Macbook Air M2 - 8gb Memory enough?

[Yebubbleman]

How if let’s stop the discussion? Let people with first hand experience share theirs. I believe OP is looking for advice from users with real and 1st hand experiences. Let’s don’t make it complicated.

Note: thanks God, we have “ignore” and “unwatch” buttons here, lol.

1) I don't think that'll stop the discussion. You've got people all posting from experience as though anyone with a differing experience is automatically invalidated. Frankly, people need to just search the forum for these discussions before posting new ones. People aren't doing that and it's showing.

2) Wait, where are those buttons???

OSX utilizes RAM much differently than WINDOWS. Once you get over that, you'll be fine with 8gigs.

macOS has memory compression. That's where the differences start and end. It helps a little, but only to a point.

Apple Silicon Macs have memory that all SoC components can access simultaneously, requiring substantially less in the way of transferring of data between those components since all of those components can access data in RAM simultaneously. Incidentally, that has absolutely nothing to do with not having enough RAM.

 

[saber32au]

Interesting reading!

For me, I'd hazard a guess and state 8GB is fine for the "average user" who's primary tasks are web browsing (ie emails, youtube, reading the news on news websites etc etc), word processing/spreadsheets, watching movies or listening to music etc.

The thing that I've noticed with my friends and family you just "want a computer to do stuff on" is that they generally complete 1 task within a program at a time; multi-tasking is confined to having a few programs running in the background (often these programs sit idle in the background due to the user not bothering to close the program down).

Furthermore, most of the time is spent doing things in a web browser, such as reading news articles, typing emails, watching videos and listening to music. Heck outside of a work environment, I don't know anyone who uses a dedicated email program (ie Outlook, Mail etc) to access their emails. All emails are accessed, written, and sent via a web browser...

I'd hazard a guess and state the average user wouldn't bother to open the settings to check the ram usage (or know what ram or swap memory is...or know where to look to find ram stats). So long as the computer does what the user wants quickly enough then all is well.

For me personally, I'd want 16GB ram. Granted 80% of my use fits in the "average user" description above...it's the other 20% where I need the extra ram. Plus I upgrade my computer every 6-10 years, so paying a bit more for a product to be usable for many years is worth it to me.

For what it's worth, I have (and still often use) a windows laptop (16GB ram) that is 10 years old, and have no plans to stop using it. It's still more than capable of completing all "average user" tasks I described above.

 

[ric22]

Having M-series Macs with both 8gb/256 and 16gb/512 I believe for the average user that 8gb RAM is good for the next couple of years. 256GB of storage is Apple spitting in our faces, though. It's unnecessary penny-pinching, and has caused problems for many people I know. Even 512GB is too little for me personally.

If you're a somewhat demanding user, get 16GB/512, to reduce the headaches that will less will cause.

 

[ignatius345]

Really? With 30 Safari tabs, Mail, Messages, Facebook Messenger, Maps, and the Battle.net app open (with no Blizzard game actually running) and I'm a power user for constantly getting low memory alerts? Is that how the world works, now?

I don't think you're a power user, but you've clearly got a memory leak on something you're running because I've never ever seen a low memory alert. Not once. I didn't even know you could get one, frankly. Main suspect is whatever "battle.net app" is.

I've run an absurd amount of stuff on my 8GB M1 Air (Illustrator, InDesign, Mail, Numbers, lots of Safari tabs) all while logged into a second user account as well. I don't recommend this, and frankly I spec'ed this machine for more basic use and ended up using it for design work. I'd have bought 16 GB if I'd known. Yes, things DO start slowing down, especially when switching users or working with big documents, but it remains usable and responsive way better than older Macs did. But again, never seen a low memory alert and I think it's a red flag that something is amiss in your system.

 

[geta]

Even if 8GB memory is enough for the time being for the “average user”, in couple of years it will be too less… 16GB memory and 512GB storage is the minimum, special of you’re planing to keep the MBA for more then 2 years.