M2 MacBook Air - How Much RAM Do You REALLY Need?
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- čas přidán 3. 06. 2024
- How much RAM do you really need for your M2 MacBook Air? is 8GB enough? Or should you pay a bit extra to get 16GB? Possibly even 24GB for the hardcore multi-taskers out there? In this video I compare all three models, and tell you which one to go with.
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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:47 Unified Memory Explained
01:51 Is 8GB of RAM Enough?
03:04 You Might Need 16GB…
03:54 Creative Workflows
05:07 Video Editing
06:50 3D Workflows
07:24 Gaming
08:11 Multitasking
09:11 Who Should Get 24GB of RAM?
11:18 16GB of RAM or 512GB SSD?
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I'm in the 16gb minimum camp always as macOS is just Unix and inherits the aggressive disk caching of Unix. macOS alone eats 5gb and does everything it can to prevent purging memory hence the swapping aggression.
In a unrelated note, are you a Canadian or American CZcamsr? Just curious.
Please make a video on Cores and GPU for MacBook M2 air
I wouldn't use a hard drive now days, I would use NVME SSDs or even a SATA 3 SSD, is MUCH faster than a hard drive, also SSDs cut down on weight,but if you must have a hard drive,make sure its a 7200RPM hard drive.
I will say,IF I can get around it,I won't use a Mac laptop/an Apple laptop,due to their lack of memory/RAM/there is no 128 GBs of RAM option,also the limited internal SSDs situation/multiple internal NVME SSDs aren't an option,my laptops support 3 SSDs,which allows me to put my OS,on one SSD,my project/emulator/testing environment on one and I can have the other SSD for storage,which splits up work loads/storage/the OS and allows for A LOT faster/more efficient work loads/work environments, Apple's desktops are great used as remote servers/to utilize their power,but for on the go or portability, I prefer the MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V, which has the i9-13980HX,128 GBs of RAM,a 4090 and a 17.3inch 3840x2160p 240HZ display,which allows me to emulate different environments , for testing and if its an Apple project,it allows me to do most everything,in a much better work environment, before switching to an Apple laptop,for final testing/I have the latest pro M.2 Apple laptop,but its limited,for my work loads,due to screen size, RAM capacities, internal SSD configurations and so on, I do offset somethings by connecting to my Apple desktop,which offers more RAM and I also connect/use my other desktop too,which has an i9-13900ks a 4090, 9TBs of NVME SSD storage and I have Manjaro and Windows,on all of my computers as well.
Memory compression. The MacOS uses memory compression to dynamically store data in ram, which is not swap and is always used first since Mavericks. All this talk of memory and swap is therefore misleading. Your Mac will compress memory long before is swaps, and swap is now more of a last ditch attempt to allocate more ram for processing rather than the first step on a memory constrained system.
First video I've ever seen that offers a summary beforehand for the "in a rush" crowd. I honestly never comment either, but felt the need to do so to highlight that. Thanks for doing that!
The quick verdict that you wrote at the beginning of the video is highly appreciated.
Dude i love that you included the summary at 39 sec, thank you
2:34 Swap is not the only tool macOS uses to manage memory. You’ll notice in Activity Monitor that it also measures Compressed memory. With the rise in CPU speed and core counts, macOS monitors current memory demands and CPU load, and decides whether it would be faster to compress low priority data in memory instead of swapping it to storage. So if a Mac has a lot of CPU cores and enough unified memory is available, it may be more likely to use memory compression to save time over swapping.
Thank you for that summary at the start of the video! It shows your genuineness in conveying your message!
Thank you!! You are the first one I’ve seen talk about VM’s - great video! - no hype, smart assessment
16gb is the sweet spot. Buying a $1200 laptop with 8gb makes no sense. I could not afford 1400 laptop, so I bought an m1 with 16 as the same price as an m2 with 8gb. I am happy. That m1 16Gb is wonderful, I use revit, solid works through parallels and I have no problem.
finally an engineer with macbook. do you install the x86/64 version of revit and sw2022 on the win11 arm vm? i just got an macbook and thinking how to get things to work
I'm thinking of doing the exact same thing. Looking for a new laptop for casual use (have a pc for anything more demanding), and am impressed by the battery life of apples new skew. However I want it to last at least 3 years and is doubtful 8gb will do even for light tasks. In my region m1 16gb is about 1500 USD while m2 8gb is about 1600 USD. Upgrading m2 to 16 gb is almost 2000 USD and that's more than I'd like to spend for a casual computer.
Don't need the newest processor cause a 1 year difference is not really gonna affect any uni student...
