If one thing was clear to me at CES 2026, it’s that PC hardware has never looked better. The big laptop brands, including Lenovo, HP, Dell, and ASUS, showed off impressive new devices, all while carefully skirting around the issue of rising memory and storage prices.
The fresh crop of 2026 hardware, undoubtedly in the works long before AI firms bought up global DRAM supplies in order to build datacenters — which is now also occurring with the NAND chips that go into storage — struck a dissonant chord. Who’s going to be able to afford this stuff when the storage and memory alone cost as much as an entire laptop?
1) High-resolution, high-quality displays
That’s mainly due to the cost of OLED panels dropping so sharply in the past few years, helped along by new QD-OLED and mini-LED tech entering the market. However, OLED panels are still more expensive than traditional IPS fare, and I won’t be surprised to see the trend of plenty dry up as laptop makers focus on cutting costs.
The same goes for pixels. The more you have on a screen, the more expensive it gets. Screens with 2.8K, 3K, and 4K resolutions were everywhere in 2025, but a return to the more traditional 1920×1200 (FHD+) layout by many brands wouldn’t be shocking.
2) Powerful discrete graphics cards
Laptop graphics cards have come a long way over the years, and it still boggles my mind that so much power and heat can be contained in a relatively slim laptop body.
👉 PC hardware is entering a golden age of design and engineering, while Windows — with its newfound AI obsession — has never felt worse.
All of that extra engineering to keep the chip cool and its power balanced does come at a price, however, not to mention the cost of the actual hardware itself.
The removal of discrete GPUs in anything but gaming and workstation laptops was already sort of a trend that filtered in as integrated graphics attached to CPUs have gotten better, so it’s not hard to see more of the same in the future.
👉 Intel Arc GPUs receive major upgrades on Panther Lake with XeSS 3 and Xe3 cores
3) Webcam and speaker quality
But as the big laptop brands target components to downgrade to offset storage and memory costs, I expect webcams and speakers to be placed in the crosshairs. I consider these areas to be non-essential for a lot of users, especially if they’re only using their PC for email, spreadsheets, word processing, and other general tasks.
The blow will certainly be felt by those who frequently video conference or who enjoy using their laptop as a multimedia centerpiece, and I expect quality video and audio to once again be reserved for the more expensive tier of laptops.
👉 Best laptops for video conference and Zoom meetings in 2026
4) Plentiful RAM and storage configurations
This one is a no-brainer, but it’s definitely worth including on the list.
The big PC makers aren’t having as much trouble as the rest of us sourcing memory and storage thanks to longstanding agreements with hardware manufacturers, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no trouble.
Whereas 16GB seems to have taken over as the base amount of RAM in modern laptops, I won’t be surprised to see a return to 8GB for introductory “base” laptop models. Sure, laptop makers will still offer higher specs, but whether or not you can afford them is another question.
Similarly, the standard of seeing 1TB SSDs in laptops will likely change as storage prices continue to rise. A return to 512GB drives in even the high-end laptops won’t surprise me, and I expect that base models will be commonly available with 256GB (or less). Eek — I hope you don’t mind paying for cloud storage.
👉 AI-driven RAM shortages threaten more than just the PC market — datacenters expected to consume 70% of global memory in 2026
Do you agree with what I’ve predicted to be the laptop features and components most likely to decline in quality (or completely disappear)? Let me know in the comments section!
Follow Windows Central on Google News to keep our latest news, insights, and features at the top of your feeds!
