Old Question-New 15”MBA-Is 8GB RAM Enough for Zoom and Microsoft Office?

[jazz1]

I’ve ordered a 15” MBA with 8GB RAM and 512 SSD as a gift for my spouse. I can still cancel. Is anyone happy/unhappy with their 13” MBA M2? I guess I can’t belive Apple would sell an 8GB RAM laptop for everyday use if it was going to slow down or stall out.

 

[Shirasaki]

8GB will stall out faster than you think. 16GB will be a sweet spot for a while, unless your spouse uses macOS as A single-task only operating system (think of that as commodore basic 2.0). Put it simply, don’t run more than 3 programs at the same time.
If you don’t have the financial power to purchase 16GB device, limiting how many program running is the way to go. Ultimately however, you will have to try it out within return window in full (stress as much as you can) before knowing if 8GB is enough or not.

 

[h.gilbert]

I use an old 2016 13" 8GB MacBook Pro for everyday use which includes Office and calls. It works fine.

I imagine an 8GB 2023 machine with an M2 and unified memory would be more than enough for that workload.

 

[jazz1]

I use an old 2016 13" 8GB MacBook Pro for everyday use which includes Office and calls. It works fine.

I imagine an 8GB 2023 machine with an M2 and unified memory would be more than enough for that workload.

Thanks for the response! I remeber my M1 MacMini with 16GB RAM and 1TB of SSD initially struggled with memory getting low warnings. Even though I was not running many apps. Safari, Apple Mail and Music. But a couple OS updates later the problem went away. This is why I was nervous about a 8GB MBA.

 

[ctjack]

My 8GB M1 Air runs perfectly and went to its' 3rd year. It have seen heavy loads and never blinked.
Never notice a difference running a ton of software + remoting to work computer versus my other 16GB 14 M1 Pro.
Meant to say that in 2023 any Mac can handle Zoom + MS. Overall drying thermal paste, intel CPU of 2012 Mac and 5GB free SSD out of 128GB was giving me more headache/lags/freezes rather than 8GB of RAM.

 

[Elohim369]

My 8GB M1 Air runs perfectly and went to its' 3rd year. It have seen heavy loads and never blinked.
Never notice a difference running a ton of software + remoting to work computer versus my other 16GB 14 M1 Pro.
Meant to say that in 2023 any Mac can handle Zoom + MS. Overall drying thermal paste, intel CPU of 2012 Mac and 5GB free SSD out of 128GB was giving me more headache/lags/freezes rather than 8GB of RAM.

I second this - same here I have a 1st gen M1 MacBook Air and it takes a lot to exhaust the RAM.

For Zoom and office and normal stuff it's totally fine.

It was straining only when I had multiple iOS simulators open, some Android emulators, Xcode dev environment, and all that stuff - extremely heavy RAM load by anyone's standard.

It works very well on day to day tasks with 8GB - much better than you'd think.

 

[1rottenapple]

Its fine. I have had the 8gb m2 MBA with 512ssd and it's fine for the last year I've used it. Never "stalled". You know what stalls? My work windozeeee dell laptop. That stalls with 16gb.

 

[bbfc]

I use an M2 13" Air with 8GB RAM and never had any issues with it running Office etc. You don't need more if that's all you are using it for.

 

[lowkey]

A girl at work uses an M1 iMac with 8GB of ram to run her interior design firm. She uses office suite, teams, safari, Archicad and sketch up and said she has no ram issues.

 

[ucfgrad93]

As others have said, you shouldn’t have any issues with 8 GB with your usage, @jazz1.

 

[jazz1]

OP here. Well after much soul searching, ame good advice here, I decided to go all in and cancelled the 8G memory version and ordered the 16GB version. I also upped the SSD to 1TB.