@@Dftba_hitch 8gb is not enough in my opinion. Why? Because that ram is not just the processor ram but the gpu ram at the same time. So, buying and m1 with 16gb is also a laptop with a better gpu, overall performance. For casual use maybe 8gb is ok. But $1000+ for a 8gb ram……
Does solidworks run fine? Is 16gb enough for vm's bro? I'm in a dilemma between a Mac and windows, I just needed some software rarely for my project works other than I'm a browser and pdf based user! Help me out!
The overview at the beginning is a genius idea,everyone should do it, as a reward I watched all the ads, comment and thumbs up and the 40 second I watch is liquid gold
I am a full time teacher and part time game dev. I occasionally use Parallels to run Windows, and spend a fair amount of time developing in Unity and Construct 3. I almost always have 17 - 18 GB of RAM in use. 24 GB of system RAM is exactly right for me for right now. 32 would be overkill, and I would be using swap with only 16. I know the video-production-centric users out there might feel they can use more GPU cores of the Macbook Pro for rendering, but for my game dev use the macbook Air with 24 GB is cheaper and more performant than a 16 GB macbook pro. The pro is sub par for my use case in every respect that I care about.
The key here is that for me 24 GB of memory enables me to do everything without constantly relying on swap memory. 16 GB wouldn’t be enough. Assuming the 13” mba I bought lasts for another ten years like the previous one did, even 24 GB is going to get tight in short order.
Bottom line: 24 GB is the best deal around for most people if they are planning to keep their laptop for 5+ years.
Thank you for the summary at the beginning!!!
This comparison is very clear and it is the definitive answer to most of our questions :)
Finally a precise video about this topic. Thank you!
In my honesty opinion, I think the 16GB RAM would be the sweet spot for many moderate users (including myself), at least for a MacBook Air. Heavier users of business applications, and university students, and for occasional light photo and video editing. That amount of RAM (16GB) would also provide some future proofing for those who would be planning on keeping their machines for a long time.
Totally right
I did buy the 16 gb ram variant. But I have noticed that there is almost 4 gb of cache. I am new to MacOS so I have no idea if its normal or how to clear it.
@@nicholasmushi6311 my m1 pro has 5gb cache.
The fact that there is even an 8gb option is a smack in the face. I don't care if it's a light operating system or not, 8gb of ram is not ok in ANY computer. Even smartphones are starting to get 16gb or more
@@billjamal4764 yes! yes! I couldn't agree with you more on the 8GB RAM. It's just like how I don't think the 256GB baseline storage is sufficient enough nowadays. Apps alone also take up a sufficient amount of storage nowadays.
Thank you for the quick summary snapshot. Liked and subscribed coz of that screen!
Great video, straight to the point with all the required details. Thank you!
Would be interesting to see the good old M1 Air 8/256 at the side with those numbers.
Thank you so much! Finally I made my decision through your video 😊
Very informative and clear video.
Thanks a lot!
Thank you ... Crystal clear explanation!
Really informative video. Thank you 😊
Very informative and pragmatical comparison - PERFET: your summary math the beginning. So the viewer can decide on hits own, if and how long he want to follow you... 👍👍👍
Thank you sm for the video. Exactly what I needed for my buying decision, actually explaining the relevance between the RAM option, the opposite of what far bigger youtubers have been doing. Congrats!!
Great video, great content, you definitely solve many doubts..
Definitely have my sub. This video answered all my questions. Going for the MacBook Air 15 inch for extra screen real estate 512 gb for the faster ssd speed and 24 gb ram as I have a lot of apps open for multitasking 😊
big thanks for the quick answer in the beginning
Very informative video thx. I don't have any doubt anymore
Well, I'm pretty happy with my 8gb M2 macbook air (base model). I have like 15 tabs on safari + light python coding + Capture One editing on a 1300+ photo catalog. The system makes a wonderful job managing the resources.
I recently purchased air m2 8/512, after watching this kind of videos where was told that 8 gb is not enough for coding(i am a student, learning python) i got really disappointed, does it really handle well? How do you think for beginners during the work will be lots of problems or freezes?
@@insanandabekov240 for coding is more than enough, specially now that most of the packages I use are supporting Apple Silicon natively. If you are going to train really big models for machine learning, not even 32gb will serve you well (better to use a cloud service). M2 macbook air offer incredible battery life, portability, a very nice screen and trackpad so I thing is great.
