Update : Well I went for the base 8GB model, and even when I'm opening like 20tabs or something, memory pressure comfortably green, and I'm using ~6GB out of 8GB. I'm very comfortable with my choice now, thanks to all of you guys who made me save a lot of money!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Is 16GB RAM required for future proofing my Air?
- Thread starter RegularGuy09
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
There is no such thing as future proofing, however 16 GB will enable you to work with larger data-sets and see less performance penalty for virtual machines or other things running in the background.
It is up to you to decide whether or not the cost increase (something like 10% total cost increase depending on the rest of the spec) is worth it or not.
It is up to you to decide whether or not the cost increase (something like 10% total cost increase depending on the rest of the spec) is worth it or not.
Last edited:
My feeling is if you're starting to consider upgrading things on the Air beyond the base spec (unless it's for something very specific which requires them) you should probably be buying a MacBook Pro instead.
Depends entirely if you can make use of it. 8 GB would be totally insufficient for my workload. ergo; an 8 GB machine would be a total waste of money - for me.
I'd agree with this for the most part, however a 13" pro with a working keyboard was not available when I needed to upgrade and the CPU performance was still an improvement vs. 2015. My workload isn't massively CPU heavy in any case, but it is RAM heavy. It is however exactly why I bought a pro with 8 GB last time around.
Agreed. And given what the OP stated, I believe 16GB would be a waste of money. For you and many others here, 8GB would not suffice.
For people who only check email, shop online and visit YouTube and Facebook all of the time, that would be correct. But I can think of a lot of users who benefit from 16GB - photo/video editing, programming, graphic design, CAD design, 3d modeling, music production, gaming and image processing such as you would use for diagnostic imaging.
I hold on to my macs a long time. Typically 6-8 years. Best macbook I had was a 2012 that I could actually upgrade ram and HD after it got old and slow. Really helped extend useful life for basic things another 2-3 years. So thats why I chose the i5 and the ram. I could be wrong, time will tell. I want this to MBA to be useful for my kid/student for 6 years for most basic tasks. I just felt the i5 and the 16gb ram was a better extra then a larger SSD.
I have 8g of ram but not a base model, I can't even run FB without the "This page is using significant memory" That didn't happen on my older air (2017) streaming seems to be ok (Netflix, Crave, Prime) streaming from my local news channel however has proven to require a restart every time.
I'm not sure what's going on with this current generation but to expect 5 years from this current model of Air is not realistic in my opinion, I don't think any computer is meant to last that long now?
There's a difference between buying for expected needs and "future proofing".
You're doing the former - you've thought about your future needs over the expected time you'll keep the system, and made a conscious choice accordingly. "Future proofing" is more about just blinding throwing money at an upgrade you have no idea whether you'll need.
I dont use FB, but I do use twitter a lot. Yesteryday I had an obscene amounts of tabs open(I have this habit of opening a silly amount of tabs, and then reading them and closing them one by one), which consisted of reddit, some forums, and mostly quora. If I had to guess, I had like 30-40 safari tabs open. The memory pressure was yellow.
HOWEVER, I didnt even ONCE saw any sort of slowdowns. The machine was running smooth. There was no overheating, or any sort of fans coming on, or any error messages.
You must have something running in the background to cause that issue. I can have multiple FB tabs open and I never see that message on the base model.
IMO having only 8gb RAM won't be the thing which makes your MacBook air obselete down the road.
It's the slow low powered processors (regardless of whether you go i3,i5,i7) and the poor sustained thermal performance in them that will limit their useful lifespan and guarantee its shorter than the previous model.
That and the switch to ARM which will likely see them largely abandoned by Apple in 5-7 years time.
I say all this as someone who owns a 2020 MacBook Air and think it's a great machine provided you don't go crazy with the upgrade options and can accept the use cases it's designed for!
It's the slow low powered processors (regardless of whether you go i3,i5,i7) and the poor sustained thermal performance in them that will limit their useful lifespan and guarantee its shorter than the previous model.
That and the switch to ARM which will likely see them largely abandoned by Apple in 5-7 years time.
I say all this as someone who owns a 2020 MacBook Air and think it's a great machine provided you don't go crazy with the upgrade options and can accept the use cases it's designed for!
Last edited:
And I never claimed it was, of course its not. Just replying to the poster saying one Facebook tab was enough to cause RAM to run out, which didn't match with my experience!
I'd like to also recommend to be careful when watching numbers in Activity Monitor. It's been a while since I've used macOS (besides the used MBA 2015 I bought and used HS and Mojave), but even back with Leopard, Panther, Tiger, and Snow Leopard macOS manages memory quite well. If you watch Activity Monitor you may be questioning if you did get enough RAM or not.
I use Xcode, Visual Studio, VS Code, Teams, Safari, Twitter, Music, Pages, Numbers, etc. and while I see my memory levels go up, its still in the green. macOS and the FreeBSD elements can manage memory far better than Windows. So unless you see the pressure hitting orange or red colors, you're fine (to be honest, I don't know if it does change colors in Activity Monitor).
I just opened all of those up, every single one of them at the same time. Memory still under 6.55GB. And for the coding ones, they had solutions loaded and building too.
I'd wait until Apple Silicon Macs come out, ESPECIALLY when it comes to the MacBook Air (as there is a whole thread dedicated to people modifying the stock fan because Apple's cooling for the 2020 Intel-based Air was markedly insufficient.
But past that, seeing as you can't upgrade the RAM later, it's sensible to get as much as you can now. Apple is likely not cutting off Macs based on RAM amount before they are based on architectural/generational processor features or lack thereof. 16GB is definitely more comfortable, even for basic things like web browsing.
I agree with this completely. An Air i3 can be purchased for $850 at BestBuy if you give them your email address and become a "member". For most people it's all one needs for business tasks and general consumer photo, music and video apps. Great screen, keyboard, good battery life and portable.
The same model with 16GB will cost you $1200 at Apple. Thats $350 dollars for some future proofing. Thats 41% of the cost of the base i3 at Bestbuy. For the ability to maybe help with some web stuttering? No thanks.
I have yet to have my web stutter, but granted I'm using Safari natively with an AdBlocker. So.... yeah
If you're seeing website stuttering it isn't going to be due to RAM.
Remember - macOS has a very efficient virtual memory system, and will utilize the SSD if it truly needs more than the available physical memory. And at ~1200MB/s the SSD is fast enough you likely wouldn't notice - unlike the old days of slow spindle drives.
Thank you for the insight. I'm not seeing it but some posters are reporting it and saying its a reason to go to 16GB. I do not agree with this.