Cms4376,
There is a lot of info on the thread that nauthead kindly pointed you to, so you may just want to look at the last few pages... That thread is very long/detailed and covers other devices which may or may not be of interest to you, so you may just want to start with the last 2 pages, starting here:
https://appraisersforum.com/forums/threads/windows-tablets-for-fieldwork.191490/page-83.
That said, to cover the basic question you posed, I still favor a model with 8 GB of RAM. Apex is not very resource hungry, but "complete suite" forms software can get bogged down when the PC runs out of RAM. When a PC is short on RAM, it tries to "go to disk" for some breathing room. All storage medium is slower than the RAM on board that device, so it feels like even slower. This is particularly true on devices with eMMC storage. Hence, I believe it is worthwhile to get the model with 128GB of storage as it is the much faster SSD instead of eMMC...
You mentioned that the device would ideally be used strictly in the field for inspection duty and I am interpreting your comment about it being a companion device to mean that you envision you'd occasionally open up CF to review/edit/finalize a full report. A Surface Go 2 is a really good companion device which can do light duty "full suite" work when necessary - i.e. in the scenarios you mentioned, so you are spot on there IMHO. I would, however, mention that most appraisers I have spoken with find that theirs works so well in that regard, that they end up using theirs more for "full PC" work than they originally envisioned and wish they had spend a few dollars more to get a beefier model. Again, for what you describe, the CPU is not really the restriction that the RAM and Storage are. Unfortunately, that jump runs you about $150 more, but I believe it is worth it. FWIW, if you get the keyboard cover, I believe that the $99 plain black model is the best value, especially for field work. Those can be hard to find in stock, so you should know that the previous model's keyboards work just fine and you may be able to find one on-line for less money. In all cases, I always highly recommend the official $99 Microsoft Complete Care option which includes 2 years of Accidental Drop coverage. Best Buy offers their Geek Squad 1 yr. policy for $79, 2 years for $239, etc.
Hope this helps! If you have more detailed questions, feel free to post them on the thread listed above which I monitor more closely and also has some input from other appraisers. My final word of advice after reading your post is to
make those vacation trips not so rare! ;-)
-Randall Garrett-
+Apex Software+
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