Laptops using Intel’s next budget processors will suffer from one big flaw

Notebook manufacturers producing machines powered by Apollo Lake CPUs are turning to soldered-on system memory in a bid to make these laptops as svelte as possible.

Of course, this quest for thin devices comes with an obvious drawback – you won’t be able to switch out the RAM and upgrade to more memory. Whatever system RAM you purchase the notebook with, that’s what you’ll be stuck with for the lifespan of the device.

This news comes from DigiTimes and the tech site’s usual sources in the supply chain, who say that broadly speaking, most laptop vendors have ditched DIMMs in favour of on-board memory to ensure their Apollo Lake machines are nice and slim.

Obviously, that’s good news in terms of portability. But consumers and businesses alike will just have to hope they can select a model which has enough memory to cater for their needs going forward into the foreseeable future.

Further up the Trail

Apollo Lake (based on 14nm Goldmont) is a power-sipping processor that follows on from Intel’s Cherry Trail CPUs and is targeted at lower-end and wallet-friendly notebooks. In other words, they’re perfect for consumers and businesses who just want a portable that will do the basics, and most certainly won’t break the bank.

DigiTimes mentions that we should see a couple of new ultra-thin Apollo Lake models from Acer at IFA which kicks off next week – Aspire devices, both of them less than 17mm thin – and other major brands including Dell, HP, Lenovo and Asus will have similar super-svelte offerings coming out before the year end.

It’ll certainly be interesting to see how they shape up in terms of aesthetics and performance, and the asking price – not to mention the battery and longevity, which hopefully won’t suffer at the hands of the laptop shrink ray (though Apollo Lake’s efficiency will obviously help in this regard).

Source: techradar.com

Top Brands