And even more important for me: is fun to use, I just want to spend hours and hours with my mac, and that help me to practice more. That's the real reason why I choose it over the 14" pro.
maybe you need more for video editing but I've done some video editing with base config no problem, also base config has longer battery life, (7 core GPU/8GB RAM and 256 SSD). Plenty for most tasks. Higher config may run hotter and throttle more due to no fan at least on M1 not sure if M2 air has fan.
Would the 8gb be enough for Microsoft office - excel, ppt?
@@bokuwatoki5983 yep I have Office 365 installed and use my work subscription to activate. All apps including teams now run native on apple silicon and it is fast on base M1 MacBook Air
So helpful. Thank you!
As a student with a gaming pc already, went for 16gb/512 in silver, cant wait until it arrives
6:41 THANK YOU. For real I'm tired of the tests only taking into account rendering, while it's not that important if it's not unconcievably slow. Which it won't be on these machines. Timeline experience is much, much and much more important. I'd rather have a two hours export for a 10min but butter smooth editing than 10s rendering and terrible timeline experience.
You genuinly earned a subscriber and a like just for that lol.
This video is outstanding!! Thank you. I got the 15” Air in Space Gray with 16GB RAM and the 512GB SSD. It’s spectacular and I never see the spinning beach ball with 30 browser tabs, video editing, photoshop, etc all open and running at the same time. I sold my 16” M1 Pro MacBook Pro because I like this upgraded 15” Air so much more.
who actually opens 30 browser tabs lmfao. Seems a bit overkill but with what you are talking about doing the Air should have never really been in your consideration. People with super heavy work loads like yourself should ONLY be looking at the high end pro models.
A very balanced view. Thank you so much. Confirms modern OSes handle RAM really well thanks to swapping but, crucially, compression. Granted there's CPU cycles to spare effective RAM can grow several gigabytes. That's why modern macOS (Maverick onwards) can manage huge amounts of memory when running non-intensive, burst-wise programs (web browsing, office, background processes ...) with aplomb while won't be as effective if the CPU is busy, having to resort then to conventional purging / swapping.
Cheers very much. Good info. I'm at the crossroads, looking at all the signs right now. Thinking Pro (for the first time ever).
I just got the 13.6 M2 MacBook Air with 16 gigs of ram memory, and 512 SSD storage. I've been a Windows desktop user since 1999 with Windows 98. My last Dell desktop had Windows 7 pro with 2T hard drive because I had a website, building my own web pages. That's why I upgraded my ram and storage, even though I don't have a website anymore. This is my first laptop, and I love it, very user friendly. I kept the 8 core GPU though, cause allot of reviewers on here said there wasn't that big a difference with the 10.
I've bought and gone through maybe ten different laptops and I find the sweet spot in both MAC and Windows to be 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD.
I’ve been using M1 macbook air for 2 years now. I am a web developer.
20 chrome tabs +
mysql client +
local server +
2 editor +
finder +
apple notes +
terminal +
2-3 other apps always open, and I never faced any issues when I thought I should’ve gone for the 16 gb version… Totally flawless
Hi. For coding which one should i choose? 8/512 or 16/256. Which one u suggest (im a RN developer)
@@Ayrtonsenna75 16/256 cus u can get external ssd
Why do people make such a big deal out of Chrome tabs? On my iMac 2011 with 12gb ram I recently casually ran 100 chrome tabs in the background and had no issue.
Hey I want to buy a MacBook Air M1 or M2 but not sure which one I need, literally all I want to do is trade on it I wouldn’t be using it for anything else. Just need something that is fast and can have a few tabs/apps open but I definitely wouldn’t have as much open as you do, my friends say get at least 16 ram but I don’t think I need it at all looking at these comments. Im so lost which one to get
@@Razertw Chorme is famous for being a browser that takes a lot of PC resources, RAM included... So when people use loads of tabs, they're mostly likely using a lot of resources... Safaria will be less taxing on your mac and give you more perforamce for example...
I was actually in a rush, so thank you for the "preview" but i have to boost the algorithm in some other way...
Thanks for the video. You provided me with exactly the content I was looking for. Thanks for sharing relevant content for people who are between the very basic user who opens one app at time and gamers/creators. 🎉
I have a 16' MBP with 16GB of RAM. I can do pretty much anything without swap kicking in. Under normal conditions, doing school work and not caring what's opened etc, I usually do not use more than 10GB of RAM. If however, I run Blender or sth.. I have to close everything else. 16GB is not enough for 3D work. When you aren't rendering, it's never really a problem. But even a simple scene will take 5-10GB of memory to build and before you know it, you're swapping RAM. The most I've ever used in blender was like 75GB to build a scene during a 16K render and the laptop just crashed.. So.. 32GB for 3D, maybe even more.
