HP, Dell and Lenovo Hike Laptop Prices Over Memory Costs

Laptop prices are going up in 2026, and the cause is not tariffs or chip shortages in the usual sense — it's memory. HP, Dell and Lenovo have all raised prices on PCs since the spring, and HP's own chief financial officer has told investors that memory and storage now account for roughly 35% of what it costs HP to build a PC, up from just 15% to 18% a few months earlier. The driver is a historic spike in DRAM and NAND flash prices as chipmakers divert capacity to AI servers, leaving PC makers bidding for a shrinking pool of memory supply. Reported price increases vary by vendor and by source — this article sets out exactly what each company has confirmed, what trade reporting claims beyond that, and what it means if you're shopping for a laptop this fall.

Why laptop prices are rising in 2026

Every modern laptop needs DRAM (working memory) and NAND flash (storage), and both have become dramatically more expensive in 2026. The root cause is demand from AI data centers: cloud providers and AI server makers have been signing long-term agreements with memory manufacturers — Samsung, SK hynix and Micron — to lock up supply for high-capacity server memory and high-bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators. That leaves less capacity for the conventional DRAM and NAND that go into consumer and commercial PCs, at a time when supplier inventories were already thin.

Memory-market research firm TrendForce, which tracks DRAM contract pricing, forecast in a June 2026 market update that conventional DRAM contract prices would rise another 58–63% quarter-over-quarter in the second quarter of 2026, on top of earlier increases, as PC and smartphone buyers competed for an allocation that suppliers were prioritizing for AI server customers. That is the mechanism behind the sticker-price increases showing up on HP, Dell and Lenovo laptops: the cost of the memory and storage inside the machine has gone up faster than almost any other component in the bill of materials, and PC makers are passing at least part of that along. For more on the underlying memory-chip dynamics, see our explainer on why RAM prices are so high in 2026 and our coverage of why SSD prices are surging as AI squeezes NAND supply.

HP's price increases: what the company has actually said

HP has been the most explicit of the three vendors about the scale of the problem, though it has done so through cost disclosures rather than a public "prices are rising X%" statement. On HP's fiscal first-quarter 2026 earnings call on February 24, 2026, CFO Karen Parkhill told analysts: "we did share last quarter that memory and storage costs made up roughly 15% to 18% of our PC bill of materials. And we now currently estimate this to be roughly 35% for the year," according to the official transcript of the call posted to HP's investor relations site. Parkhill said memory costs had increased "roughly 100% sequentially" and that HP expected further increases through the rest of its fiscal year. She named "a combination of product cost actions, company-wide cost actions, and price increases" as HP's levers for recovering the impact over time.

HP's fiscal third-quarter 2026 results, reported on August 26, 2026, show the effect showing up in its numbers: Personal Systems (HP's PC division) net revenue rose 18% year-over-year to $11.8 billion, but total PC unit shipments fell 16% in the same period, according to HP's earnings release filed with the SEC. Revenue rising sharply while units sold fall is consistent with meaningfully higher average selling prices, even though that release does not state a specific percentage increase. Interim CEO Bruce Broussard said in the same release that HP's "ongoing strategy to address environmental constraints led to meaningful improvements in memory supply and higher fulfillment rates," while the filing separately lists "increasing memory and storage costs" among the risk factors affecting the business going forward.

Trade and channel publications have reported more specific figures — commonly citing HP price increases in the range of roughly 10% to 15% across client devices — but that range comes from reporting on supplier and reseller communications rather than from an HP press release or earnings call, and HP has not published an exact blended percentage. Readers should treat the 10–15% figure as reported, not as an HP-confirmed number. HP has continued launching new commercial laptops through the period, including the HP EliteBook 6 G2q announced in March 2026 (pictured above), the kind of mid-range business notebook most exposed to rising memory and storage costs.

