The ongoing memory crisis has rippled past smartphones and is now affecting laptops. Samsung’s Galaxy Book 6 Pro (16-inch), for instance, starts at KRW 3.51 million (about $2,373) in the company’s home market, which is around 25% higher than the same variant of the Galaxy Book 5 Pro, which was launched at KRW 2.80 million ($1,749 for an equivalent variant).
Yes, the company has upgraded the notebook with Intel’s new Panther Lake chipset, but there’s more to it than just increased CPU cores. It is the dramatic rise in the cost of RAM and storage chips that is driving the price increase. As and when Samsung releases the Galaxy Book 6 variants in the United States, they could debut at much higher prices than the outgoing models.
Samsung’s dual role makes its price hikes an industry warning
Samsung holds a very unique place in the consumer-tech industry. While it sells products under its own brand, it also manufactures critical components, such as memory chips, for other popular brands. Hence, when the OEM itself raises the prices of its products (to remain profitable), it’s an alarm for the entire industry and, by extension, consumers.
LG’s laptops have met the same fate. The LG Gram Pro AI 2026, with a 16-inch screen, Intel Core Ultra 5 processor, 16GB of memory, and 512GB of storage, is available in the Korean market for a maximum retail price of KRW 3,140,000, which is around $2,345, about KRW 500,000 ($375) higher than the comparable 2025 model.
According to a report from Inews24, “the price of a mid-range Lenovo laptop in the U.S. market was $799 in 2025, but will rise 12.6% year-on-year to $900 in 2026.” If that’s the scale of the hike for mid-range laptops, higher-end trims (with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage or more) could see even higher price increases.
Like smartphone manufacturers, laptop makers could also witness plunging demand, not due to a lack of innovation but to a dramatic increase in price. So, if you’re thinking about getting a new laptop, either stick with relatively older models that are still affordable, pay the “memory premium” in 2026, or hold off a couple of years until the memory crisis goes away.