I like the way he gave a TLDR version. Great works!
I am subbing due to the summary for the in a rush crowd. W
Great video, thank u.
Thanks a lot! Ur's really helps!
So for my 3D modeling i decided to go with the extra 512gb of storage because you get the extra gpu cores. That boost from the cores to me was a no brainer because of thermal throttling. The ram can be useful but in a couple years I’ll be upgrading again and have my main PC for the extra power IF I need it. So far it’s been plenty powerful
I opted to upgrade to the 512gb instead of the ram for the same reason. It has more cores, plus the store upgrade was more worth it cause of school and photo/video editing. I know 8gb is enough for my use case.
@@Clt.princee exactly. Like these things are shockingly powerful. They can even game now (even though more devs need to make stuff) that along with the form factor of the m2 air you just can’t beat it in terms of quality and performance to get stuff done in my opinion. Developers are keeping it in mind of those with 8gb of RAM as well. So most of the time you prolly wouldn’t notice it with how well developers optimize their apps on Mac OS. Awesome that you’re loving it and went the same route!
@@TylerKhan Right! I love the design and portability of the M2. Even though the M1 was on sale, it was literally the same design as my 2019 intel MBA so I didn’t really see it as an upgrade. Glad I went with the M2.
What configuration did you get?
@@sunitjoshi3573 I went with the configuration with the more gpu cores and 8gb of ram. It comes with 512gb ssd and only 8gb of ram because with thermal throttling, 16gb of ram isn’t fully used.
I got the 32gb M1 Max with 10 core cpu simply and base gpu.
I need to work fast and my pc has to work properly.
Love it
amazing, thanks for the tip on gaming, i was debating whenever i pay extra for ram or not or just get a 8gb ram, but i guess in the end it depends on how much i can pile up, prices are absurd, cheapest one comes at 1500$ and most expensive 1700$(price for imac 2021, 8 core gpu and cpu for touch id and extra gpu and fan for highest performance 1500$, and 200$ extra for 8 to 16gb although even with disconts best i can get is 8gb if i rush and i get it off 200$ so i pay 1300 for mid tier version, while high end comes at no discont 1700$ 400 above the price).
I worked with a developer that had a M series macbook pro of some sort last year in a software development environment. I don't know how much ram he had, but I'd assume he had 16gb. That would be fine for 99% of software development, and honestly 8gb is probably also fine for 90% of small software projects and even web development. However, in our case, we were maintaining and adding features to some system that was importing hundreds of gigabytes of data from various third party providers, and migrating that into our client's databases. This system runs on AWS instances with 64-128 gigabytes of ram to perform these data transformation and migrations.
The developer I was working with could not run locally one of the transformations because his macbook pro would run out of memory and freeze up mid-way through. Whenever we had to test changes to this particular migration, unless we wanted to provision another EC2 instance, we had to use my workstation, which was a retired gaming PC with 32GB of ram that had become my main work PC.
For a pure consumer device, 8GB of ram is still plenty. 16GB of ram is honestly where I'd start for a machine that has to do proper "work". Personally 32GB is my desired amount for a "work" station as, in addition to my previously mentioned anecdote, it just gives so much more capabilities. I can run multiple VM's / docker containers and have multiple projects open and running while developing some systems. For instance, there are multiple projects I've worked on where I need a linux dev environment as well as a windows server to run MS SQL server and .net. Instead of running a windows workstation and linux workstation side-by-side on my desk, I run the windows workstation on my linux workstation in a VM.
More commonly though, vIdeo editing with multiple imported source files becomes very smooth with more ram. I wouldn't want to do more than clip together multiple 4k video files in a timeline with anything less than 16GB of ram.
I'd also choose RAM over SSD upgrade since Macbook Ram's aren't expandable and external ssd's are much cheaper compared to built in Mac ssd's. Very good review sir. Keep it up
I have the 2020 M1 Air. Great machine. Any I usually don't have much more than Mail open while watching CZcams videos, maybe NeoOffice also. So nothing really huge. And yet, especially after watching a few videos I get the message saying that RAM is tight and if I wnat to free it up. Now I can deal with this, takes about 5 seconds to clear up until the next time it happens.
I never get this on a 2015 2.2Ghz Air with only 8 GB RAM running Monterey. My wife also never got it on her 2012 unibody with 8GB running Mojave. Of course he computer is now getting a little long in the tooth and judging by my experience with my M1, and know how she freaks anytime some uninvited message pops up on her screen, when the time comes, I'll go for the 500GB SSD and 16GB RAM for her.
yeah seems like the m2 air with 24gb of ram will be perfect for my workflow. development can use so much ram even if nothing is that cpu intensive
I got the 16gb m2 off the education store for coding. The ram really helps day to day use.
