Budget laptop buyers are getting squeezed as memory prices keep climbing toward 2027

[BinaryMonk95]

Consumers shopping for a new laptop are increasingly finding a gap between what they want to spend and what's actually on shelves, as the ongoing memory chip shortage keeps pushing prices upward across nearly every price tier. The core driver is the same one hitting phones, consoles and tablets, DRAM and NAND flash memory, the components used for working memory and storage in virtually every modern device, are in extremely tight supply because AI data centers are consuming an outsized share of global production

The squeeze is hitting entry level machines hardest. Industry analyst firm Omdia found consumer PC sales fell 9.5 percent year over year in the first quarter of 2026 and expects the segment to drop over 11 percent for the full year, with Omdia's Scott Braverman noting many consumers are simply delaying purchases rather than paying the higher prices. Business PC sales fell too, though less sharply, as some organizations pulled orders forward specifically to beat further price increases tied to Windows 10 replacement cycles

TrendForce's latest pricing survey projects conventional DRAM contract prices to keep climbing another 13 to 18 percent quarter over quarter into Q3 2026, with NAND flash rising 10 to 15 percent, a real slowdown from the roughly 60 percent jumps seen earlier in the year, but a slowdown driven by manufacturers and consumers hitting an affordability ceiling rather than any actual improvement in supply

None of this is expected to ease quickly. New memory fabrication plants take two to three years to build from groundbreaking to full output, and most currently announced expansion projects, including Micron's more than 150 billion dollar multi-site buildout across Idaho, New York and Virginia, aren't expected to meaningfully add supply until 2027 at the earliest, with several manufacturers saying they don't yet have visibility into when supply will actually catch up with AI driven demand

Americans Only Want to Pay $800 for a New Laptop. Too Bad Many Cost $1,600uk.pcmag.com

[Dave]

The affordability ceiling framing is the key detail here, prices are still rising but slower specifically because people are refusing to pay more, not because supply actually improved