Anytime Microsoft talks about reducing bloat of their Windows 11 operating system, I always picture the eye roll of Robert Downey Jr GIF. Back in April, Microsoft started talking about their “Windows K2” plan. The concept behind it was a strategy “designed to dramatically improve performance, rework how OS development teams collaborate, shore up reliability, and rebuild a sense of community among beta testers.” Apparently, they didn’t keep this in mind when they designed their 8GB Surface laptop. After some reviews, the news ain’t good.

In an effort to meet with Apple’s Neo, Microsoft launched a more affordable Surface Pro 12 and Surface Laptop 8 back in June. These were designed to feature lower-end configurations than their flagship counterparts. This included an older Snapdragon chipset and just 8GB of RAM instead of 16GB. Reviews of the new devices are now in, and, as expected, 8GB of memory is simply not enough to run Windows 11 smoothly.

Since it’s release, Windows 11 was a power hog. That is why many older machines weren’t able to use it. Much of that was do to their CoPilot AI software. This is why I moved my desktop PC to Linux.

The reporting from The Verge, 8GB of memory works mostly fine for basic tasks such as web browsing, text editing, and video streaming on YouTube. As well as other streaming platforms. However, the laptop would hang or freeze “for several seconds” whenever someone joined a video call on Microsoft Teams.

If the 8GB Surface Laptop Can’t Handle Windows 11

The report notes the laptop struggled to handle the video stream. Even when it was not running any power-hungry workloads in the background. At the time, it only had about 10 Chrome tabs open. As well as Slack and Signal apps. The laptop also froze randomly several times a day while working in Google Docs. That’s even with no Teams calls or video streams running in the background.

Windows Task Manager reported the device was using roughly 6.7GB of its 7.6GB of available memory most of the time. Rebooting the PC with no unnecessary startup apps running in the background reduced memory usage to around 4.2GB. Opening around half a dozen Chrome tabs increased it to roughly 5.5GB.

Go ahead and insert your eye rolling meme.

When Windows was launched, it required 16GB of RAM to simply run it. However, to coincide with the launch of the Surface, Microsoft dropped it to 8GB. Many of us knew it, but had to wait. It’s clear that it can’t do more than the bare minimum of what an iPad can do. However, Apple allows the iPad to do a lot more than a Surface laptop can do.

The updated Surface Laptop page on the Microsoft Store describes 8GB of RAM as “great for everyday use like browsing, streaming, schoolwork, and productivity apps.” Let’s hope that you don’t have to do any of those at the same time.