Best configuration for new MacBook Air

[philpalmiero]

I’m planning to order a new MacBook Air. It will be used by my son, a student he will mostly be using Office, email, and surfing. Is it worth upgrading to 32GB of ram? I have the M2 MacBook Air with 16GB and I think it’s fine. But with AI etc maybe more Ram is needed. Idk

 

[Apple_Robert]

For his use, 16GB of RAM will be more than enough.

 

[dizmonk]

For his use, 16GB of RAM will be more than enough.

I completely agree with one caveat. It depends on his major. Assuming he is a college student or going to be one, some majors will have more demanding computer tasks. If it's a STEM discipline and you expect it to last him, I might upgrade the RAM to 24. When my daughter started college I got her the 24GB/1TB configuration a few years ago.

 

[raythompsontn]

Stay with the base model with 16 Gig. Nothing he will be doing in college for the next 4 or 5 years is going to stress the machine. Save the money that would be spent on memory on something useful. Stay with the minimum SSD size and if more storage is needed just use an external drive. AI is going to run on servers, not on laptops, especially at a college.

 

[delsoul]

If it's any help, I'm still using a 2021 MacBook Pro M1 Pro base model (16gb ram, etc) and it absolutely manhandles everything I've thrown at it...gaming, graduate program at the University, massive data analytics projects, you name it. The new M4 Air is even more powerful than my laptop in many ways. For his uses, 16gb of ram is way more than enough, especially since its unified memory. Save the money on the ram difference and apply it towards books for classes, spring break, a rainy day. This whole future proof stuff...by the time that will even be a factor he'll be ready for another laptop by that time anyways. For $899 with that student discount, it's an absolute steal.

 

[delsoul]

Stay with the base model with 16 Gig. Nothing he will be doing in college for the next 4 or 5 years is going to stress the machine. Save the money that would be spent on memory on something useful. Stay with the minimum SSD size and if more storage is needed just use an external drive. AI is going to run on servers, not on laptops, especially at a college.

This is true. Some of my group mates in past analytics projects were concerned that they had older hardware (both Mac and non-mac) which might be an issue with large models and AI...wasn't even an issue because most everything was hosted services so the internet connection was the biggest factor at hand. Couldn't have said it better myself the advice you suggest. That base model M4 is staggeringly powerful and shouldn't be underestimated. "Base Model" used to be a dirty word when it came to computers, that isn't the case anymore with apple silicon

 

[ignatius345]

I'd stick with the 16 GB RAM, but I would spend the $200 doubling the SSD space to 512 GB. 256 can get filled up really quickly if you start accumulating files. On a desktop you can always just plug in an external drive, but that's not super practical on a laptop.

 

[picpicmac]

It will be used by my son, a student

You didn't say what he is studying, or where he's at in is education journey.

As such, I think you've gotten some bad advice in this thread.

Is he in college or headed there? If so, then the school will have recommendations/requirements for student computers. Be wary of getting a Mac if he's going into engineering (other than software engineering.)

If he's in high school - they just buy whatever used Apple Silicon Mac you can find w/16GB of RAM and save from buying new.

FWIW, I will never buy a laptop with only 256GB of internal storage, because I'd only buy a laptop if I was going on the road, in which case I don't want to have to deal with externals and cables. I lived overseas years ago with a top of the line PowerBook and it was great at the time, but even then I wish I had more storage (and those were the days of FireWire.)