How much RAM do you ACTUALLY need in your Macbook? 

The analogy I always give to people is. RAM is like a table you use for work or dinner, etc etc. You want to have a big enough table where you need to put all of your items on the table, preferrable all the papers you are looking and you can glance at. Having too small of a table means putting them back in your file cabinet or in the kitchen (if the dinner table analogy is used). If you get too much RAM, then it's like having a dinner table, or work space that is so big, you can't fill it up ; no matter how many guests you have or the number of guests/dishes you are serving. understanding what you need and what you might potentially need is important in the same way people pick out a office table or dinner table.

In the video you make a statement that is false, RAM IS NOT EXPENSIVE... It is apple who sells it at a high price.

Actually there is a very good reason to get the 16GB model or higher that everybody forgets to mention. Running a virtual machine with Windows. If you need to run windows programs, the extra RAM helps tremendously… if it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t bother.

16 is great for people who work on it. 8 for just fun & work ever so often 32 if you need it you'll know, if you don't know if you'll need it you don't need it .

I routinely use over 50GB of RAM on my M1 Max MacBook Pro. Sometimes more. Using after effects and premiere pro etc. I’m really glad I didnt spend all that money on a computer and then skimp on the RAM that it needs.

Thanks for taking the time to make this video. Very informative, saved me money that covered cost of apple care on the MacBook Air I just ordered

excellent video / editing / advice this is EXACTLY what i was looking for. You have really great content here. I'm surprised you only have 43.2k subs

In 2021 I purchased a 16” M1 Pro MacBook Pro. I went with 16GB because I’m wasn’t doing crazy complex tasks, but I did have to run a VM in Parallels for the first time because Bootcamp wasn’t an option. I also used a docker container to install Azure Data Studio. This resulted in my RAM being overloaded and now I’m upgrading to an M2 Max MacBook Pro less than 2 years later. I really wish people would have considered things like VMs when making RAM recommendations.

The isolated performance tests are pointless when comparing different RAM options. It would be much better to somehow measure sustainable performance with typical creator/developer setup with many apps opened to understand how it could affect your workflow. I’m usually have Teams, Mail, VSCode, Node, Edge (10 to 20 tabs), Figma, Photoshop, Docker with 1-3 DB images, couple of Terminals, Fork, Spotify, Postman and some local DB instance running, and it’s definitely feels slower and unresponsive on 16 GBs than on 32 GBs (the 8 GBs option will just die in swapping)

I think the SSD capacity also plays a role on how fast the project can be delivered. The higher capacity the better, because M chips also use the SSD to store temp memory.

Hey ! Good video, very useful, thanks a lot 🙏 question for the next Macbook Air M2 : don’t you think more ram is needed if i plan to keep my mac for many years ? Ram isn’t important in the long term ? (Even if i have a basic use of the mac (word, youtubes, many windows open, etc.) Thanks for you answers 🙏

There’s another reason to get more RAM, M1 and M2 Mac’s write exponentially more data to disc as they swap virtual memory. While Apple has mitigated the shorter resulting drive lifetimes of 2 years (SSD’s last 1-2 decades in PC’s) to 5-8 years depending on use, one simple fact remains - More RAM means less swap which means better performance and longer disk life because of the less writes, which all means a longer life for your PC.

I use Photoshop and Final Cut Pro. Edit simple 4K videos and vlogs. Went with the 16GB Pro and its never ever slowed down. 32GB I know would have been a waste of money.

Seems to be 10C/16G with 16 RAM and 512GB is the perfect equilibrium for most tasks on the spectrum, unless you are a really heavy user or a really light one (which 8RAM will work fine)

Great video! Thanks for sharing details. I am using 6-8 MS office files on Mac and Parallel desktop Windows simultaneously. How much RAM is convenient for these type of user?

