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.
M2 mba - 16gb ram u notice any difference with 8gb?
- Thread starter ipos
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
how many people here have both an 8gb-ram M2 air and a 16gb-ram one? how could anyone make that comparison?
Get the highest memory capacity you can afford. No, it won't be a waste.
No... I mean sure it won't hurt if you have the extra $200 but if all you're doing is browsing Mac forums and making flyers for your bake sale then it's not going to help. Maybe if you're someone who likes to keep a crazy amount of tabs open or feels the need to use Google Chrome.
What I would make sure to do is get a large enough SSD for all the stuff you want to keep. For light usage that also might be the base 256 GB spec
I returned 8/256 and received yesterday my 8/512. That’s plenty for me. For work I use the office pc’s. I wanted something light for surfing/emails/YouTube etc. I don’t run heavy apps nor do video/photography/gaming. I don’t even have time to get into any of that stuff. It’s running fine smooth and fast.
Did you notice any speed difference between the models with launching or using apps like Safari or office apps?
I think it’s important to make sure you have enough storage especially on a laptop because you won’t always be connected to Wi-Fi and carrying around and external SSD is annoying in my opinion.
I'm currently on an M1 Macbook Air with 8gb ram and it's maxed out on memory utilization in Activity Monitor. I'm not doing anything crazy -- Messages, Spotify, Slack, Firefox tabs, Chrome tabs. My recommendation would be 16gb ram minimum and 24gb if you can afford it.
but are you experiencing anything detrimental because of it? or is it simply what you're seeing in activity monitor?
Why can't people realize that some "tabs" are extremely memory hungry so putting a few apps and saying "tabs" gives no information. I've seen a single tab in Safari take up close to 3GB (looking at you Facebook). There are some very resource hungry websites out there.
Additionally, there's more to memory than just utilization. If everything is working as "normal" then you haven't hit the threshold.
I tried the base Air in the store and maxed out the RAM with a bunch of tabs and an iMovie export. GUI slowed and resizing windows became choppy. Big delays when switching between tabs in Safari. IMO Apple shouldnt showcase that model...I was not impressed.
What I do not know is if this issue will disappear with 24GB RAM and a faster higher capacity SSD. If anyone can chime in, would be appreciated
3 GB for a Facebook tab in Safari? Are you sure you don’t have an NSO group safari extension running in the background? 😂😂
I’m going to check when I get home but I’m pretty sure I’ve never had it use that much. That’s crazy
That’s what I figured. Maybe I’ll get the base M2 Air for my brother as a gift.
I suppose my take is that the M2 MBA is a relatively powerful system and fitting only 8Gb RAM limits what you can do with it in future IMO. Seems a shame to llimit what the laptop can do for the sake of another $200 on a $1200 laptop. You can always add more storage via USB, cloud or a NAS. If you buy the system with 8GB that's what's it's stuck with for the life of the device!
That's how I see it anyway. If you're only buying the base model and don't want to spend the extra money for 16Gb then you might be better going with the M1 MBA as the M2 isn't worth the additional money unless there's a specific feature in it you really want.
That's how I see it anyway. If you're only buying the base model and don't want to spend the extra money for 16Gb then you might be better going with the M1 MBA as the M2 isn't worth the additional money unless there's a specific feature in it you really want.
if i could do all my work (with 20 safari tabs, notes, mail, calendar, messages always open) and then editing in rapidweaver or affinity photo (for example; and i did say 'or'...) on a 2016 12" with apples lowly 'm3' chip (funny, that name), and 8gb ram... then my soon-coming M2 air (8/256) should kill my previous experience.
but that's just me, here....
but that's just me, here....
I've seen the same thing! Makes me loathe meta even more... (and yet still using it - maybe it's self-loathing?)
Granted it may be after extended use as it's on my 27" iMac which I never shut down and it has 24GB of memory. But occasionally I'll get the "this site is using too much memory" in a Facebook tab and when I check it's well over 1GB and as high as 3GB. Usually if I've been watching videos or watching a live feed.
do you at least sleep your imac? anyway, it's worth rebooting occasionally; it 'flushes' the ram˙, and a clean start can be a very-useful thing...
Facebook tab open for 5 minutes while I've been browsing it:
At the same time another tab has been open for hours:
If you’re just going to browse the web, go for the 8GB model.
But if your browsing is going to include the Facebook website, you’ll need 16GB. 🤣
At the same time another tab has been open for hours:
If you’re just going to browse the web, go for the 8GB model.
But if your browsing is going to include the Facebook website, you’ll need 16GB. 🤣
Last edited:
Experience isn’t necessarily a good indicator of how much RAM you need. I’ve tried my workflow on a base M1 MacBook Air, and though everything felt responsive, Activity Monitor said I was using 5GB of swap.
The super fast SSDs of the Apple Silicon Macs are a blessing and a curse. They make it a lot harder to tell when you’re pushing the RAM to its limits.
experience isn't a good indicator? am much more concerned with how things perform (apps, the OS) then what's happening under the hood. millions of macusers have never opened activity monitor; they just work, surf, whatever... and enjoy using their macs.
Millions of mac users may not have a good reference point, and may not know what they are missing. They may be accustomed to the slight hesitations in switching apps, tabs, etc., and not realize that if they had more ram these hesitations would have disappeared.
Sure, they are happy in their ignorance, but their perceptions do not mean that more ram would not have improved their experiences further.
MacOS will show it is using as much memory as your machine has. However, that really doesn't mean all of the RAM is actively being utilized at the moment. What you need to focus on is the memory pressure reading, That is a much better indication of active RAM usage by the OS and apps.
i ran my life on a 2016" macbook with 8gb ram, and never felt any 'hesitations'.
having a good experience is just that; one does not have to be constantly comparing it to how 'better' it could theoretically be. and that doesn't make people 'ignorant'.
for most computer users, the reference point is simply their own experience, they're not up half the night running benchmarks on 2 macs (for example), or stressing about the things we do here on the macrumors forums...