Why you say? Well this is to be a birthday, wedding anniversary, and retirement gift for my spouse. She tends to hang on to laptops a long, long time time. So I thought I’d do a little future proofing, as well as add more SSD storage so maybe I can use it once in awhile (ha, we shall see if that ever happens)

if this gift fails to please what is Apple’s return policy? If I decided to keep it for myself, I’d probably giggle too much while web couch 🏄

 

[The Cockney Rebel]

For the sake of £200/$200 I would always go for 16GB RAM.

Did with my M2 Air, and M2 Pro.

 

[raythompsontn]

Put it simply, don’t run more than 3 programs at the same time

I have run half a dozen programs, two of them Photoshop and Lightroom in my prior MBA M1 with 8 gig of memory. I had no issues running any of the programs. The system did slow down when exporting 1,500 photos while using Photoshop but that is a CPU issue and not memory.

Running even lighter weight programs, zoom, email, MSWord, Safari and Outlook at the same produced no noticeable issues.

With SSD any swaps from memory to SSD are fairly quick. Long gone are the days of spinning rust.

 

[Shirasaki]

I have run half a dozen programs, two of them Photoshop and Lightroom in my prior MBA M1 with 8 gig of memory. I had no issues running any of the programs. The system did slow down when exporting 1,500 photos while using Photoshop but that is a CPU issue and not memory.

Running even lighter weight programs, zoom, email, MSWord, Safari and Outlook at the same produced no noticeable issues.

With SSD any swaps from memory to SSD are fairly quick. Long gone are the days of spinning rust.

I run similar batch of programs on my 16GB M1 MacBook Pro, and memory usage never Drops below 12GB.
SSD swap worn them out quickly, and I don’t want to be forced to upgrade at unintended moment.

 

[The Cockney Rebel]

It's better to have it, and not need it, than need it, and not have it.

 

[jazz1]

It's better to have it, and not need it, than need it, and not have it.

In the end I did order the 16GB RAM and went up to 1TB SSD. I'm selling one of my beloved telephoto lenses to take the bite off of Apple's high cost upgrades. I hope my spouse finally knows (the laptop is a gift for her) what a Saint 😇 I am! 🤣

 

[The Cockney Rebel]

In the end I did order the 16GB RAM and went up to 1TB SSD. I'm selling one of my beloved telephoto lenses to take the bite off of Apple's high cost upgrades. I hope my spouse finally knows (the laptop is a gift for her) what a Saint 😇 I am! 🤣

Well done, I ordered the same config for my 13" M2 Air.

I've had it for a few months, and I love it.

What colour did you go for?

I have Starlight.

 

[jqc]

I have a 2020 MacBook Pro M1 8GB/256GB I used for work. multiple windows of outlook open, multiple larger pots (20mb+), word, excel, 5-10 tabs, multiple PDFS, mail, messages, WhatsApp, calendar, etc etc etc.

Handles just fine and not slow at all, and so did my 2014 MacBook Pro before I replaced it.

memory swap is high however, I just looked and swap used is 7.65GB.

The only app I notice is sow, even when it's the only one running, is Photos in terms of rendering the photo for Canon R6 photos. Usually I have to go into edit mode for the pic to fully render. Not sure if this is just the sh*tty Photos app or not.

I am in the market for a new MBP or MBA but more because of wanting to go to 2-4TB of storage. When I do, I will look to get 16b or 32GB of RAM, just because it makes me feel better!

 

[jazz1]

Well done, I ordered the same config for my 13" M2 Air.

I've had it for a few months, and I love it.

What colour did you go for?

I have Starlight.

I wanted Starlight, but by mistake ordered the Midnight Blue. At this point I decided not to mess with the order as it is supposed to be available at my local Apple Store for pickup. I may ask them to switch it out to Starlight, but I doubt they will be able to without a full return and reorder. I'll give it a shot. I know the blue has fingerprint issues. 😟

 

[The Cockney Rebel]

I wanted Starlight, but by mistake ordered the Midnight Blue. At this point I decided not to mess with the order as it is supposed to be available at my local Apple Store for pickup. I may ask them to switch it out to Starlight, but I doubt they will be able to without a full return and reorder. I'll give it a shot. I know the blue has fingerprint issues. 😟

The fingerprints wouldn't bother me.