Hey Arthur. Great video. Thanks. And for those who does streaming using Ecamm and zoom? I’m buying a 16”macbook pro and i don’t know the best configuration

I am extremely happy with my 8GB Air, even sometimes using it as desktop pc (connecting it to the monitor, while py PC is on repairs or used by someone else)

Greatest video on this channel so far! Just what I needed to know with the best analogies and practical demos, this video really goes to show the meaning of RAMs in modern day Macs (and PCs by extension). Keep up the simplified yet detailed good work.

Thank you for mentioning the architecture programs! I have been hoping for a video somewhere that could mention it within the exploration. This was great

Hi man! Big question! For a DJ set where the computer will be used to run DJ software like Recordbox or Traktor and maybe also some more software live like Ableton live, what characteristics should I look into a laptop? Thank you heaps!!! ❤

I got the 13,3' m1 16gb ram laptop and I use it for coding, Illustrator and photoshop and runs pretty smoothly ... currently I'm running windows 10 on parallels and I can say That it works better than I expected

I did freelance videography and photography for a year on the M1 Pro 16GB MacBook Pro. It was handling 4K 4:2:2 10bit log video editing like butter

Thank you for the video. I'm looking everywhere and can't really find a good reference or answer. When running windows parallel , do you need 64gb of ram? assuming 32gb divided by half would leave only 16gb left for the Mac side.

Do you recomend to have 24GB of RAM (8GB original + 16GB) on a iMac retina 2015 27" ? I use Photoshop and Finalcut once a week and love to have may mail, spotify and other app runnign at the same time. Thanks & BR Carlos

A co-worker use to always say "Crap with expand to the space available when it come to memory, and storage". Thing is the 8GB will swap to storage much more than the 16GB models. Since I hate swap I purchased the 16GB model.

A key point to make is that the M1 and associated OS apparently caches to SSD more than Intel-based Macs did and, remember, the SSD is not replaceable and has a high but limited life in terms of write cycles. Unless your use case can live easily within a lower RAM spec, I would always be tempted to pay for the RAM upgrade on a machine I expect to keep for a good while.

I'm upgrading my laptop. A MBP 14" M1 pro for the next 5-7 years. Should I get it with 16gb or 32gb? I mostly use office softwares, some mild video editing, but use a lot for web for research. Thanks!!

Excellent video and well crafted presentation 👌🏼😀 .. thanks for the valuable info Arthur 👍🏼😀 it helped me making my choice on my upcoming purchase

Made the mistake of getting an 8GB M1 MBP and I'm totally struggling with it mainly in my 3D workflow. Music production its doing ok. I'll be upgrading to something else this year!

I have a 16GB M1 Air for Unity game development (Rider as IDE) and music production in Logic Pro and I know that an 8GB M1 falls apart with my workloads while the 16GB has zero issues in my more than half a year of usage.

How about the storage which would you prioritize if you can upgrade a base model would go for 16gb ram 256gb storage or 8gb ram 512gb storage?

Hi, thank you for your video. I’m thinking about new m2 MACBook air 16gb memory 1tb ssd for simple video editing in fcpx, is this a good machine for this? Or 24gb memory will be better? Thank You

For what it's worth, I'm a web developer that recently made the jump from Linux to Mac because of the new M1 chips. I'm just running a MacBook Air with 16GB and it works well but I'd definitely recommend that 16GB for developers. My normal workflow often involves a couple of VS Code instances, a DB tool, multiple browser tabs, and some other misc stuff. Let's not forget things like Spotify, Slack, Zoom, etc all on an external 3440x1440 monitor. Now first off, the fact that a fanless laptop can handle that at all is amazing. But it does routinely take me to 11GB in use. 8GB wouldn't be enough. That being said, the M1 Air with 16GB RAM, 1TB of storage, and 8GPU cores costs $1600, which is less than the base model 14" MBP.

I was quite surprised when you mentioned 3dsMax in the video since it is Windows-exclusive... That comparison didn't make a whole lot of sense at that point. Would be more interesting to see how 8 and 16GB compare for things such as VMs (e.g. Parallels), Steam, or maybe programming tasks since these would be tasks a lot of mac users would want to do I guess.

