For myself, I ordered the 32GB. For my work, I have to deal with hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of 50MB raw files at any one time so I figured 16GB might be pushing it a little. I noticed the software I'm using takes up 10GB in Activity Monitor on the MM2018. Although memory usage should be much more efficient on the M2, better to err on the side of caution😆
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Mac Mini m2 Pro - 16GB vs 32GB
- Thread starter icemantx
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Thought I'd add my experience so far with the M2 Pro (16GB Ram). I am a light user with a reasonable amount of stuff open (20-30 safari tabs including 2-3 YouTube videos, a couple of Firefox tabs, Spotify, Outlook, Word and a couple of other light programmes, e.g. calendar and reminders). It uses as much ram as my Intel 2018 i7 (16GB Ram) model. Dare I say it, slightly more on rare occasions.
The only difference is that no swap is used with the M2 Pro mini, at all. I have never seen swap use more than 0 bytes. With my Intel mini, I always had 2-4GB swap used. It is worth noting that I have experienced some orange memory pressure where I never experienced that with my Intel mini. I am slightly surprised by this, but I don't think it is worth returning for a 24GB M2 non-pro mini or paying a huge amount more for the 32GB RAM given my light use.
Edit: I am returning the M2 Pro. My patience has run out.
The only difference is that no swap is used with the M2 Pro mini, at all. I have never seen swap use more than 0 bytes. With my Intel mini, I always had 2-4GB swap used. It is worth noting that I have experienced some orange memory pressure where I never experienced that with my Intel mini. I am slightly surprised by this, but I don't think it is worth returning for a 24GB M2 non-pro mini or paying a huge amount more for the 32GB RAM given my light use.
Edit: I am returning the M2 Pro. My patience has run out.
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I've had the same experience. I've had my M2 Pro (16/512) for a week now, and upgraded from a 2018 i5 with 32GB RAM. My daily workflow is having all of the following apps open on a single 43" 4K display: Mail, Reminders, Finder, Calendar, Calculator, Safari (~6 tabs), Citrix Receiver remote session to work, Messages, Settings, Zoom, and Activity Monitor (only temporary as I wanted to monitor the memory pressure my routine was creating). This created so little memory pressure you could barely see the green line on the bar graph. Yesterday I did some 1080p video editing in iMovie, and also did a Handbrake encode for a different video at the same time. Both videos were 43 minute long 1080p videos, and with both of those processes running on top of everything else I had open, the memory pressure stayed in the green (bottom 1/3 of the graph), while the CPU load rose to about 93%. No beach balls, no freezing... YMMV, but in my experience 16GB of RAM on an M2 = 32GB of RAM on an Intel i5.
I ordered 32GB not because of the memory usage I have today but what things will look like over a long enough period of time. My current machine is over 5 years so unless something dramatic happens I anticipate keeping the new machine for at least five years.
16GB might be fine for the next few years but I don't want to have to replace the machine just because of memory pressure down the road.
Makes sense.
For me, I am going to stick with 16gb and if my needs change in a few years, more than likely it will be more than memory alone that triggers an upgrade. Upgrading the computer was not something I was able to do without selling my iMac and buying it all over again. Now with the M2 Pro Mac Mini + Apple Studio Display I can upgrade my computer when needed and keep the ASD.
We finally have a true "headless iMac" combo with the M2/M2 Pro Mac Mini + ASD.
We had this before albeit many long long years ago (Mac Mini around 2011 and the Apple Display) which was also a great combo at that time... We have it again now and even better ;-)
I just got back from the Apple store to replace my 16GB 512GB SSD Mini M2 Pro with a 32GB 1TB SSD Mini M2 Pro.
I now can't even get into the yellow memory pressure, even if I try hard. No swap use. Totally as expected, of course.
This decision on 16GB vs 32GB depends entirely on your usage and if you're happy for swap to be used.
I now can't even get into the yellow memory pressure, even if I try hard. No swap use. Totally as expected, of course.
This decision on 16GB vs 32GB depends entirely on your usage and if you're happy for swap to be used.
Multiple Adobe products open, multiple Chrome tabs (a large amound but not too crazy), Plex server running. It didn't take too much effort.
Loading a few decent sized Kontakt libraries an easy way to get yellow/red memory pressure with 16GB. Of course you could always run w/purged samples.
