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.