Dell's price increases: what the filings show

Dell has been quieter in public than HP about naming a specific price-increase figure, but its own SEC filings tell a similar story. In its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended August 1, 2026 (Dell's fiscal second quarter of 2027), filed with the SEC, Dell reports that Client Solutions Group commercial net revenue increased 22% year-over-year "primarily due to an increase in the average selling prices of our commercial offerings," adding that the increase "was partially offset by a decrease in units sold" and that the rise in ASPs "was primarily attributable to disciplined pricing." Consumer revenue in the same segment grew 7%, which Dell also attributes to higher average selling prices alongside a decline in units sold.

Dell's outlook language in the same filing is direct about the cause: "We expect the notable inflationary environment for component costs will persist throughout the remainder of Fiscal 2027," the company states, adding that it will "seek to maintain disciplined pricing while balancing profitability and growth." That is Dell's own, SEC-filed acknowledgment that component costs — which for PCs means primarily memory and storage — are elevated and are being passed through via pricing, even though Dell has not disclosed a specific percentage increase the way trade reporting has suggested. Some channel and supply-chain reports have described Dell price increases as high as 15–20% on certain commercial configurations; that figure should be read as a reported, sourced-to-the-channel claim rather than a number Dell itself has confirmed.

Lenovo's price increases: what the company has disclosed

Lenovo's own disclosures are the least specific of the three on pricing. In its results presentation for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026/27 (the three months to June 30, 2026), dated August 13, 2026, Lenovo's Personal Computing and Smart Devices (PCSD) segment is described as having "strengthened global PC leadership" while it "maintained stable OPM despite ongoing component demand-supply imbalances," according to the earnings presentation published through Lenovo's own newsroom. That is Lenovo acknowledging, in its own words, that component supply and cost pressure — the memory shortage — is an active factor in its PC business, without putting a number on how much prices have risen.

Trade and channel reporting has been more specific, and the figures vary noticeably depending on the source: some reports put Lenovo's average notebook price increase at around 6%, with a range of roughly 4% to 10% depending on configuration, implemented in phases during 2026 (with an initial round around March and a further round reported around July). Other supply-chain-sourced reporting has described planned increases as high as 15–20% on some lines, and still other coverage has cited a steeper year-on-year rise in US street pricing for mid-range Lenovo notebooks. These numbers do not all describe the same thing — some are vendor list-price adjustments, others are street-price or channel-sell-in figures, and they cover different time windows — which is part of why they look inconsistent at first glance. Lenovo has not published its own blended percentage, so none of these figures should be presented as confirmed by the company.

How much are prices actually going up? Reconciling the numbers

Because none of the three companies has published a single confirmed "we raised prices by X%" figure, the honest answer is that there is no one number — there is a range of reported figures, each tied to a different source, vendor and measurement method. The table below separates what each company has put on the record from what has been reported about it.

What is consistent across all three companies, and confirmed in their own disclosures rather than just reported, is the direction and the cause: memory and storage costs have risen sharply in 2026, all three vendors describe it as an ongoing or worsening pressure on their PC businesses, and all three are using some mix of pricing, product reconfiguration (for example shipping lower base memory or storage configurations) and supplier agreements to manage it. The specific percentage you'll pay depends heavily on the model, the configuration (how much RAM and SSD storage it includes), the region and the channel (retail versus commercial contract pricing).

The DRAM price crisis, in brief

DRAM pricing moves in cycles, but 2026's spike has been unusually sharp because it is being driven by a structural shift in demand rather than ordinary inventory swings. AI servers use large amounts of conventional DRAM in addition to specialized high-bandwidth memory, and cloud providers have been willing to pay a premium and sign long-term agreements to secure supply — which TrendForce's reporting describes as crowding out allocation that would otherwise go to PC and smartphone makers. Memory manufacturers have also been slower to add new conventional DRAM capacity because so much of their capital spending is going toward AI-specific memory products. The result is that PC makers are negotiating from a weaker position than they have in years, and the increases have been showing up at each stage of the supply chain: in DRAM module and SSD pricing first, and in finished-PC pricing with a lag of roughly one to two quarters. We've covered the module-level side of this in more detail, including what Micron's own earnings reports have said about RAM pricing, and in our explainer on CAMM2 memory and how it compares with standard DDR5.

When did these increases take effect?

