Windows 11 26H2 has two distinct performance findings: Microsoft says six Windows interactions were up to 20% more responsive in a comparison of two OS builds, while Tony Phillips reported faster Settings launches on one 16GB ASUS laptop, with total idle RAM unchanged.
Read each performance figure alongside the task, build, and PC it measures.
What Microsoft’s 20% figure measures
Microsoft tied its “up to 20% more responsive” claim to response-time tests for Search, Start, right-click, Settings, Snipping Tool, and File Explorer. The company compared Windows 11 OS Build 26300.9550 with Build 26200.7628 and says actual results vary by device, configuration, and use. Microsoft’s description of the tests concerns those six interactions, not every task a PC can run.
What one ASUS laptop measured
In a separate 25H2-to-26H2 comparison, Tony Phillips of How-To Geek used one ASUS laptop with 16GB of RAM. The 26H2 system was identified as OS Build 26300.9711. Phillips averaged five Settings launches at about 1.75 seconds before the upgrade and about 1 second afterward. Based on those rounded averages, the launch was roughly 0.75 seconds, or about 43%, shorter on that laptop.
| Measurement | Windows 11 25H2 before | Windows 11 26H2 after |
| Settings launch average, five tests | About 1.75 seconds | About 1 second |
| Task Manager CPU reading at idle | 5% | 1% |
| Task Manager CPU reading under the usual workload | 7% | 2% |
| Search process memory | 49.2 MB | 1.3 MB |
| Windows Explorer process memory | 131.3 MB | 92.9 MB |
| Desktop Window Manager process memory | 69.5 MB | 62.8 MB |
| Total RAM at idle | 7.2 GB | 7.2 GB |
| Total RAM under the usual workload | 11.2 GB | 12.0 GB |
These are Phillips’s reported readings from a single 16GB laptop, not an average across PCs. He also reported no meaningful change in Start, Search, the context menu, or Snipping Tool on that system, though File Explorer felt slightly snappier.
Why lower process readings can coexist with higher total RAM
Process memory and total system memory describe different quantities. Phillips reported lower memory readings for Search, Windows Explorer, and Desktop Window Manager, but total RAM stayed at 7.2 GB at idle and rose from 11.2 GB to 12.0 GB under his usual workload. The lower readings for those individual processes therefore did not amount to a lower total in this test.
Microsoft separately says Windows can keep up to 2 GB more active data in memory rather than moving it to slower storage. That company statement is about memory management, not a measured reduction in total RAM on Phillips’s laptop.
Microsoft’s memory changes on PCs with 8 GB or less
Microsoft says Widgets load only when opened on PCs with 8 GB of memory or less, making more than 200 MB available for apps and other work. That condition differs from Phillips’s 16GB laptop test. NeoTeo previously covered Microsoft’s statements about Windows 11 on 8GB PCs.
What the separate virtual-machine test covered
GO-EUC compared Windows 11 25H2 Build 26200.8655 with 26H2 preview Build 26300.8772 using one KVM virtual machine with 8 vCPUs, 16 GB of RAM, and a 64 GB disk. It ran Login Enterprise’s Knowledge Worker 2022 workload and tracked CPU, memory, disk activity, queue length, and process count. GO-EUC says its one-VM setup did not measure host scalability or desktop density, so it does not answer how many virtual desktops a host can support.
For gaming, the figures above are not frame-rate measurements: Microsoft measured Windows interactions, and the laptop comparison reported Settings, CPU, and memory readings.