Just to confirm, are you using the 13 inch MacBook Pro for the 16GB ram and the 14 inch MacBook Pro for the 32GB model as the 8GB MacBook Pro should be the 13 inch one, which has a slower CPU. It seems impossible to keep the control variables the same from 8-32GB? Thanks

This was very helpful and highly appreciated. Keep up the good work! :)

If you plan on keeping this product for 5+ years or you are using this machine for more serious tasks (video editing, audio recording, software development, etc) I wouldn’t recommend less than 16gb. If the machine is for home or office use, wherein it is mainly an email machine, runs office apps, acrobat, a loaded web browser, and maybe a few other apps, then 8 will work and may be the right choice for the lower price

You forgot to mention external displays, since the GPU doesn’t have it’s own RAM, it steals memory from the unified memory, you will need larger RAM for connecting to multiple external displays.

Very informative video sir, thank you! I have a M1 Pro MacBook Pro with 16gb and doing some pretty heavy lifting in Premiere Pro with out too issues. They only time that it bogs down sometimes is during color correction. Cheers!

Hey Arthur, question on Movavi performance on Mac M1. Movavi is Intel-only. Will it work fine?

I have a 14 inch max with 32 GB ram, usual docker, Webstorm multiple browsers workflow. And I end up[ swapping about 300-400 MB after 2-3 days of usage, not a whole lot but I think I would have liked 64 GB RAM.

It really depends on the software you use, Adobe CC gets bigger at each release so I’m sticking with 16gb.

hello, I have been thinking about buying a macbook pro but I have not decided on the ram memory, because I wanted to start in what is video editing and photography and office automation, I thought about 32 gb of ram memory but I've been watching it is in the long term, but sometimes I think that 32 is a lot and I do not know if I will get what I'm going to do, and I imagine that later will come out better chips. other opinions or recommendations? by the way what a great video.

Thanks for the video! a question, (I work with 4k video editing and occasionally with lightroom 25mp raw file and photoshop) for you better a m1 14" 8-14 core with 32 gb or a 10/14 or 10/16 core with 16gb. and for the same amount of ram (16gb) is there a substantial difference between the 8/14 core, 10/14 core and the 10/16 core? thanks

I got the 24” IMac 8CPU and 8GPU and 16GB RAM. Yes the machine is a beast for normal tasks and even simple video and photo editing. Once I started getting a little complicated with edits though all the RAM got stuffed and I ended up with over 5GB of swap used. I consider myself a little more than above average user and I would definitely invest more in RAM not CPU or GPU.

Thanks for this insightful video with a clear summary what to buy when. I made a big mistake getting only 8GB and virtualizing windows on my MacBook Air. Things screech to a halt, eventually. 8GB have to really be avoided for any type of serious multitasking. Your clip makes that obvious. More power to you!

Thanks for the content, great video, one more moment/large point for consideration -- there are already a lot of AAA games for mac, so asl you can play through parrallels -- and since unified memory is also used for graphics, it's a big difference for gaming

you have so much to learn about what ram is all about and how things really work with ram

Having owned a 16GB MBA and an 8GB M1 mini - absolutely get the 16GB every time. Running lots of tabs on Safari eats through that 8GB really quickly - so even with lightweight tasks such as browsing you can see beachballs quickly on the low end model.

Depends what you do with your Macbook - simple as that. If you are a light user - browser, social media apps, some simple graphics work, video, music - 8gb is enough. Even if you are an amateur content creator - photographer, musician etc. - 8gb is enough. When you start to get into the area of video production, 3D art, more pro photography, you'll want as much as you can feasibly get. For me, I fall between the first and second. I've got a mac mini M1 and a macBook Air M1 - both base models. I have yet to notice any significant annoying slowdown. I do a fair amount of photoshop work, create music in Logic Pro, which includes using guitar, bass, keyboards etc. - I also do code. (Software engineer by trade). Anyone who says that you need more than 8gb for this level of usage on an M1 mac, really doesn't know what they are talking about - the architecture is VERY different to Intel Macs. Yes - once you have made that choice, you are stuck with it - so if you do start to go to a more pro-level and require more oomph, that'll likely happen quite slowly over time - by which point, Apple will have released newer models (which they already have) - and at that point, you can trade up. Next question, because this one has been done to death and put to bed a LONG time back. I think the biggest irony in all of this, is that these questions are often posed by those who create video content ... for RU-vid ... and as such, they will naturally be biased toward wanting more RAM.

