Stick with 16GB for browsing and office work.

No.

16GB is plenty for Windows 11 with a browser and Office open. Even if you have fifty Chrome tabs, you’re not hitting 16GB unless you’re also running a virtual machine or editing 4K video. I’ve been on 16GB for years doing exactly this, and it never stutters.

32GB becomes useful when you’re doing real multitasking — multiple virtual machines, heavy photo editing, data analysis with huge datasets. For email, spreadsheets, and YouTube? Overkill.

Windows 11 is actually pretty good about memory management. It’ll cache stuff in free RAM to speed things up, but it won’t slow down when you hit the limit.

That extra money is better spent on a faster SSD or a second monitor. Future You will notice those upgrades way more than unused RAM.