However, apparently the ports can get "chipped" over time, which can show up on the Midnight colour.

Just be careful, and I'm sure you'll be fine.

I do love Starlight, though.

 

[jazz1]

The fingerprints wouldn't bother me.

However, apparently the ports can get "chipped" over time, which can show up on the Midnight colour.

Just be careful, and I'm sure you'll be fine.

I do love Starlight, though.

I'm sure that can be an issue on the dark colors. I wonder if the lighter colors just don't show the "chipping" as the bare metal matches better to the colorization? The good news is my spouse (it is a gift for her) probably won't be using the USB ports much, and the power port is magnetic and not a friction mounting.

God, I hate it when my car gets dinged or scratched. So you've really called out my phobia. 😊

 

[Falhófnir]

I probably wouldn't worry about it unless you're planning on maxing out the machine's lifespan (i.e. keep it as your main machine for 7-8 years) or you think your needs might go up over the time you'll be using it. 8 isn't generous, but will certainly be capable for the foreseeable future with moderate usage/ expectations.

 

[The Cockney Rebel]

I'm sure that can be an issue on the dark colors. I wonder if the lighter colors just don't show the "chipping" as the bare metal matches better to the colorization? The good news is my spouse (it is a gift for her) probably won't be using the USB ports much, and the power port is magnetic and not a friction mounting.

God, I hate it when my car gets dinged or scratched. So you've really called out my phobia. 😊

The MagSafe connector is very strong, and you have to be careful when lining it up.

The Midnight is a really nice colour, and I'm sure your significant other will like it.

If she doesn't, you can send it to me .

 

[ignatius345]

I’ve ordered a 15” MBA with 8GB RAM and 512 SSD as a gift for my spouse. I can still cancel. Is anyone happy/unhappy with their 13” MBA M2? I guess I can’t belive Apple would sell an 8GB RAM laptop for everyday use if it was going to slow down or stall out.

It's fine. I've run Zoom simultaneously with Illustrator and a bunch of other stuff on my base model M1 Air. No beachballs, no stalling. Disk swap no longer slows things to a crawl now that Macs use fast SSDs instead of old hard drives. The most slowdown I see is a momentary hitch when I switch between big things -- or fast user switch between accounts. But it's short-lived and once I've switched everything moves along as normal. Frankly I'm shocked at what I'm able to get away with on 8GB with Apple Silicon. My 2020 Intel i5 Air would have completely seized up with this workload.

Would 16 GB be faster? Of course. And if you're looking a few years down the road it always pays to account for future bloat in OS and other software. I bet the 8GB would be fine now and for a while to come, but my recommendation would be to up it to 16GB and probably add a few years of usability on the back end.

 

[jazz1]

It's fine. I've run Zoom simultaneously with Illustrator and a bunch of other stuff on my base model M1 Air. No beachballs, no stalling. Disk swap no longer slows things to a crawl now that Macs use fast SSDs instead of old hard drives. The most slowdown I see is a momentary hitch when I switch between big things -- or fast user switch between accounts. But it's short-lived and once I've switched everything moves along as normal. Frankly I'm shocked at what I'm able to get away with on 8GB with Apple Silicon. My 2020 Intel i5 Air would have completely seized up with this workload.

Would 16 GB be faster? Of course. And if you're looking a few years down the road it always pays to account for future bloat in OS and other software. I bet the 8GB would be fine now and for a while to come, but my recommendation would be to up it to 16GB and probably add a few years of usability on the back end.

On my M1 MacMini with two 27” screens, and running Safari (6 tabs open), Mail, iMessage, Apple Music or Tidal, VPN software, I usually have a little over 5GB out of 16GB free. Now granted this gift laptop to my spouse will likely run fewer apps simultaneously than me on my MacMini, I do agree that future OS, and apps may outpace a 8GB RAM computer. So I did cancel the lower spec original order and went with 16GB RAM. Thanks for the solid advice!