What would you recommend for working on data analysis with excel, sql and python. Is 8gig enough?

Great video! My question is if I’m looking to upgrade my 2019 16” MBP to a 16” M1 Pro MBP, I’m a professional photographer that strictly uses Photoshop and Lightroom (no video), is 32gb overkill compared to 16gb? I’d there a noticeable increase in performance using PS / LR with 32gb?

Real world experience. I have a mini with 8gb of ram. I work in IT. The browsers drag you down during a long work day. I think 16gb is the minimum. The problem comes from email, calendars, video calls, and web sites. It all takes a little bit.

I'm presuming this would be the same for a Mac mini (which is what I use). I'm an artist and run a lot of programs like Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, a couple of vector based programs, etc... and I use an XP-Pen drawing display hooked up to it. About a year and a half ago, I almost went with the 8 Gig model, which I'm sure would've been fine, but... I figured, just to be on the safe side I should flip the extra $250 (Canadian) and go with a 16 gig. It runs smooth as glass... but would it have run just as smooth with 8 gig? Maybe, but I feel better with that 16 gig "safety net" .

Thank you for this informative video. Now I have a better understanding of what I need when purchasing a computer.

Planning to get older mac. is MBP 2018 i7 32gb good investment than MBP M1 16gb? will be using it for music production..

One thing that doesn’t seem to get tested much is building previews and running a few Lightroom tasks simultaneously. For example, I’ve found that on the M1 MacBook Air 8GB, if I build 1:1 previews and try to edit or use brushes at the same time (or do much of anything else), it locks up. I find I do this a lot on my old MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM which didn’t seem to have as much of an issue.

well I do audio work with ableton and I cheaped out on the 8GB (what I used to have); and it's really all right. I've yet to see the pressure goes into red (I've seen it yellow a few times); and the swap has never gone beyond around 300 MB. Could it be a little faster? probably. Would I really care? probably not. I use mostly synths; a few drum samples; one or two sampled instruments once in a while. I do know that RAM is the bottleneck on my system (like I would see RAM issue before maxing out the CPU probably); but for my usage it's not a problem. When I make a render it's usually below 5 minutes, which is just perfect to make a toilet or coffee break. Only problem is "wired memory" seem to fill up with time so I reboot every few weeks to keep it under 2GB.

Great content and superb production. Looking forward to seeing your channel grow. Take my sub!

I did video editing on 8GB of RAM on Premiere Pro with the 13” MacBook Pro. I wonder what’s the deal here. I even did them with 4K60. If you want the best video editing performance, go get the M1 Max MacBook Pro on the 14 or 16” model depending on what size you choose if you can actually afford it. That will come with 32GB of RAM standard. You can put up to 64GB of RAM if you really want to.

Memory is not meant to improve performance , that's CPU .. memory is meant to have more programs opened and helps the CPU to kept the performance .

currently got a M1 macbook air, I run out of memory with 8gb quite regularly. Macbook starts to lag and mouse cursor runs slow when i have 2 different browser and 15 tabs open, unless i deliberately go quit every other program that is running. so I would say always go for 16 if you have the extra budget

What would be advised for wedding video editing? 16gb or 32gb?

what about working on 5-7 dockerized projects, each contains redis, mysql db, possibly rabbit, nginx and php-fpm or nodejs server? will more ram make it less performance eater?