I'm blown by how well the 16GB version of my wife's MBA works. I was hell bent on getting a 64GB system. I'm entirely re-thinking that.
SO true what you said about rendering is only a fraction of work
You need 16 gb period. 24 is overkill, but 8 you're definitely on the line. I've had 8 gb on both a PC and a mac, and i've constantly run into resources issues for my general workflow. Even with just web browsing. We also do a lot more video calling these days, and that sucks up a lot of memory, and normally when video calling, you are sharing content etc. Go with 16!
Boy am I late to this party :) With that said, this was one hell of a party, and I'm glad I joined, albeit late. I do want to chime in, I wonder if the tests would have yielded different scores if you used M2 MBA w/1tb of storage, which will have the fastest SSDs (i believe 1tb and above have faster than 512, and 512 is double the speed of 256gb), and will work better with memory swap. Not that I blame you -- even if you're returning these, buying three M2 MacBooks Air with 1tb, with those different RAM options, would make this quite an expensive video. I just wish there was a way we could get those benchmark numbers with 1tb SSD versions of the computer.
I have a Mac mini M1 base with 8 gigs of RAM.
I mostly use my Mac mini for making music and logic I don’t use a lot of sample based instruments it’s mostly just..
Even bringing in projects from my old Intel Mac that were using 16 gig I’m still not seeing any more than 45% memory pressure I’m not saying anymore swap than I am when I’m watching CZcams and twitch with a few tabs of each open..
I’ve been monitoring the hard drive read and write using i-STAT menus which basically gives you a live feed of the activity monitor in the menu bar..
As much as I would love to have 16 gigs I’m not even utilising the eight gigs that I have to a point that would warrant me needing 16 gigs..
By the time it comes to a point that I need more RAM the M1 chip won’t be powerful enough for my needs and I’ll end up getting a new machine in a few years..
So personally I would equate my 8 GB Mac mini to the same as my old 16 GB intel MacBook.
I’ve edited videos on my eight gigs without any issue at all..
And to be honest it wasn’t any different to my custom built PC with 64 GB of RAM and a 3080 TI, obviously the 3080 has its advantages because da Vinci resolve is able to leverage the power of a dedicated graphics card..
But all in all I don’t feel like I’m disadvantaged in any way shape or form with my M1 Mac mini and I absolutely didn’t need to get the 16 gig which I didn’t so I’m very happy with my choice
the summary given at the beginning of the video shows that this channel deserves to be subscribed
If you are a developer I recommend getting 16 gb one. You can live with 8 gb but feel yourself very limited, and pressure on ram rises too.
32GB seems to be the most common choice for Macbook Pro among software developers. For example profiling tools require lots of RAM. I have even seen crashes on 16GB system as the data capture ran out of memory and swap wasn’t fast enough.
I was until recently creating music on my late 2013 MacBook pro. The Air M2 base model is totally fine for music production.
What configuration did you get?
Well as an MacBook pro owner Created Tech is my only tech channel choice
I am used to desktop pcs with atleast 32gb. I thought with 18 having to close background apps while working would bother me but honestly it helps me focus better
I have the 16GB, 8 Core GPU, 256GB SSD. Amazing computer. Ive never noticed any slowdown with the lower storage because I don’t work with large files. I use for Android, iOS and Flutter development and I have used Xcode and Android Studio simultaneously but still not faced any problems. the machine is beast 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Hi brother how to buy macbook air M2 15 inch with 16 gb ram.
Here no where in stores available 16gb ram
I’m really close to ordering the very same one, I’m just on the fence about the 8-core , or I should get a 10-core one. Do you think yours handles video editing (premiere pro) smoothly? I’d really appreciate feedback
@@martinturon4799 Hey sorry, I dont use the premiere pro or any video editing tools so cant comment my experience but I asked my friend and he said its doing good job with his needs(editing with 2-3 layers with 1080p and 4k) but it may vary with whats your need. But if u ask me I think there is not much difference between 8 and 10 core in practical life. So if money is concern get 16 gb Ram with base model 8 core and u r good to go.
@@eternussolutions1084 I got mine (16 gigs/512 gb) few hours ago and my god, this is a smooth machine... thanks!
Nice video, congratulations! What is your Mac configuration recommendation for those who are going to use data analysis, both on Mac, but also need a virtual machine with Windows 11 running Power BI?
