Yes. I see majority of people trying to sell their M2/M3 Airs for 95% of what they paid for it. The best is when they use it for 2 years and it's plastered with stickers all over it.
Saw an ad the other day for a used M1 Air for $1000 LOL.
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Are any 8GB M2 or M3 owners thinking about upgrading to the base 16GB model?
- Thread starter Jacoblee23
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Yes. I see majority of people trying to sell their M2/M3 Airs for 95% of what they paid for it. The best is when they use it for 2 years and it's plastered with stickers all over it.
Saw an ad the other day for a used M1 Air for $1000 LOL.
No.
Actually I had moved from 16GB M1 to 8GB M3 and did not feel any difference in day to day operations. So I dont feel any need to upgrade just for increase in RAM. I might in 2026 opt for a lighter Macbook Pro with M5 or whatever will be the current CPU.
Actually I had moved from 16GB M1 to 8GB M3 and did not feel any difference in day to day operations. So I dont feel any need to upgrade just for increase in RAM. I might in 2026 opt for a lighter Macbook Pro with M5 or whatever will be the current CPU.
The other option is ignore all that and just go by feel. If it's too sluggish for you then consider more RAM.
Just picked up a newly arrived "new" base model m2 MBA that comes with 16gb memory. Best Buy already had them on sale for $799 down from $999 retail price. I picked one up. Light work load here, nothing fancy but even though it's the older m2 chip, it was too hard to pass up on 16gb memory for that price.
Nice that they basically dropped prices by $200 by updating the base ram. Now you can get 24gb/512 for $1499 in the 13" variant. My brain likes shiny new latest and greatest things and wants the M3 24gb, but I know I have probably zero need for it
Nice that they basically dropped prices by $200 by updating the base ram. Now you can get 24gb/512 for $1499 in the 13" variant. My brain likes shiny new latest and greatest things and wants the M3 24gb, but I know I have probably zero need for it
Maybe true, but there is the WANT factor. I just upgraded my M2 Air to M4 Pro MacBook Pro. Not that I really needed it, I just wanted it. That is enough justification.
why take a serious nosedive on trade-in / resell value now?
..Why not just use the device that worked fine before 16gb was announced as base model, and get that nice ram upgrade next time you're due for a new laptop as a bonus?
..Why not just use the device that worked fine before 16gb was announced as base model, and get that nice ram upgrade next time you're due for a new laptop as a bonus?
The juice from a M1/M2/M3 to M4 upgrade isn't worth the squeeze, unless you have specific RAM or storage requirements that are causing you problems. Otherwise the ROI is poor on that small of an upgrade.
I did jump from M1 16GB RAM to M4 Pro 24GB RAM. Even THAT jump I didn't do for true "Needed it" reasons; I will appreciate the better speed but could have done fine without it. I just had another use case for the M1 mini anyway, so took advantage of the opportunity to upgrade.
I did jump from M1 16GB RAM to M4 Pro 24GB RAM. Even THAT jump I didn't do for true "Needed it" reasons; I will appreciate the better speed but could have done fine without it. I just had another use case for the M1 mini anyway, so took advantage of the opportunity to upgrade.
Trade ins are even worse for desktops. If I update my M1 iMac (16 GB RAM /1 TB SSD) at some point, I will definitely be selling carefully on eBay. The completed auctions for comparable machines come up around $1K, whereas Apple will give me $305 or less. That's just an insulting amount of money!
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you sir, are a good influence. Best Buy dropped the price this morning on the 24gb/512ssd to $1299. I took back the M2, paid the difference, and am an even happier camper now. That is a smoking good price for the specs and my use case
Obviously you have never talked with my spousal unit.
Excellent, enjoy your new machine. Wants sometimes supersede the needs.
I bought the base M2 8GB because my needs are pretty basic and I believe reprentative of a large portion of the everyday consumers: Mail, Messages, Safari, Notes, Photos, iWork, MS Office, and occasional ChatGPT. It runs smooth as butter on the latest version of Sequoia. For me, there is absolutely no reason to sell or trade in my base M2 at this time. I will only need to get through one more major MacOS update after Sequoia, which should not be a problem. Then, Apple will be due to release a new MBA model, and I will consider trade in at that time.
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I always say, people underestimate what 8GB can still do. Or they overestimate how much most users do.
Why short change yourself, wait for the M7. Then wait for the M8. M9. It is a vicious cycle, waiting for the next greatest system.Don't be a sucker! If you wait that long, you might as well get the M6...
Seriously, the only real reason to upgrade is because the machine is not getting the user tasks accomplished. Be it a memory or system upgrade.
I upgraded from a M2 Air to a M4 Pro, same memory and SSD. Did I need to upgrade? Nope, nope. I upgraded because I wanted to upgrade, not because I needed to upgrade. There was no justifiable reason to upgrade my machine. The addition of the SDXC slot is a bonus but not necessity. Thunderbolt 5? I have nothing that uses Thunderbolt 5 and probably won't for several years.
If I had a lot of dollars I would have opted for the M4 Max, 8 TB SSD, 128 Gig. Would I get my work done any faster? Maybe a few seconds which I use now to scratch myself. But I don't have the dollars and the occasional scratch is a welcome relief.
its still weird to me Apple directly sells M2 13" MacBook Air but not the M2 15" Air, only the M3 version.
They must have a TON of inventory of the former.
Well, the 15" M2 MBA was released afterwards and likely didn't make many in their original run.
Wouldn't fit well in Apple's price ladder strategy either.
I'd at least wait until M4 Air is out next March. It's only a bit over 3 months away.
Yeah and I wouldn't be surprised to see another $100 discount on Black Friday and Christmas for around $649. I would also keep an eye out on that 15" M3 model as stated before I don't think two 15" models sold at the same time makes a ton of sense for Apple given how they like to structure their price ladder.
I think we will see rock bottom prices at Black Friday and/or Xmas time. Just need to wait it out, now is the worst time to get rid of perfectly working 8GB Airs. If someone is willing to take the loss on their 8GB Air and pay to get 16GB then may as well wait for M4 to make it more worth it. The performance bump from M3 to M4 is pretty substantial.
Unless you're short of RAM (as in, your work is running slowly or there are things you are unable to do on the machine that you need to do) I'd be sitting this one out.
But - if you do need more resources (as opposed to just wanting the new shiny), now is probably a good time to jump. Apple trade in values might suck but selling yourself is probably better, and values are only going one way from here.
But if you can wait, the m5 or m6 will likely be better next year or the year after
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as per a comment above - unless you're doing something specifically memory hungry (virtual machines, large projects) 8 GB is probably still good for general desktop stuff.