Hello, interesting post. I started out with a 13" MBP with 8gb ram and 1TB storage. While the laptop performed quite well, I frequently found myself staring at the infamous beach ball, quite regularly. Activity Monitor always showed available ram nearly all used up and frequently using as much as 7gb swap memory. I upgraded to the 16gb ram version of the 13" MBP, 1TB storage and noticed an immediate improvement in performance. The swap memory was not used nearly as much and the beach balls were far less present, although still appearing once in a while. Recently I upgraded to the base model 16" MBP with 1TB storage and again noticed an immediate increase in performance, again with only 16gb ram. The swap memory is almost never used. In all 3 cases my usage is the same. I basically do no video editing, usually have no more than 4-5 browser tabs open and use the laptop primarily for office work and watching RU-vid video and movies. On average, Activity Monitor shows about 12-13gb ram being used. Google Chrome is still the biggest memory hog, although Safari is not much better. I would have gone with 32gb Ram, had it been available. As we say in the motorsports industry "there is no replacement for displacement". Thanks again for such an informative post.

If you're a producer using Logic Pro, 32gb Ram is a minimal amount. All those plugins and audio tracks and midi tracks and sampled sounds are very demanding. Most producers go for 64gb, or even 128 if they can get it. You want more than you think you need, because you may end up needing more than you thought you would use.

14" 16-32 gig. My big problem about purchasing more for the future is. Will the labtop last that long. Will Apple support the sytem for that long or force you to upgrade. I purchased a big brand PC six years ago running Win 1o. Already not upgradable to Win 11 & Microsoft says they are not supporting Win 10 anymore. Just received my supposed last update & I get a small window pop up asking me to enter my pin when I log on to the internet using Microsoft Edge browser & can't even get a response from Microsoft about it (is it Microsoft asking for my pin or???) because I run Win 10. So I hit the cancel button & run as is. I'm not entering my sign on pin again unless someone from Microsoft talks to me. Heck, I'll go off grid & just go to the library if need be.

What wpuld you recommend for music production where you would have 20 to 40 stems and each one has plugins on it ?

Just got the M1 Pro MBP with 16gb a few days ago. All I do is my engineering class work (so mainly coding), medium format digital photography, some video, and audio editing. So far 16gb has been more than enough, but I am worried about how it will handle google chrome. I use a lot of tabs and those seem to eat up ram more than anything I can do in DXOlab, Final Cut Pro, or Matlab.

Very informative as always. Really exited for the upcoming M2 laptops.

This makes so much sense thanks so much for your explanation

Xcode, Safari, Mail, Notes, TextEdit parallel(multitasking). So, Mac Mini with M1: 8 core CPU, 8 GPU, 8 GB RAM, and 256GB SSD configuration will be fine for me? Or please suggest if i need more core CPU, GPU, RAM or SSD.

Not every mac heavy user is multimedia creator. I use mbp 13 m1 with 8gb ram for academic research. Often used more than 3 profiles in chrome with >10 tabs opened. Handled many pdfs for research, excel, word, several note taking apps, statistical software such as spss, smartpls opened and feel barely lag. Thanks for the video btw. I will stick with my stuff for a while.

For office work surely 8 GB is more than enough, while for creative jobs or some gaming higher RAM would be needed

I just bought a Canon R7 camera and I would like to do Astrophotography and edit the results for sharper images . Which MacBook Air or Pro and how much RAM would be the best for what I would like to do?

Very useful and i was actually searching for this answer and I'm happy that i have understood the differences

In 2014, I bought a MacBook Air with 8GB (upgraded from 4GB, the base option at the time). Great decision, because the machine still works well today. (I use Xcode on it - but not the latest version). If I had got it with 4GB, I wouldn’t be saying that. I’ve just ordered the M2 Mac Mini with 16GB unified memory, and I’m hoping it will still be useable in another 10 years time…

Generally, you only need more RAM if you're doing things that use lots of RAM. The top types of apps that use up RAM are: - Software development - Audio and Video production - Scientific simulations - Financial simulations - Games - Running VMs and services (think Docker)

Thanks so much. I was wondering if I could work with editing vido&photo without a problem with the 32 G.