The beauty of getting 24Gb RAM is that you can run Windows in an virtual machine with 8Gb allocated (using UTM, for free, not the Parallells scam which is $90 per year), and the remaining 16Gb allocated to MacOS, and essentially get 2 ultra-fast laptops in one.
Well said, this is my current style of use.
Did you get a 24GB one?
“scam” lmao, because it's a paid software?
Wait! Are you telling me I could play my whole steam library on it if I do that?
@@Smokeybanjo It's virtualization, it's slow af compared to running native on a machine. Forget Gaming.
I have the 16GB, 10 Core GPU, 256GB SSD. Amazing computer. Ive never noticed any slowdown with the lower storage because I don’t work with large files. I use safari, office, email, and specialized economic modeling software. Everything works great.
your modeling software takes advantage of the 10 core GPU right?
Only 8GB can slow down. 16GB will work fine.
@@kelvinkms3671 agreed! 16gb is also a lot more future-proof if you keep your laptop for 10 years like I do.
Any issues with throttling and heating? I’m thinking 16/512!
@@beri232 With the price of the MacBook Air, it would be better to get the base model and buy cloud storage + external memory, perhaps. Safer and also uses funds for a future upgrade, instead of wasting all resources on a Mac that, at the end of the day, is not made for heavyweight tasks and won't have the thermals for it, no matter the RAM bought.
I bought the base mode MacBook Air m2. By the time you add ram and bigger hard drive may as well get the 14inch pro . The base model works perfectly for normal computing tasks. As if you need more power then that it’s probably the wrong laptop to buy
that is just not true, the 14inch pro starts at 1999$... thats like 700$ more if you just upgrade to 16gb and 512ssd
@@sayanskywolf13 in the uk it’s only like £500 more that the base MacBook Air m2
Best Buy just had the Mac Book 14 in M1 Pro on sale for 1599, if they bring that back around Thanksgiving, that is the way to go.
Are you related to Optimum? you sound a lot like him and have similar video style, I love this
Have 8GB of RAM on my Mid-2012 unibody and that allows me about 40-50 open Brave tabs with smooth running.
Interesting stuff. I was thinking of getting an M2 Air instead of upgrading my iPad. I have an iPad Pro 12in (the original iPad Pro). I am currently running a 14in Mac Book Pro M1 with 16GB Ram and 1TB HD (the mid-grade model if you buy at the Apple Store) as my main laptop for creative work. But I usually travel with my iPad. So I wanted something light and portable for light work while traveling and in the past the iPad was almost there but you just can't do certain things on an iPad that you can do with a laptop (Apple must hold back the tablets so you still buy a computer). I've been traveling with the 14" and gotta say it's actually lighter and less bulky than my 12" iPad after I put the logitec case with built in keyboard (with the idea to make it laptop replacement), but if the Air is even more portable, and I can leave my $2500ish laptop at home, I think it would be nice to have the second laptop for "non-professional" work and as a basic computer at the park or coffee shop. With the option to occasionally work on some higher caliber stuff if I need to (which is why the iPad as a laptop replacement sucks) and not worry as much about drops, spills and even worse since Apple care doesn't cover, theft. I remember my iPad Pro when I bought it was almost if not just as much as the M2 Air is today. So I wonder if the 8gb M2 Air would be a better alternative to an iPad Pro with a keyboard if someone wants a casual computer for travel and non-office/studio environments for quick work in the cloud. And I wonder bang-for-buck wise, if the 16gb option would be better than the 8gb option as an iPad Pro replacement. Thanks.
If you just need an extra travel laptop, get the base M1 Air. For daily tasks it’s awesome. The only bad thing IMO is the terrible webcam, which isn’t great for video calls. But it’s not worth paying so much more for a better cam on the M2, as MacOS now allows you to use an iPhone as an even better webcam anyway, if you need it.
@matthewg.garcia9415 Similar to me. I am a graphic designer and have a MacBook Pro 16" Intel i9 16GB 1TB, which is big and does all the work very smoothly. I mean, I really can't complain at all about this laptop. It's amazing in terms of productivity. The only downside... is that it is very big and super heavy. Apart from being a graphic designer, I'm also a content writer, and writers love to take their laptop everywhere to get inspired :D but I can't do that with this huge laptop. So looking for a small, light laptop, where I can do this writing thing and occasionally, very occasionally, if I happen to be travelling and need to run Adobe Illustrator, I can still do it. I also have an ipad pro, where sometimes I draw, but apps on tablet do not have the same features as on a laptop. As you said, they still want us to buy laptops. :D
What did you end up getting? And how is it going?
Would running multiple apps and web tabs with 2 external monitors deplete more RAM? Can you make a video on this?
