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Thinking of getting a MBA M1 but..

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No1up

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 7, 2009
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I keep reading the 8gb model isn't good enough and I need the 16gb but that brings up the cost to $1500.. that's a bit much with AppleCare on top. I'm already stretching on the MBA, I have to go new since ill be financing it with my Apple Card so $1000 plus AppleCare+. I don't really do a lot of hardcore work. mainly word and excel, a little photo editing, a ton go web tabs, Hulu, YouTube. What do fine folks thing? I can get a windows surface laptop 4 for $1000 with 16gb of ram but I have an an iPhone and watch so id like to try and stay with apple if possible.

is it a good computer over all?
 
8gb should be sufficient for what you plan to use for. Just bear in mind, excel in Mac - the UI - is not as comfortable as in windows version. I tried few times working on complex and large excel in Mac, and always end up with work in Windows.
 
I have m1, Mac mini 8/256 and macbook air 16/512. While i use mostly mba, mac mini does great job in office desktop work.
 
turbineseaplane said:
If you plan to keep the MBA for a few years, go 16gb
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People always say that, but it never holds up in my experience.

Four years ago, I bought a CTO 13" MBP 4-TB ports with 16GB of RAM, expecting it to 'future proof' vs. sticking with the base 8GB.

Fast forward to 2020/2021, and my $800 8GB M1 MacBook Air runs circles around the 16GB MacBook Pro (currently in daily usage by my wife). Sure, we had a Intel to Apple Silicon transition, but further AS optimizations 2-3 years down the road could negate any benefits of 16GB today. Unless you have serious/professional use cases that you can leverage that much RAM today (Word and Excel wouldn't be impacted, IME).
 
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The 8g will be fine for you (I have one). But don't forget to shop the refurbished store on apple.com (https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/mac) since you save 15% off new and get the same warranty etc.

turbineseaplane said:
Well - I'm saying it based upon my wife and her MBA M1 with 8GB and the slight slowing she gets from time to time with lots going on with multiple tabs open, etc
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The problem with judging this is... what's lots of tabs and what does "a lot going on" mean? I don't see a slowdown but a) I don't keep dozens of tabs open and b) I use Safari. If someone wants to use Chrome and keep 100+ tabs open, yeah, there will be a performance hit. Bookmarks are your friend.

All that said, it's never a bad idea to grab a bit more RAM.

OP - the other thing to consider is whether you want to wait for the M2 Air which is likely out this fall. The risks there are that 1) it isn't guaranteed - it could ship next year and 2) it mighr only be an incremental improvement over the M1 Air. But if money is tight and you don't need a new machine right now (and are willing to wait ~6 months), that's also an option.
 
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Save your money, get the 8GB RAM, seriously. 16GB is way overkill for what you plan on doing with it. You can do a whole lot more with 8GB of modern RAM in the M1 than you could with +16GB from years ago. I speak from 1st hand experience. My old 2011 MBP has 16GB RAM but it crawls compared to my M1 Air with only 8. I also got the 256GB internal version, then a 2TB Samsung T7 SSD external for only €280. The 2TB internal upgrade would have cost €1000 extra.
 
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For Microsoft Teams and video call heavy use, plus Docs, small spreadsheets and finally SOME light web design in WordPress, would an 8gb Air be enough?
 
Fwiw, I have Safari, Mail, Word, Filemaker, Calendar, Splashtop, Messages, and a few other apps open all the time and my memory hovers around 11-12gb used. I wouldn’t buy an 8gb machine
 
erasr said:
For Microsoft Teams and video call heavy use, plus Docs, small spreadsheets and finally SOME light web design in WordPress, would an 8gb Air be enough?
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Yes, and then some. I have done pretty much all that, including Teams. The M1 8GB doesn’t even break a sweat. Had this little monster about 6 months now and still can’t get it even slightly warm, whereas I can fry an egg on my 2011 MBP with 16GB just watching Netflix.
 
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No1up said:
I keep reading the 8gb model isn't good enough and I need the 16gb but that brings up the cost to $1500.. that's a bit much with AppleCare on top. I'm already stretching on the MBA, I have to go new since ill be financing it with my Apple Card so $1000 plus AppleCare+. I don't really do a lot of hardcore work. mainly word and excel, a little photo editing, a ton go web tabs, Hulu, YouTube. What do fine folks thing? I can get a windows surface laptop 4 for $1000 with 16gb of ram but I have an an iPhone and watch so id like to try and stay with apple if possible.

is it a good computer over all?
Click to expand...
Get AC+ at a later date if you want. You have a year to do so.
 
EuroChilli said:
Save your money, get the 8GB RAM, seriously. 16GB is way overkill for what you plan on doing with it. You can do a whole lot more with 8GB of modern RAM in the M1 than you could with +16GB from years ago. I speak from 1st hand experience. My old 2011 MBP has 16GB RAM but it crawls compared to my M1 Air with only 8. I also got the 256GB internal version, then a 2TB Samsung T7 SSD external for only €280. The 2TB internal upgrade would have cost €1000 extra.
Click to expand...
While 8GB is certainly usable, it doesn't take very much for you to using a web browser to have the Mac using SSD swap over RAM. If you have a M1 Mac with 16 GB it will almost never use SSD swap during normal multiple app usage. The internal SSD access is about 3000 MB/s R/W, where as something like the external Samsung T7 SSD will be much slower at close to 1000 Mb/s R/W.
 
No1up said:
I keep reading the 8gb model isn't good enough and I need the 16gb but that brings up the cost to $1500.. that's a bit much with AppleCare on top. I'm already stretching on the MBA, I have to go new since ill be financing it with my Apple Card so $1000 plus AppleCare+. I don't really do a lot of hardcore work. mainly word and excel, a little photo editing, a ton go web tabs, Hulu, YouTube. What do fine folks thing? I can get a windows surface laptop 4 for $1000 with 16gb of ram but I have an an iPhone and watch so id like to try and stay with apple if possible.

is it a good computer over all?
Click to expand...

8gb is fine for this. Also remember that you don't need to show proof to order from the Apple Teachers & Students portal to save a little $.
 
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valkyrie917 said:
8gb is fine for this. Also remember that you don't need to show proof to order from the Apple Teachers & Students portal to save a little $.
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Yeah but if you have an issue with it at a later date (when still in warranty) you may have problems with Apple if they query your status. Plus it's not totally legit.
 
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Realityck said:
While 8GB is certainly usable, it doesn't take very much for you to using a web browser to have the Mac using SSD swap over RAM. If you have a M1 Mac with 16 GB it will almost never use SSD swap during normal multiple app usage. The internal SSD access is about 3000 MB/s R/W, where as something like the external Samsung T7 SSD will be much slower at close to 1000 Mb/s R/W.
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Yes, there is some swapping going on, but I’m not at all worried about SSD wear. I have this habbit of closing apps and browser tabs I’m not actively using. I can always open them again, takes a split second.

I have a few Photos libraries on the T7 Samsung, the biggest one is 700GB with 120k images, lightening fast.
 
EuroChilli said:
Yes, there is some swapping going on, but I’m not at all worried about SSD wear. I have this habbit of closing apps and browser tabs I’m not actively using. I can always open them again, takes a split second.

I have a few Photos libraries on the T7 Samsung, the biggest one is 700GB with 120k images, lightening fast.
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Is $200 USD worth forgetting about closing apps all the time?
 
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