Okay well you have plenty of responses that justify 16GB and plenty of others justifying 24GB. Figure out which one fits your situation and move on.
As far as your obsession with this one video. Great? 👍
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Six months later - how does everyone feel about 16GB of RAM on the base M4 Mac Mini?
- Thread starter Ishimura
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As far as your obsession with this one video. Great? 👍
You were the one who thought the Ellis video was relevant to this exchange, not me.
I’ve only mentioned it repeatedly because you insisted that there was something I was not understanding about it and then refused to explain what that was.
I’m sorry that you’re seemingly agitated about somebody discussing tech specs - on a tech forum of all places.
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It’s just funny to at you keep obsessing about that one video when I was just trying to help you? It’s all good my man….good luck with your already well answered question. ✌️
I tend to keep a system long enough resale value is pretty much a non-issue, and I don't like hassling with wiping the drive, reinstalling the OS, haggling, etc..., so I understand.
Answering your first point, above, involves some guess work. I'll lay out a somewhat analogous situation that might hope. I bought an early '08 Mac Pro for around 4 grand, it was my main computer for many years. Eventually it got a bit slow and glitchy, so I got an iMac for home and used the Mac Pro at a place I stayed when on call for work to occupy my down time. Eventually, it went kaput.
B&H Photo & Video had a sale on 2017 12" MacBooks with 512 gig SSD and only 8 gig RAM, so I picked one up as a replacement for the Mac Pro (sounds crazy but worked fine). I didn't like the 8 gig RAM, but that was the only configuration offered at a good sale price, and I didn't want to invest a lot of money in an offsite downtime entertainer that wasn't my main system. Paired with a 27" display it did fine for years. I eventually retired, and now use it when I travel and having a built-in keyboard is convenient.
But performance got slower over time. What helps? Closing some app.s. Not leaving Safari open with multiple browser tab.s open. With very few app.s open, it still does okay. I'm guessing 16 gig RAM would be useful right now, but it's not upgradable.
At this point, Ventura is the last officially supported OS (and what I use), and security updates likely won't go much longer). It's not my primary system, so as a compact travel Mac that fits in a backpack pocket, it's okay.
I don't think you will notice any difference in routine use between 16 and 24 gig RAM on an M4 Mac Mini for years.
If you use the system many years, and software written for more powerful future systems gets more resource-intensive, your M4 will eventually bog down a bit; that's true with any personal computer. When that happens, extra RAM might make the difference in helping it run a bit longer with less slow down.
I can't give specifics. I don't know to what extent mainstream home user software written in 2031 will demand more CPU and RAM resources.
I, no guru/just a home user, think it boils down to this:
1.) 16 vs. 24 won't make a noticeable difference for years.
2.) It may do so late in your system's life. Not huge, but noticeable.
3.) I doubt 'wear and tear' on the SSD from swap file usage is likely to brick your system over its life, but no guarantees.
4.) Instead of thinking about what apple hypothetically 'should' charge for an extra 8 gig RAM, what they pay for it or what someone thinks its objective market value is, ask instead what you will get out of it. That's what you're paying for.
5.) Peace of mind counts for something. $200 For added contentment with a system you'll have 6-7+ years is not the worst investment.
You have made a series of thoughtful and very sympathetic posts in here and elsewhere and I really, truly appreciate that.
At the end of the day this becoming such a problem for me is a reflection of 1: the obscene cost of the upgrades and 2: anxiety over money by which I really mean not having a lot of it.
It’s just been hard for me and it has lead to a lot of frustration, genuine frustration.
Like a lot of people I got really excited about this little computer, but at that £599 base price. I also got excited about switching to Mac.
Then I was lucky enough to come by some money to actually be in the market to finally buy a new computer - mine is approaching 13 years old. This would be my first Mac.
So, I really need a new computer and I’d be looking at changing the type of computer entirely.
I’ve got enough money to buy one but not enough money for it to be a casual purchase, you know? I worry a lot of about my decision.
