual channels available in the DDR3 version and you need to identify the best laptop with DDR4 ram memory.
This is not a big worry as there are a large number of models available with DDR4 technology, and the speed and frequency in DDR4 are much faster than in DDR3.
The difference between the both is quite evident the base speed of the DDR4 is identical to the DDR3 ram’s maximum speed, you may not experience the difference while doing light work at the time.
This becomes a big factor during multi-tasking and running multiple programs, the laptop may start to hang due to a lack of memory support for the processor.
Moreover high chances are one slot is empty in the laptop that is for future upgradation, also try to choose a laptop that is offering an upgrade option minimum of up to 16GB or above.
Is 4GB ram enough for windows 10?
A large number of models of windows laptops are equipped with the latest operating system however biggest question, is windows 10 works with 4GB laptops let’s understand.
Windows 10 alone requires around 2GB of space from memory, which means you are left with only 2GB, however, once you start browsing or working on files the consumption immediately keeps increasing.
So basically you can work on the normal task and can open one application at a time, for instance, software like photoshop is usable on 4GB but the system will lag and you have to close all the other tabs running which impact your proficiency.
Lastly, on windows- 10, laptops with 4GB of memory are not recommended in case you do a lot of multi-tasking, in this scenario you need a minimum of 8GB ram.
Final words:
Here we are, let us conclude without memory support, PC is not going to survive it is the biggest factor for any kind of computing task it allows the device to store data temporarily so you can work smoothly.
However, you need to also consider other components like processor, battery life, and cooling system and if you do any heavy loading work like playing games, editing and designing then a dedicated GPU also becomes equally crucial.
Lastly, is 4GB ram good for a laptop? in this modern era where we have to do a lot of multitasking during working hours, and even as students you have to submit assignments on time for all this you must have a minimum of 8GB ram in your laptop.
Overall 4GB is only suitable for those who are just going to use it for any light work like web browsing with 2-3 tabs open, watching movies, or working on excel, word, and PowerPoint.
