Finally I bought 24GB version and I am glad I did it!
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Is 24GB RAM overkill for MBA?
- Thread starter bchreng
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It's better to have more RAM than you need than less RAM than you need, if you can afford more RAM.
Unused RAM can be used for caching stuff.
Unused RAM can be used for caching stuff.
I do a lot of fairly heavy stuff (Lightroom, Photoshop, mathematical simulations, complinging stuff) on an M4 with 16Gb and an M4 Pro with 24Gb. I can't actually tell the difference but it feels less icky using the 24Gb machine 
640k is enough for everybody.
It maybe better to have it if you can afford the price jump.
Maybe this may answer your question.
If you plan to keep the NBA more than 3 years, 24 GB RAM will be a better choice if you can afford.
What is magical about three years? I know of five year old MacBooks still running fine. My last computer was eight years old. And was still working fine. I just wanted a new machine.
Hadn't checked in on MR in a while. But this thread is on point for me.
I bought the base M2 MBA when it first came out (upgrade from an Intel MBA). The machine was great for me for a while. However I guess my usage has intensified and I am now constantly fighting the swap. It grows to several gigs in a couple of days. I rebooted an hour or two ago and it's already near 300 MB (and it won't stop there).
Broke down and ordered a M4 MBA w/ 24 GB. With the trade in value on the old machine it wasn't too bad. I did this in no small part because I don't experience any of the same issues on my M1M Studio (with even more applications open). At least for my usage the chip and the SSD don't seem to be factors but the memory is.
FWIW - I had sworn that for many people 8GB was enough. I'm not sure I was right about that.
I bought the base M2 MBA when it first came out (upgrade from an Intel MBA). The machine was great for me for a while. However I guess my usage has intensified and I am now constantly fighting the swap. It grows to several gigs in a couple of days. I rebooted an hour or two ago and it's already near 300 MB (and it won't stop there).
Broke down and ordered a M4 MBA w/ 24 GB. With the trade in value on the old machine it wasn't too bad. I did this in no small part because I don't experience any of the same issues on my M1M Studio (with even more applications open). At least for my usage the chip and the SSD don't seem to be factors but the memory is.
FWIW - I had sworn that for many people 8GB was enough. I'm not sure I was right about that.
Nothing magical about 3 years, but usually people who cares about resale value wont keep it for longer, and those who don't care, will keep it till it's useless.
Was the size of the swap file causing performance problems? Or did you just not like the size of the swap file?
On my current machine, 24 Gig of memory, with nothing running, my swap file is 256 KB, and has been that way for several days. I open several applications, about all the big ones I can think of (Photoshop and Lightroom are real hogs) and my memory is still not fully used and the swap file does not increase in size. One of those application is Parallels with a Windows 11 PRO virtual machine with 6 GB of memory allocated.
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I got mine with 512GB SSD and 24GB RAM. I tried a 14 M4 pro with 16GB. Didnt like the form factor, I think the 14 inch screen was cramped and just didnt work for me.
So I got the air.
In my perception, the air is way faster in programs opening, web browsing, etc.
Now I wish I did the 32GB.
I had an older Intel 16 Macbook Pro for a while that had 32GB, and that machine hauled ass.
I think the 32GB is worth it.
So I got the air.
In my perception, the air is way faster in programs opening, web browsing, etc.
Now I wish I did the 32GB.
I had an older Intel 16 Macbook Pro for a while that had 32GB, and that machine hauled ass.
I think the 32GB is worth it.
In my opinion, it is fine. More and more RAM will be needed down the road especially for AI features or more memory hungry apps.
It really just depends what you're using it for. As some have noted, old laptops with 8GB RAM are still running perfectly fast, for some usage like creating text documents. For your usage, I would recommend 16GB, and spend the money on more storage. External drives are a pain with laptops (unless you're using it as a desktop, in which case, get a Mac mini instead).
I went with 16GB on my M4. For the 3-4 years I expect to use it and for what I use it for, that will be hopefully enough.
