Engadget explains Chrome's RAM use as a trade-off for speed and isolation

According to the report, websites now resemble apps more than the text-heavy pages of the early web. They carry more information, support more functions and are expected to load instantly while the browser keeps multiple tabs open and runs extensions in the background. Browser makers can either share memory and processes across tabs to save RAM or give each tab and site its own process, which uses more memory but keeps things fast and stable. Chrome, like many browsers, chooses the latter.

Engadget said that approach prevents a single crashed site from bringing down the entire browser and the other open tabs. Chrome also runs each site in a sandboxed process, and the operating system keeps those processes apart, so a malicious page cannot easily inspect a banking or email tab. Some of the extra memory is the cost of that separation.

The report challenged the idea that RAM use should always be kept as low as possible. It said unused RAM is wasted RAM, and a browser that fills memory with pages, media and prepared tabs is doing its job. Engadget cited PCMag as saying 8GB of RAM should be fine for most general-use PCs, several times what a single browser typically needs.

Engadget also noted that high memory use can point to a memory leak, in which a program takes memory and never releases it. Chrome's built-in Task Manager, opened with Shift + Esc, shows which tab or extension is responsible. The browser's Memory Saver feature puts tabs that have not been used for a while to sleep and frees their memory, then reloads them when clicked. Google has rolled it out to all users; it is in Chrome's settings under Performance, where sites such as a music player can be exempted.

Other browsers take different approaches. Microsoft Edge runs on the same Chromium foundation as Chrome and uses a similar process model, but its sleeping tabs and Energy Saver put idle tabs to sleep to cut memory use. Firefox groups tabs into fewer shared processes and unloads tabs when the system runs low on memory. Engadget said both are reasonable choices and neither is a cure, because a browser that offered the same experience for a fraction of the memory would have to give something up.

If Chrome feels slow, Engadget advised looking beyond the memory number. Users can open the browser's Task Manager and look for a tab or extension whose memory keeps growing. If nothing does, Chrome is using RAM as intended. If the browser still feels sluggish, the cause may be elsewhere, such as a nearly full drive or a slow connection, and restarting the browser is a good first step.