Playing league, discord multiple tabs at the same time and some ocasionally video editing on premier.
What do you recomend?
Super helpful, many thanks. I need 16GB.
I have 8gb ram and I run 5 desktops with around 5 chrome tabs on every desktop on average. Also 4 to 5 apps running all the time but somehow it works fine, no issues so far.
I have the 8 core 16/512 M2 Air and I would definitely not want less ram. I am not a pro user, literally only use it for school and the sims. When I have like 5 Safari tabs open, Spotify open and Onenote for school, it always uses around 10 gb ram. I am REALLY glad I spent the extra money on upgrading the ram
Damn, MacOS must be absolutely garbage optimize.
@@Hgaara0204 Nah, it's the same on windows and probably the same for linux as well. It's more to do with the software itself and if your computer has the excess ram capacity it will use it instead of handicapping itself for no reason.
Any issues with throttling and heating so far?
@@ZahBroskeeit is not the same for Linux at all that is the most crackhead statement I’ve ever seen. I can have 100 tabs on a 2014 4gb ddr3 laptop when running arch Linux.
As a Windows user of the past 22 years and Mac in 10 years before that, I presume that the Mac's OS has better memory management and needs less power, like Linux, than Windows. But moving from academia to the business world made Windows a requirement. To me, XP SP3 made it tolerable, 7 improved and 10 is sort of OK. Except, with layer's on layers of cosmetic changes called improvements, the overhead load increased too and at the same time apps on this platform became less and less frugal in resource usage.
So it depends on our applications.
When my previous powerful workstation died on me, I thought to replace it by a 12 core 16GB RAM notebook with discrete GPU that has its own 4GB video RAM. That notebook has Thunderbolt 3 and formally supports 2 displays of 4K (which its internal is).
At that time, I moved to a mirrorless camera system and at that from 24MP to 46MP.
With two 4K displays, Adobe's Lightroom Classic (LrC), and these 46MP raw images, I ran into the problem that LrC calculates previews based on horizontal display resolution (that's 7,680 for 2x 4K display).
The short version is that with the help of senior techies from Adobe and the notebook's manufacturer, I was not able to get this to run so stable that it would not crash. To work, it needed a cod reboot and nothing started so I could open LrC.
Nothing else. Try to go to Photoshop (Ps)? Crash. No blue-screen, just a stop and reboot.
As I had hoped to make this a success, I concluded I could not. Goodbye to a 100 Watt (plus 2 displays) system. The notebook now demoted to the studio as tethering station with an empty LrC catalog that collects shots from the camera so these can be reviewed on the larger (15") display.
The replacement that does the job?
16 core workstation running at default 5.1GHz with 64GB of the fastest latency RAM. This has Thunderbolt too, e.g. for the card reader. The GPU sports 11GB of very fast video RAM. In it, there's a RAID 0 array of smaller SSD drives that store data volumes of very high Write/Read character: LrC catalogs, cache, pag file. This build scored 98th percentile in the SPEC benchmark at the time it was new - everything running at default speed. Oh, there are a few RAID 1 arrays in there as well for (generally write once) read many volumes, at the level of the Intel chipset. Aside from raising availability, these also can make reads faster.
Yes, it is very fast, in the Intel/Windows world, now about two years later.
How much of that memory do I really need? It depends of course on what is open.
With my 46MP raw shots, I easily exceed 8GB of video RAM in the GPU, so an upgrade to a newer GPU with 8GB - many power gains in these newer cards are targeted at games and a bit of video - does not seem worth my while. The base RAM frequently exceeds 32GB and incidentally 48GB. I have no problems processing very large images (32,000 pixels on one side) - for example stitching a bunch of these into one gigapixel image in Ps take there from LrC. While having several Office apps open, and several browsers, and play a 4K video, and a few smaller tools.
Issues?
Well, in the last 12 months or so, more and more software developers (or maybe the compilers they use for their apps) have "discovered" the GPU as processing powerhouse and base graphics plus LrC using the GPU in raw processing no longer have exclusivity. Rather, I see all sorts of apps hogging the "video memory" space. Consequently, I can run into a graphics memory shortage when ai have a few folders open set to extra large icon view and holding thousands of files each. That did not happen, say, a year ago, when Windows Explorer had not "discovered" graphics processing and memory yet.
The workstation sports a 750W "Titanium" class PSU that is very efficient an probably should have been 850W or more in another efficiency class. With two of these workstations running, with their displays and some NAS storage, I guess the associated energy consumption is some 3,000 kWh per year. Imagine I could replace this all with ARM-based architectures ...