The MBA replaced an 8GB M1 MBA and that really was being overstressed since Sequoia and recent Microsoft 365 updates - Outlook would take around 30 seconds to open an appointment window, complete with spinning beachball. Before Sequoia it was running fine. The company policy at the time of the M1 was 8GB, so the MBA had 8GB, this time it is 16GB, so the MBA has 16GB.
We might find that 16GB is too little in a couple of years, because AI or whatever really needs more legroom.
Usually, I would say buy as much RAM as you can afford, especially if you are planning to keep it for more than 3 or 4 years.
Luxury, absolute luxury, when I were a lad, we got a 1Mhz processor and 1KB RAM and we lived in a hole in the middle of the road /4 Yorkshiremen.
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A swap file of that size was typical for me in the past and caused no issues. However now it routinely approaches 1GB after a day of use. If I don't reboot, that will steadily climb until it gets as big as 6 or 7GB (and then performance degrades). Obviously I could simply reboot all the time (I do so each AM now), but that's annoying and reflects that I don't have enough RAM. I know this to be true because I do the same tasks on my Studio and this never happens. I'm not aware of my Studio ever using swap.
Like I said before, I was an advocate for 8GB machines for light tasks like mine. But it seems that the applications or my usage simply want more RAM. again, I could get away with what I have just by aggressively managing it. Buying a new machine is a luxury.
Interesting.
When I had my 8GB M1 Air I was running Photoshop, Lightroom, the usual office apps, etc. and my swap file never got above 1MB. When I got my M2 with 16GB I used the same apps and added Parallels with a 4GB W11 virtual machine. Swap was never an issue or performance. With the 24GB M4 I have never been able to observe the swap file above 256KB regardless of how much I stress the system. That 256 size is just a token size, a placeholder I suspect.
The M2 was not an intentional purchase. My M1 screen was getting flakey. Apple said it was my fault, I disagreed as the machine was under warranty. Apple said it was user damage which I took significant exception. Apple wanted about $500 to fix the machine. I balked and moved my way up the management food chain to some regional level. The final offer was to replace the M1 Air with the M2 Air, with more memory and storage (in-stock store item), for slightly more cost than the repair of the M1.
The M4 Pro purchase was because I wanted it, and had the money. I didn’t need it and sometimes wants trumps needs. In some ways I miss the M2 Air as it did everything I needed. 16GB seemed to be a good spot for memory for my needs although 8GB would have continued to serve based on my use at the time. The M1 was the cheapest way to get into the Mac world to see if it was a viable transition from Windows. The integration with my other Apple products (watch, TV, iPhone, iPad) was excellent. But I have not converted completely. Some things about Apple annoy me and my “muscle memory” acquired since DOS 2.0 is not a transition I want to fully commit.
The M1 processor is easily powerful enough for those tasks, and with an SSD the bottleneck shouldn't have been drive performance, so it does sound like limited RAM was the culprit. The M1 series came out in 2020, so here we are 5 years out.
As someone else on MacRumors once mentioned, Apple doesn't tend to increase base RAM often (understatement!), so if low RAM is the problem and you buy a new system in 3-4 years because the old one's slow, you may be paying to upgrade RAM then.
For me it was the number of applications that I need open for my work. Before sequoia, it was bumping on the limit, but after the second sequoia update, it was pushing a couple of GB swap and especially Outlook was incredibly slow.
It depends more on the use case rather than the number of years.
If you are just surfing the web and typing documents, your RAM needs are unlikely to rise enormeously in the near future.
I think better to futureproof than not.
I bought 16gb M1 and it was max at the time. If I was shopping now I would have definitely went for 24 or even more.
After all they are steadily developing AI, who knows what they bring with new updates! Imagine having fully-standalone internet-independent AI terminal, it will definitely use all the available ram.
But on the other hand there is also a budget, if 24gb doesn’t feel bad on wallet - go for it, but if you don’t want to overspend maybe lean for 16
I bought 16gb M1 and it was max at the time. If I was shopping now I would have definitely went for 24 or even more.
After all they are steadily developing AI, who knows what they bring with new updates! Imagine having fully-standalone internet-independent AI terminal, it will definitely use all the available ram.
But on the other hand there is also a budget, if 24gb doesn’t feel bad on wallet - go for it, but if you don’t want to overspend maybe lean for 16