It’s a real investment for me. The ‘just enough’ minimal specs have made this a much, much harder decision.
The more I read your posts, Ishimura, the more you sound like many Apple buyers: You want more RAM but you don’t want to pay for it. Frankly, given Apple’s upgrade pricing, I can’t say that I blame you. But Apple pricing is real so you’ll have to resolve that fact in the context of what you want/need and can afford. And only you can do that. You seem to have taken some posts to heart and find them useful. But right now, it’s obvious you’ve reached research/decision paralysis - which happens a lot to many people. Maybe put the subject aside for a month or so and allow the answer to bubble up from your own mind in its own time. I wish you good luck.
I appreciate that you seemed to be trying to help with your first post. Then the exchange went south.
Obviously that is unfortunate and - I’m sure - not the intention of either of us.
The tension here is coming from somewhere else. I don’t want that to force me to give up on this whole thing and just get a PC.
I was really hoping to get something really snappy, quiet and small like this. There are so many positives about this computer.
It has been months already, unfortunately. Although only two or so since the money has been available to buy anything.
I still can’t decide.
The very best (brand new) offer I’ve seen for 16/512 is £695. The best offer for 24/512 is £835, although that has sold out on two different occasions when I’ve been looking at it.
Neither are necessarily readily available for that reason, but those are the very lowest prices I’ve seen for each. The base model I’ve seen for as low as £490, but I’m really trying to put that out of my mind so I don’t feel like a huge idiot for spending hundreds more.
I don’t need more than 24GB, and if somehow my needs dramatically changed and I was using my computer for real work then clearly I would be able to justify buying a new computer. Not sure if I could actually afford it, mind, but it’s just an unlikely scenario anyway.
So it’s just down to this very annoying 16/24 RAM issue.
I’ve long since decided I can’t just be bothered to babysit a 256GB SSD, to have SSDs attached and all of the rest. So I decided a while ago that I would pay the extra for the SSD upgrade.
But the RAM has been triggering my anxiety a lot.
You know what finally prompted me to make this thread, after months of thinking about this RAM issue?
It was this video, and video reviews that has some small sections that do similar things.
I was really hoping for some written versions of this, or at least those would be the most useful for me. Probably.
I just don’t want to be all “ah damn, I should have spent that £200 for the RAM”.
It was this video, and video reviews that has some small sections that do similar things.
I was really hoping for some written versions of this, or at least those would be the most useful for me. Probably.
I just don’t want to be all “ah damn, I should have spent that £200 for the RAM”.
Folks who constantly whine that vendors should give more at the same price are just that, whiners. Wanting Apple to keep its lowest cost boxes lowest cost does not make someone a sycophant, nor does it mean someone is saying "16 GB RAM is 8 GB RAM too much." It is a hard concept for some to grasp apparently, but what Apple's lowest end RAM is and what RAM is recommended are often two different things.
Silly shouting does not further silly arguments. IMO when building a 2025 and beyond Mac mini it makes most sense to install 24 or 32 GB of RAM.
Ishimura, what is your use case for the Mac?
This thread keeps appearing on the trending topics for me so I’ve had a read.
This might help.
I bought a MacBook Air M4 week before last with 16GB of RAM. It’s replacing a 2012 Mac Mini with 8GB RAM that still runs fine (software unsupported now etc). That Mini has been rock solid for me, it’s why I love Apple gear, it just works and lasts.
Anyway, I had no qualms about the 16GB of RAM, I didn’t think twice. My previous Mini had 8GB and it felt limiting at times, a jump to 16GB seemed cool and with the new architecture of the M chips and SSD swap, I was happy it’s gonna last me a long while. I’ve also been blown away by what’s possible on my M2 iPP.
I’m only a few weeks in and the thing is fantastic. It’s a been used just for work for me - So far that’s included RAW editing, 4K video editing, product design, large photoshop files for print, Spotify, Excel, web etc, often multiple things at once or open in the background, it’s handled it all a breeze - And it’s needed to, it’s not been used for fun but for work.