Not too surprising. If you run a couple of VMs that can also instantly consume 8-12GB depending on what the VMs are.
I just want to use the computer and not worry about performance bottlenecks based on usage.
$400 is a lot of money or maybe not so much for this peace of mind.
Yeah - 16GB of Crucial DDR5 memory for a “normal” computer only costs $75
I have to get a PC for work, and I was shocked by how inexpensive it was to add another 8 GB of RAM to it.
I get there’s the ”Apple Tax,” and I’d choose a Mac over a PC any day, but damn… 400 bucks for an extra 16 GB of RAM is ridiculous.
I'm not here to justify the Apple tax, but it is what it is.
I got my 32GB Mini yesterday, set it up from my TM backup and have been playing with it.
I'm not even doing most of what I normally would be doing and you can see that it's already using 20GB.
I'm glad I got the extra RAM. There will be enough headroom for me to have some other things going like iPhoto, a VM, etc. without the machine bogging down a bit due to running out of RAM and moving to SWAP.
I'm not even doing most of what I normally would be doing and you can see that it's already using 20GB.
I'm glad I got the extra RAM. There will be enough headroom for me to have some other things going like iPhoto, a VM, etc. without the machine bogging down a bit due to running out of RAM and moving to SWAP.
But your memory pressure is very low! Still in green. Could you show the same, while having a dozen of YouTube videos waiting in the background, in your internet navigator, and if possible VLC with a 4k movie waiting also in background, with music playing, and opening a few large pictures/photos in Preview or with Pixelmator (if you have it)?
Memory pressure is green because there's nearly 20GB free.
The point is if I had 16GB I would certainly already be swapping and I'm not even doing that much with the machine at the moment.
Can you show any quotes for 200GB/s RAM? That's what you get in the Pro.
Typical DDR5 tops out at less than half that - mostly around 1/3 that. Even the priciest. And that isn't cheap once you get the DDR5/7800+.
Yes, I agree Apple charges a premium. But it isn't 4-8x what it's worth. On the open market, to get RAM at 1/3 speed, looking at the top end, it's about half the price Apple charges.
You mean 20GB used (from you picture above), so about 12GB free. So yes, with 16GB, you would been creating some swap file. Memory pressure would also be higher, maybe in yellow?
Not necessarily swapping. Your memory composure would be different, MacOS would compress more RAM, and less would be cached. That might mean still _no_ swapping. I didn't see if you posted your Activity Monitor's Memory tab or not, but that would suggest more the full story.
Later edit: Saw it. You're using about 16GB, but the method of use would change if you only had 16GB on the machine - more compressed, therefore it's not completely clear that 16GB RAM would necessarily be noticeably different.
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It would be great to see an apples to apples comparison (see what I did there - LOL) comparing an equally configured M2 Pro Mac Mini WITH 16GB vs 32GB in real world comparisons. I have not seen that yet for the M2 mini.
ArtIsRight has a few charts that are close / interesting. Personally I find sitting through long YT videos to be unbearable, so apologies on this. I haven't seen a Toms Hardware or Anandtech review yet that goes into that detail.
My expectation would be these are mostly edge cases that only those who do this 8x5 would ever care about. Even just going 8->16 exposes some of that; 16->32 even more so.
I used to think the same, but the truth is once you've started hitting the new limits in RAM is's likely that the machine will pale in comparison to newer minis on the market.
Where I live, the (NZ$700) price premium for the additional 16GB equates to a 33% of the price of a new base model. Better, I think, to save that money now and put it towards a new M4 or M5 model in a few years time (which may well come with 32GB as standard).
@foo2 Is correct, there would be more compressed memory. When RAM is freely available MacOS will put it to good use, if less is available then it tries to compress and squeeze things to fit. Think of it like packing your suitcase. If you have two suitcases then you don't have to worry so much about having enough room, but with a single suitcase you'll cram as much as you can into it.
I recently returned a 32GB M2 Pro Mini. I don't have screenshots available but noticed it was using 20GB RAM, no swap, and thought "so glad I got 32". After returning the Mini I opened the same apps on my 16GB M1 MBA and surprisingly it only used 13GB. I still think 32GB is the right fit for me but 16GB wasn't that restrictive in comparison.
You mentioned that you are returning it...returning it for 32GB? Returning for just an M2?