Personally to me it doesn’t matter how much ram I have on my MacBook, but when it comes to my iMac I need at least 16 or 32.
I bought the 8gb (M1) Air. I must admit I do regret not going for 16gb, the lack of ram causes me quite a few issues.
Care to elaborate? What tasks are you doing on the laptop and what issues are you facing? I'd help me with my decision
Thanks
10:56 MacOS tends to fill out excess ram, caching parts of opened programs for quick access. But it'll gladly dump that ram if it needs it. "Unused memory is wasted memory."
That's what memory pressure indicates, it doesn't account for RAM that's being used as idle cache, so that's why the graph is so low.
Do you think the 8gb would be ok for light video editing in iMovie? I am just going to be transferring files from my iPhone, editing them (mainly cutting and spicing and adding background music and then uploading them to CZcams? This is the first computer I will have had in YEARS. I am currently doing everything on my iPhone 12 pro and it works fine, I just want some more fine tuning. Great video.
What would be a better upgrade for the 15” m2 the ram upgrade or the storage upgrade as I am thinking of using this computer for at least 6-7 years
8 go sticks for coding. Having google chrome, vs code, Spotify, notion, research tabs, terminal. 8gb struggles a lot.
Have 8GB 2018 Macbook Pro Touch Bar i5 and doing great for me. Even can do some easier video edits in After Effects (not that video editor), use Photoshop, Illustrator etc, but mainly using Sublime for coding part. Only thing today is battery. Using many many tabs at once. But i'm exited for M3 chip and looking for possible update. If M3 arrives I believe Macbook Air will be great one with 16gb 512ssd. Only thing is the missing fan... will it affect a lot if at some point I want to Edit more videos.
Downside is, that newer Macbook's gives you less usb-c ports (MBY M3 will change it). Currently have 4 of them by default and it's great. 3 should be default as minimum.
My macbook M2 is 24 GB RAM. I develop apps with vscode and emulators, and consistently consume 16-17 GB of RAM.
Any issues with throttling and heating so far?
can I use 256gb ssd and 24gb RAM? it's good or not? I want to develop an apps
Agree. Same here, use xcode, android studio and react native on my machine. Aswell as other dev tools like proxy servers for example. Often push 18 to 19 gbs, sometimes a bit more. 16 was ok on my old m1 mac mini, but my mac mini m2 with 24 gigs flies and doesn’t seem to throttle as far as I can tell.
gooddd video!!
Planning to buy macbook air m1 base model. My current workflow is:
Browser with ~15 tabs, Intellij(for coding), discord, ms to-do app.
I'll use fl studio & some graphic designing tools later. What do you think?
Very clear, excellent. thank you. I need a mac to compile nodejs and run a local server. In my case, I think it takes more cpu than Ram.
I feel like if I'm going to upgrade, I might as well get an M1 Pro 14" MacBook Pro right away....
Running ml with 8gb is a pain. Anything slightly more advanced goes oom very fast! Even 16 isn't enough
I have a Mac Mini with 16G ram and a 512 sd and the TV app with files on an external HD takes a full 12 seconds to open.My older mac did not take this long.
What would you recommend for someone owning a Ecommerce business? Mostly using 10-15 browser tabs, slack and discord, lots of excel sheets and i need to store like product photos and descriptions
What do you guys think is the best macbook for graphic design, I’m a second year graphic designer and still don’t know what to get
Thanks looking at m2 air 16 gigs ram makes sense
What do you recommend, m2 8gb ram or m1 16 gb ram?
Swap memory isn't just a mac thing. In windows you can literally customize your swap size.
I think the Macbook pro I'm on right now is fine for running apps in Chrome. Also slack teams zoom. Maybe some video and photo editing for social media like IG. This is for a college student, and simply needs a battery. Over on the Windows side my daily driver at 4gb Ram still seems to do fine for chrome/teams/slack/zoom basic business.
“Diminishing returns” should be the Apple by-line.
They love to overcharge for upgrades at the point of sale.
Totally agree. 16 GB of ram is the best config for casual users but also the base config for pro users.
That goes for Windows and Linux as well. 16gigs of ram.
Sorry. If I choose MBA M2 256/16 instead of 512/8 will I feel a big difference in speed working with editing short videos and multitasking (8-10 tabs, CZcams, Canva …) ?
@@angelinakhotulova9305I am planning to get this one too, what do you think abt it 8 months later?
why
Every created tech video: Unless you edit high resolution 4K videos and game seriously on your Mac, you don’t need that 16GB RAM.
Me: I’m *both*