I haven’t bothered to check the memory pressure and I haven’t been consciously closing apps down. You said you were a light user? I’d imagine you’ll be fine, don’t sweat it. Get it and enjoy it.
This thread keeps appearing on the trending topics for me so I’ve had a read.
This might help.
I bought a MacBook Air M4 week before last with 16GB of RAM. It’s replacing a 2012 Mac Mini with 8GB RAM that still runs fine (software unsupported now etc). That Mini has been rock solid for me, it’s why I love Apple gear, it just works and lasts.
Anyway, I had no qualms about the 16GB of RAM, I didn’t think twice. My previous Mini had 8GB and it felt limiting at times, a jump to 16GB seemed cool and with the new architecture of the M chips and SSD swap, I was happy it’s gonna last me a long while. I’ve also been blown away by what’s possible on my M2 iPP.
I’m only a few weeks in and the thing is fantastic. It’s a been used just for work for me - So far that’s included RAW editing, 4K video editing, product design, large photoshop files for print, Spotify, Excel, web etc, often multiple things at once or open in the background, it’s handled it all a breeze - And it’s needed to, it’s not been used for fun but for work.
I haven’t bothered to check the memory pressure and I haven’t been consciously closing apps down. You said you were a light user? I’d imagine you’ll be fine, don’t sweat it. Get it and enjoy it.
It's not about the cost. An SoC with 16 GB RAM/unified memory is about $20 USD more (Apple obviously won't disclose the exact costs). I'd be happy to pay that extra. Most people would. But, you know that, right? So I wonder what your message really is, and if it's your own.
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Depends what you use it for. I have a 16gb Mini, though it’s an M1. I came from a 32gb mini, 2018 top spec intel. The m1 is clearly better - but I’m always always running out of ram. I use Adobe bridge, Lightroom and Photoshop. None of this was a problem on my other mac, yet with this m1 I am forever running out of ram. Like, I can only have one app open at a time.
I’m a professional photographer and edit a lot of photos, but even though the M1 is better in every respect to the Intel - the lack of ram makes it worse.
Take a lot of care when picking the ram amount for your machine. Ram is still king no matter the hype saying otherwise.
Just to make sure we're on the same page.... backup is a different story.
If you buy a 256 or 512 GB computer and you need to store terabytes of video, photos or games, then you need external storage.
Whether or not you use external storage, you need backup. External storage, that is, storage expansion, is not backup.
What's more, for storage expansion, a Thunderbolt SSD drive makes a lot of sense. But you can use a much less expensive and larger USB spinning or SSD drive for backup.
@Ishimura I understand your predicament, I’ve been in similar places myself. When I need to make decisions like this myself it’s a case of balancing what I want (16 vs 24GB), against what I can afford. How much will the extra cost impact you? Extra RAM is nice for longevity (I used my MacBook Air for 12 years, upgrading that to 8GB was worth it in the long run), but if the extra cost is not worth it for you, then get the 16GB and enjoy the brilliant little machine that it is.
I would suggest the key question here is what are you willing and able to spend? How much will it hurt you to buy the more expensive configuration, or what would you need to sacrifice to make that happen?
Good luck!
I would suggest the key question here is what are you willing and able to spend? How much will it hurt you to buy the more expensive configuration, or what would you need to sacrifice to make that happen?
Good luck!
I have a couple of M4 Minis, both 16gb ram (one 256 and one 512).
The 256gb is a Plex/File/VM Host, 2TB NVME attached, and then 2 x 8-bay Thunderbolt 3.5" drive arrays filled with mostly exos 16tb HDDs.