This is very informative and best video I have seen. Thanks a lot.

My first 2007 iMac came with a ridiculous 1Gb of ram, which I instantly upgraded to 4Gb. Every Mac I've had since has been ram-maxed. With the latest models, however, Apple makes the ram upgrades so expensive, so I see the reason for this video. I also see the reason to wait and wait and wait to buy a new Macbook because the ram I want (32Gb) is so expensive.

Amount of gb's is not only about performance. Its also about amount of running processes at the same time

Where did you get that neon AW on your wall? I like it a lot and looking for a gift for my baby cousin

If you buy a 16 GB model, you won't get the full 16 GB. Some space will be taken by already running apps in the background by startup. And if you work in creative software, you'll also be listening to music or using Chrome for research on the project. So imagine how much space is left for your creative software to run and use its full power.

So, i got things clear, mba 8gb is enouh for my workload as a student, using it for document, browsing and light editing tqq

I don't suggest getting 8gb of ram because you can't upgrade it later. You'll never buy too much ram but you can buy too little. If it was upgradeable the I'd say ok cheap out on 8gb however 16gb has been the norm on PCs for a long time and most phones have 8gb so it doesn't make sense to buy a premium product and only have 8gb. If you wanted to cheap out then macs were never a good choice regardless.

Here’s a good question what kind of configuration would you recommend for someone that does browsing, emails and focuses on making logos designs android-shirt files using adobe illustrator, mock-ups on adobe photoshop.

I want to run the windows version of Excel on Parallels Desktop. Should I get 8gb or 16 go ram? I am gonna get 1tb ssd for sure.

depends. for example if we are in music production many apps store samples in ram. in such cases even 256 gb ram might not be enough to handle the needs of producing a 100 piece orchestra

... and if you are doing multiple things at the same time, or you need to use external displays (uses RAM in this architecture), then you need more RAM. So, short version: Get as much RAM as you can afford. I just saved you time from the video.

so if you are coding with xcode or android studio , it's recommended to get 16GB of RAM then ?

Hi, I need some help/suggestions on how much RAM I need for my daily work. I am a website/app developer and I use the computer daily for about 12-14 hours. My daily computer tasks are coding, photoshop, and AI, with multi-browser tabs open. I will also use the extra monitor. I am not sure how much RAM I need for that kind of tasks(not an expert). Hoping it will last at least 3 years. I am planning on getting the MacBook pro.

16GB period. I've heard countless people say they regret getting only 8GB, and I'm in that group of people.

I got the 64GB RAM option 💻 I've got no complaints; it runs like a dream with Firefox, Spotify, Telegram, Photoshop, and Illustrator all running No hesitation whatsoever

Thank you!! I really needed this.

so which one is better for Art (painting) Stream ? (I'm using OBS + Clip Studio paint + final cut to edit my videos )

Ridiculous how expensive the upgrade from 8 to 16 or even to 32 gb is compared to normal PCs. Even considering the memory is embedded on the M1, it should be even cheaper.

The thing with RAM is that if you have enough for a task, having more doesn’t increase speed too much but if you have less then the system uses the HDD or SSD as memory and you will notice that. There are two reasons for increasing the ram. Not only that you will use more demanding software now, but if you want your laptop work “fine” more time. The basic works that today need only 4Gb in some years will need more (for doing the same work hahaha). People with MacBooks from 2012 have them working perfectly but with an increase of RAM from the original 4Gb to 12 or 16. I lived the same with a Pc with 4Gb… in some years (and some Windows versions later) with those same 4Gb I need lot of time only to have the laptop on and ready to work and even to the more simple actions like watch a RU-vid video I need to be patient… a friend with the same laptop but 8Gb doesn’t notice difference the firsts years but now he works far better than me.

Is MacBook pro 13" m2 256 yood enough for photo editing?

Great insight and you have helped me to make up my mind! Thank you!