Is 24GB RAM overkill for MBA?

[VigneshB]

As others have already mentioned, the more RAM you provide, the more your mac will use.
Thus, am not a big fan of keeping my eye on Activity Monitor constantly. Though, if you are frequently running up the swap memory, you DO require more RAM.

As per Apple’s guidlines:
16GB: Ideal for browsing online, streaming movies, editing photos and video, gaming, and running multiple everyday productivity apps.
24GB: Recommended if you will be multitasking across a large number of memory-intensive apps, including audio and high-resolution video editing.
32GB: Best if you typically work on advanced projects that require enormous files and content libraries.

My personal take is if you’re someone who needs 24GB, you do be better off with the Macbook Pro(yeah, I do get the air is more portable!). The value proposition of the Air starts dwindling once you start stepping up from the base model. I do think the 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD with the 10 core GPU is the sweet spot for the Air.

 

[geta]

As others have already mentioned, the more RAM you provide, the more your mac will use.
Thus, am not a big fan of keeping my eye on Activity Monitor constantly. Though, if you are frequently running up the swap memory, you DO require more RAM.

As per Apple’s guidlines:
16GB: Ideal for browsing online, streaming movies, editing photos and video, gaming, and running multiple everyday productivity apps.
24GB: Recommended if you will be multitasking across a large number of memory-intensive apps, including audio and high-resolution video editing.
32GB: Best if you typically work on advanced projects that require enormous files and content libraries.

My personal take is if you’re someone who needs 24GB, you do be better off with the Macbook Pro(yeah, I do get the air is more portable!). The value proposition of the Air starts dwindling once you start stepping up from the base model. I do think the 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD with the 10 core GPU is the sweet spot for the Air.

I will have to disagree with you, for research purpose that involve 40-50 pages open in Safari or other browser, plus a few other apps that also open, MBP wont give any advantage over MBA with 24GB RAM.

 

[VigneshB]

Oh yes, I agree. In such use cases, the MBA might be the apt device more so fiscally.

I was saying in a more general fashion and also with regards to OPs stated use cases. There will be certain use cases which will go against my take!

 

[theluggage]

As others have already mentioned, the more RAM you provide, the more your mac will use.

...if there's unused memory, MacOS will use it for caches etc. which might give modest performance gains but aren't essential. It's not going to waste - but you could live with less. My 32GB Studio is currently "using" 18GB (not running anything heavy right now) - but its not currently doing anything that would cause a 16GB machine to break a sweat.

Thus, am not a big fan of keeping my eye on Activity Monitor constantly. Though, if you are frequently running up the swap memory, you DO require more RAM.

Of course you don't need to keep looking at it, but if things feel sluggish the only way you'll know if that is due to lack of memory is to look at Memory Pressure (rather than Memory Used) in Activity Monitor.

From Activity Monitor "help":

Your computer’s memory pressure is accurately measured by examining the amount of free memory available, the swap rate, and the amount of wired and file cached memory to determine if your computer is using RAM efficiently.

...and it's swap rate that's the killer - not swap usage. Having data put out to swap while it's not being accessed is not an issue, just swap working as intended. The problem starts if data is having to be rapidly shuffled in and out of swap.

 

[danpass]

Absolutely, and if I waited just a couple of months I would have gotten the MBA4 with 32gb of RAM.

Any stock market trading program quickly maxes out the available RAM. I need to restart the trading program every couple of days on my 16gb M1 Mini but rarely on the MBA3 24gb.

 

[kk123]

If the extra 8GB costs $50 instead of $200, we would not need this discussion

I was using M1 pro 16GB and even basic browsing (10+ chrome tabs) would have non-zero swap usage. Opening another software (3D slicer) can easily cause memory pressure. Now on 24GB M4 it's all green again, not necessarily much faster but it's at least satisfying.

 

[Torty]

SW and RAM usage is highly connected. I can only tell that my usage did not change I never had RAM problems before but now I experience those. (Stuttering music and yellow RAM pressure level)

The stuttering music was due to the Amazon Music app. Was fixed with an update. With all the discussions about longevity and RAM: Don't forget the aging battery.

