Hello, I’ve been uhmming and ahhing over which laptop to buy. I was almost decided on the HP Envy 16 but the HP Envy 17 is a much better fit for me personally (full size sd card slot and number pad). It’s also a couple of hundred pounds cheaper and atm is on sale for under £800 whereas the 16 inch model is going to be about £1100. I never felt comfortable spending over 1k on a laptop but couldn’t seem to get what I needed at a lower price point. The HP envy 16 was a bit of a compromise but has the advantage of upgradeable RAM (and 2 ssd slots but the envy 17 ssd can be upgraded).
I’m just not sure whether it’s too much of a risk to buy the potentially unfixable envy 17 (with a decent amount of RAM of course) and get everything else I was looking for spec wise or whether I should spend a few more hundred and buy the fixable envy 16 and compromise on practical use instead. A compromise obviously has to be made - where would you make it?
As a secondary machine just for browsing or spreadsheets and text documents, I wouldn’t mind soldered RAM, even if it’s only 16GB (or on ultra cheap <$300 laptops even 8GB).
If you expect to use the laptop as your main computer for many years, then no, soldered RAM is not a good idea (unless it has at least 32GB).
I wouldn’t worry about not being able to fix it, because RAM rarely goes bad. I’d worry about needing more RAM in the future and not being able to add more.