It was an unnecessary purchase as I thought I was going to transcode lots of AV1 content over Plex (M4 and A18 have hardware AV1 decoding), but to be honest, the M1 with 8gb of ram before it ran everything identically (the VM is just HAOS, 2gb allotted) and could even software (cpu) transcode a 4K HDR AV1 file over plex just fine (albeit only the one at a time, it saturated the M1 cpu). Most of my friends/family have the bandwidth that I don't really do any transcoding anyway (it's all direct), which any old computer can do loads of simultaneously (mostly a storage/network bandwidth metric at that point). Unsure to what degree memory has to do with the software raid setup, but it ran the same (I could saturate the 10gb/s ethernet between machines or saturate the disk speeds between arrays, on the 8gb m1 all the same)
I use the 512 as my desktop/daily driver. drives two 2k screens. I've tossed lots of 4K HDR workflows at it in FCPX and I don't think the 16gb has ever slowed me down, any bottleneck seems to be CPU/GPU related and even then, export times are fine for what I do so I'm happy with the base M4 (almost got the M4 pro).
The 256gb is a Plex/File/VM Host, 2TB NVME attached, and then 2 x 8-bay Thunderbolt 3.5" drive arrays filled with mostly exos 16tb HDDs.
It was an unnecessary purchase as I thought I was going to transcode lots of AV1 content over Plex (M4 and A18 have hardware AV1 decoding), but to be honest, the M1 with 8gb of ram before it ran everything identically (the VM is just HAOS, 2gb allotted) and could even software (cpu) transcode a 4K HDR AV1 file over plex just fine (albeit only the one at a time, it saturated the M1 cpu). Most of my friends/family have the bandwidth that I don't really do any transcoding anyway (it's all direct), which any old computer can do loads of simultaneously (mostly a storage/network bandwidth metric at that point). Unsure to what degree memory has to do with the software raid setup, but it ran the same (I could saturate the 10gb/s ethernet between machines or saturate the disk speeds between arrays, on the 8gb m1 all the same)
I use the 512 as my desktop/daily driver. drives two 2k screens. I've tossed lots of 4K HDR workflows at it in FCPX and I don't think the 16gb has ever slowed me down, any bottleneck seems to be CPU/GPU related and even then, export times are fine for what I do so I'm happy with the base M4 (almost got the M4 pro).
Craig Neidel has a YouTube video getting into how much RAM for an M4 Mac in 2025.
This guy fields lots of questions about what amount of RAM to get, I've seen enough of videos to get the impression he's a decent 'centrist' Mac users with good sense and good advice (in my basic home user opinion), and this may give you some food for thought.
Ironically, I suspect if you add up all the ambivalent decisional struggle over time you've already endured to this point (which I relate to; I can do the same thing when researching tech. purchases), you may've already 'spent' over $200 worth of stress and aggravation trying to decide.
I suspect you will be fine with 16 gig, but in several years might see some modest benefit from 24, but that's a guess.
ARK Overload in this video deals with the question and up first is that about whether future-proofing with 24 gig RAM and a 512 gig SSD is a good idea.
How Much Memory (Ram) Do You Need On Your M4 Mac in 2025?
I think he's talking about the whole M4 family and all M4 series Macs, not just the base M4 (i.e.: not Pro or Max) Mac Mini. So when he talks about RAM in the 32+ gig range, and what % of Mac users would need a given degree of RAM, be mindful that's not a % of base M4 Mac Mini users; MacBook Pro and Mac Studio users are in the mix.This guy fields lots of questions about what amount of RAM to get, I've seen enough of videos to get the impression he's a decent 'centrist' Mac users with good sense and good advice (in my basic home user opinion), and this may give you some food for thought.
Ironically, I suspect if you add up all the ambivalent decisional struggle over time you've already endured to this point (which I relate to; I can do the same thing when researching tech. purchases), you may've already 'spent' over $200 worth of stress and aggravation trying to decide.
I suspect you will be fine with 16 gig, but in several years might see some modest benefit from 24, but that's a guess.
ARK Overload in this video deals with the question and up first is that about whether future-proofing with 24 gig RAM and a 512 gig SSD is a good idea.
I produced music with the M4 Mac Mini for 30 days - My Honest Thoughts
Also, the great thing about macrumors forums is that you can get just about any answer you want that will validate what you wanted to do anyway 😀
I have a MacBook Pro. It's all right. When I upgrade, I will purchase more Unified Memory or RAM.