So in a few years there might be the question to invest money into a battery change or put this money into a new machine with new SOC, better display etc.

 

[SmOgER]

It's an overkill if you don't do AI inference or extreme multitasking, yes. We should also probably distinguish laziness and a true multitasking - just because you keep 50 tabs open in your browser it doesn't mean you are using or even need all of them. And if you don't need them you probably won't even notice that your oldest tabs are no longer in ram.

As for memory hogs and memory leaks, remedying that with more ram is like sweeping your problems under the rug until your rug can't cover them anymore. Open activity monitor and kill them instead.

 

[StoneJack]

16 is fine, 24 is more a luxury, if you ask me. I do 4K Final cut pro video editing on on 16GB MBA M4, smooth as butter

 

[Basic75]

Why not get a PC then with 128GB of RAM and 4TB SSD? Your requirements might change.

If you get a PC you can usually upgrade the RAM and the SSD later...

 

[Meedoss]

Got a mini M4 24/512gb, not seeing any difference v my 15" M4 16/512Gb with my ASD.
Should I?

 

[geta]

Got a mini M4 24/512gb, not seeing any difference v my 15" M4 16/512Gb with my ASD.
Should I?

It depends on what you do... if it's just basic daily tasks, then no.

 

[Meedoss]

It depends on what you do... if it's just basic daily tasks, then no.

Dang could of saved 300 bucks lol no sure will keep it anyway can't get a sale for my 15" M4 Air.

 

[Apple_Robert]

For the OP's use, 24GB was wasting money. 16 GB would have been fine. There is no such thing as future-proofing. People on the forum need to stop buying into that myth (read: lie).

 

[SmOgER]

For the OP's use, 24GB was wasting money. 16 GB would have been fine. There is no such thing as future-proofing. People on the forum need to stop buying into that myth (read: lie).

Most people who were "future-proofing" their ram 2-3 years ago on their MacBooks have likely already replaced them for never models for unrelated reasons if anything. Other than those niche cases I mentioned above, having more ram with system latency becoming smaller and internal storage becoming faster is a shrinking factor, rather than it becoming more relevant. I would argue iPhones themselves are giving you degraded performance sooner than any Apple silicone MacBook did thus far.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Most people who were "future-proofing" their ram 2-3 years ago on their MacBooks have likely already replaced them for never models for unrelated reasons if anything. Other than those niche cases I mentioned above, having more ram with system latency becoming smaller and internal storage becoming faster is a shrinking factor, rather than it becoming more relevant. I would argue iPhones themselves are giving you degraded performance sooner than any Apple silicone MacBook did thus far.

As to the bolded part, I think that that is a fair assessment barring niche phone users.

 

[Big_D]

As to the bolded part, I think that that is a fair assessment barring niche phone users.

I think it very much depends on the use case. We have forcefully upgraded about a dozen users over the last year that were on old SE, iPhone 8 and iPhone 11 devices at work. They get the opportunity to get a new phone every 2 years, but we had to drag most of them kicking and screaming to a new phone by enabling MDM rules that blocked old iOS versions from accessing email, Teams etc. They were perfectly happy with the old phones and didn't want to go through the hassle of upgrading.

Likewise, my M1 mini was fine (16GB), but the work Air (8GB) became unusable with Teams and Parallels after the Tahoe update. If it hadn't been for that, I'd probably have held off upgrading until the M5 Air came out... Likewise, we have Windows users at work on 8 year old machines who are fine and don't want to upgrade, because it "disrupts" their work, others with 4-5 year old machines are crying for new ones, because they feel so slow - mainly Teams users.

 

[geta]

For the OP's use, 24GB was wasting money. 16 GB would have been fine. There is no such thing as future-proofing. People on the forum need to stop buying into that myth (read: lie).

For most daily tasks 16GB will be fine, especially if you plan to keep it only for 2-3 years. But for someone who keeps their laptop for 5-7 years or more, extra RAM and storage is good investment.

also, if someone not sure they need more RAM, they probably don't need.