Based on company disclosures and the broader reporting around them, the increases have rolled out in stages through 2026 rather than in one single jump. HP's CFO described the cost pressure as already material in its fiscal first quarter (ended January 2026) and said the company expected to see "the largest impact in the second half" of its fiscal year, which runs through October 2026 — consistent with price increases continuing to phase in through the September period referenced in trade coverage. Lenovo has been reported to have implemented increases in at least two rounds in 2026, one around March and a further one around July. Dell's SEC filings show the ASP effect building through its fiscal first and second quarters of 2027 (covering February through August 2026), with the company's own language — "the notable inflationary environment for component costs will persist" — explicitly extending that expectation into the remainder of its fiscal year.

Are more laptop price increases coming?

All three companies' own disclosures point toward continued pressure rather than a quick resolution. HP's CFO told investors in February that the company expects memory-cost volatility "to remain throughout fiscal 2026 and likely into fiscal 2027." HP's own fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 outlook (covering roughly August through October 2026) continues to flag rising input costs as a near-term pressure on Personal Systems margins. Dell's 10-Q, filed after its fiscal second quarter closed on August 1, 2026, states plainly that it expects component-cost inflation to persist "throughout the remainder of Fiscal 2027." Trade press has separately reported that HP has signaled the possibility of an additional round of price adjustments before the end of calendar 2026, though that would be a further step beyond what HP has stated on the record in its SEC filings and earnings calls to date. None of the three companies has said publicly that the memory shortage is close to resolving; TrendForce and other memory-market analysts have pointed to AI-driven demand lasting into 2027 as a reason prices may stay elevated for some time.

Should you buy a laptop now, or wait?

There's no guaranteed right answer, but the disclosures above point to a few practical takeaways:

• If you need a laptop soon, buying now is reasonable. Every public signal — from HP's CFO to Dell's own 10-Q — points to cost pressure continuing, not easing, through the rest of 2026 and into 2027. Waiting for prices to fall is not obviously a winning bet right now, since none of the three companies expects memory costs to normalize imminently.
• Consider configuration carefully. Because memory and storage are the components under the most cost pressure, vendors have an incentive to ship lower base RAM/SSD configurations at a given price point, or to charge a steeper premium for memory/storage upgrades than they used to. Check the base specification closely rather than assuming last year's "standard" configuration (for example 16GB RAM/512GB SSD) is still what you'll get at a similar price.
• Compare list price against configuration, not just the headline number. A laptop that looks like it has only gone up modestly in price may have had its memory or storage quietly reduced; conversely, a bigger sticker increase may reflect a richer configuration. This is especially relevant for commercial/business buyers negotiating fleet refresh contracts, where Dell and HP have both pointed to average selling price increases rather than simple price-list hikes.
• Expect wider swings on configurations with more RAM/storage. Since DRAM and NAND are the components actually getting more expensive, the price gap between entry and higher-memory configurations of the same laptop is likely to be wider than it was in 2024–2025.

What to watch next

Three things will determine whether laptop prices keep climbing through the rest of 2026: how quickly memory suppliers bring new conventional DRAM and NAND capacity online versus how much more capacity continues to shift toward AI memory products; whether HP follows through on the additional pricing action trade press has suggested is under consideration before the end of the calendar year; and what HP, Dell and Lenovo say about memory costs and PC pricing on their next earnings calls — HP's fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 results and Dell's and Lenovo's following quarterly reports will be the next points where each company is likely to update its own numbers rather than leaving the specifics to trade reporting. Until then, the clearest confirmed facts are the ones in this article: memory and storage costs have risen sharply and unusually fast in 2026, all three major PC vendors say so in their own filings and calls, and all three are responding with some combination of pricing, configuration changes and supplier agreements — even if the exact percentage you'll pay depends on which laptop, and which report, you're looking at.

Written byMara Lindqvist

Mara Lindqvist edits the hardware desk. She covers graphics cards, processors, memory and storage, the foundries and chip designers behind them, and what the numbers on a spec sheet mean for people choosing a PC. Specifications in her stories come from manufacturer spec pages and datasheets.

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