MacBook pro M2 16Gb vs 32Gb

[Rain92]

Hello , i'm thinking to buy an MacBook Pro M2 , but im undecided if i should get 16gb RAM or 32Gb.

I will use It for manly for Writing and for multi tabs.

 

[floral]

16gb is plenty. Contrary to popular opinion, multiple tabs is just fine on an 8gb. My entry level laptop with 4gb ram can handle 15 tabs without refreshing, surprisingly. So, I bet a 16gb laptop would be great for your use :D

And my iPad Pro with 8gb ram can save up about 25 tabs in the background with no refreshes.

 

[Rain92]

For Writing i mean using Scrivener

 

[ilikewhey]

Hello , i'm thinking to buy an MacBook Pro M2 , but im undecided if i should get 16gb RAM or 32Gb.

I will use It for manly for Writing and for multi tabs.

i would go with 32, if you plan on keeping the mac for more than 5 years, apps will keep using more and more ram as the time goes. just compare how much ram snow leopard took up vs ventura.

 

[CalMin]

16gb is plenty. Contrary to popular opinion, multiple tabs is just fine on an 8gb. My entry level laptop with 4gb ram can handle 15 tabs without refreshing, surprisingly. So, I bet a 16gb laptop would be great for your use :D

And my iPad Pro with 8gb ram can save up about 25 tabs in the background with no refreshes.

This.

My 8GB M2 Air will handle OP’s needs without breaking a sweat. 16GB will be fine for years to come.

Some will tell you to get 32GB to ‘future-proof’ and if money is not an issue, and you will sleep better, then sure. Just know for most of the time that RAM will be sitting idle or the speed improvement will only be noticeable if you run benchmarks.

 

[dmccloud]

16gb is plenty. Contrary to popular opinion, multiple tabs is just fine on an 8gb. My entry level laptop with 4gb ram can handle 15 tabs without refreshing, surprisingly. So, I bet a 16gb laptop would be great for your use :D

And my iPad Pro with 8gb ram can save up about 25 tabs in the background with no refreshes.

When I first got my 13" MBP (base M1 model with 8GB RAM), one of the first things I did was to load as many simultaneous tabs in Firefox as possible to see how many it took to spin a beachball. Turned out the answer was just over 180 tabs, and many of those were YouTube videos, with other tabs being email, forums like these, news sites, ESPN, etc. So yes, even a base model M1 or M2 Mac can handle multiple tabs with ease.

 

[PaperMag]

8GB RAM is really only 6GB RAM, since macOS will "wire" 2GB for its own purposes. Now let's say the average website is 200MB (even though plenty are in the 500MB category, like gmail). That means with 6GB you should be able to load 30 websites. So an 8GB Mac is absolutely plenty for OP's use case of only web browsing and writing.

 

[DHagan4755]

16gb is plenty. Contrary to popular opinion, multiple tabs is just fine on an 8gb. My entry level laptop with 4gb ram can handle 15 tabs without refreshing, surprisingly. So, I bet a 16gb laptop would be great for your use :D

And my iPad Pro with 8gb ram can save up about 25 tabs in the background with no refreshes.

* Unless you're using TradingView, along with some trading platforms. The amount of data flowing through each tab can devour RAM depending on the chart indicators added. In this instance most of my tabs are just about 1GB each. Then pages start refreshing & of course the swap to SSD starts adding up.

 

[ilikewhey]

8GB RAM is really only 6GB RAM, since macOS will "wire" 2GB for its own purposes. Now let's say the average website is 200MB (even though plenty are in the 500MB category, like gmail). That means with 6GB you should be able to load 30 websites. So an 8GB Mac is absolutely plenty for OP's use case of only web browsing and writing.

thats assuming zero other apps like mail, music, any office suites, are open.