 

[Apple_Robert]

For most daily tasks 16GB will be fine, especially if you plan to keep it only for 2-3 years. But for someone who keeps their laptop for 5-7 years or more, extra RAM and storage is good investment.

also, if someone not sure they need more RAM, they probably don't need.

Mock my post all you want with the laugh emoji. What i said about future—proofing is a fact. People use the term to try and rationalize an emotional purchase.

 

[Ron3945]

If hou want to run one or more instances of windows on a virtual machine on you MBA extra memory is usefull

 

[Torty]

...

Likewise, my M1 mini was fine (16GB), but the work Air (8GB) became unusable with Teams and Parallels after the Tahoe update. ...

Tahoe eats so much RAM that it makes a previously functioning system unusable? Wow. I will stick to Sequoia as long as possible.

 

[geta]

Mock my post all you want with the laugh emoji. What i said about future—proofing is a fact. People use the term to try and rationalize an emotional purchase.

Future proofing is real, whether you like it or not.

Not everyone replaces their laptops, phones or iPads every year. Most people outside of these forums keep these products for long terms.

 

[Big_D]

Tahoe eats so much RAM that it makes a previously functioning system unusable? Wow. I will stick to Sequoia as long as possible.

It depends on what you are doing with it. I run Outlook, Teams, Brave, Safari, Swyx, Microsoft Windows App (Remote Desktop), TeamViewer, Parallels with Windows on ARM, running a couple of Windows only tools (E.g. Swyx Manager, which is a Microsoft Management Console snap-in), plus Excel and Word.

That ran fine in 8GB until Tahoe, but struggled after the upgrade. But that is an extreme number of applications for many people, I would think. Also, Teams and Outlook are particularly lardy applications.

But there is a reason why Apple now say 16GB is the minimum going forward, especially if you are using the AI features.

 

[Christopher Kim]

I used to be of the view that erring on side of more RAM for potential "future-proofing" purposes was the wiser decision. Over the years, my tune has changed, mostly because as I was honest with my actual needs, they were pretty minimal. I recently upgraded from a 2021 14" M1 Pro MBP which I upgraded to 32GB / 1TB (cost around $3k), to a base model 15" M4 MBA 16GB / 512GB that I got on sale on Amazon for $1150 (vs $1399 MSRP).

I realized over time I didn't need the RAM / higher-config. And additionally, as many others have said:

- The cost of upgrading RAM / Storage to future-proof with Apple is egregious (typically $200 for every step, 16gb > 24g > 32gb)
- If you can get away with the base model, and can wait a few months, you ALSO get the benefit of discounting (will only speak for those in the US). But that's only on base models. If you want an upgraded BTO config, you have to go through Apple and pay full MSRP

So it's a double-whammy if you have to upgrade.

Take my 15" M4 MBA. I paid $1150 for the 16GB / 512GB base model. If I wanted to get 24gb / 1TB (a very reasonable upgrade), it would be $1799. That's $650 more, or 56.5% higher price, for the same machine but just for some future-proofing. Is that worth it?

If you don't know you need the higher mem / storage, I've moved more to the perspective that it's better to just buy the base model, and 3-4 years down the road, if your needs change, just buy the next base-model, and get the newest technology to boot. Not for everyone, but I think more and more people fall into this bucket, now that the M series chips are so powerful.

 

[Meedoss]

I used to be of the view that erring on side of more RAM for potential "future-proofing" purposes was the wiser decision. Over the years, my tune has changed, mostly because as I was honest with my actual needs, they were pretty minimal. I recently upgraded from a 2021 14" M1 Pro MBP which I upgraded to 32GB / 1TB (cost around $3k), to a base model 15" M4 MBA 16GB / 512GB that I got on sale on Amazon for $1150 (vs $1399 MSRP).

You mean you downgraded in everything except M4 chip.
Yes I have a 15" 16/512Gb M4, wouldn't buy another air, apples lcd screens are no better than 10 years ago imo.