TRUTH about RAM vs SSD UPGRADES for MacBook 

imagine using colima instead of docker desktop, vim instead of x code, the base model is perfect for me!

And yet on all other tech videos everyone is saying '8GB is not enough' .... how many 'average consumers' are opening more than this!

It's a useless baseline since it OBVIOUSLY depends on the project and the Docker Image. 8GB is 8GB no matter how good your memory management is and the system takes a huge chunk of it.

@@lomelyo huge chunk? what do you mean by huge chunk. people need to learn to read macos ram usage before talking. if you see 5 gb out of 8 used, and 2.5 gb cache, you still have 5.5 gb usable. which is plenty for many use cases. the thing is you see 5 gb used and you start panicking. start understanding the numbers you see.

@@sphexie I'm talking about 1-2gb range. Which means 25% of the RAM is reserved for system use. 🤦🏽. I know how RAM works.

My kid has an old air ~2015 with 4GB and it still flies with all his Roblox games

If I boot my Windows computer, it takes about 10 or 12GB RAM by just starting. If I boot my Macs, they use like 4GB upon startup.

@@xmaverickhunterkx This is just a straight up lie. Windows 11 uses 3.5-3.8 GB upon start up.

@@fazlerabbi460 I mean with actual programs installed that startup ln both machines with the OS. Not an empty install. Both with exactly the same programs BTW. And Windows actually uses more RAM if you have more too. My 16GB Win would take about 6 to 8, and my 32GB upgraded to 64GB is the one that has always used about 10GB. And I highly doubt there's a world where Windows uses only 4GB and is not paging like a mad dog lol.

depends of windows. if you go with spectre or light you can use it on 2gb of ram perfeclty fine

my mba2012 4/256 stil work without problem

Glad you liked it!

Same here. Sub n Bell right off the bat. Really needed this review after purchasing (somewhat blindly) an M2 with 256GB of SSD.

Thanks for the sub!

@@auangApple has nothing to do with content on this channel. I just haven’t done this test before, but I totally should have. What other tests do people want to see?

​@@AZisk It would have been really nice to see the 24GB ram version in the comparison too. Would you say is it worth buying more than 16GB of RAM knowing now how MacOS compress the memory? Also the responsiveness only degraded in the base model after a lot of tests.

@@AZisk Not sure about tests, but from what I've heard 'swap memory' being used doesn't significantly affect the SSD health unless you use it for very RAM-intensive tasks, all-day, for many many days - and even then, by the time it significantly damages the SSD, the life-span of the Mac itself would be coming to an end. In that scenario, an 8gb Ram M2 Air would be the optimal Mac for students, especially those in CS or SWE - could you please speak on this?

Problem is apple in the base models uses cheaper slower ssds so it realy depends on the usecase. nothing is as fast as ram but if you f.e. deal with larger files the faster ssd on the upgraded models can safe actual time

Its very expensive tho

@@JC-tg5xx what's more expensive is having to buy a new laptop when you realise you need more ram

Is 8gb really insufficient for stuff like messaging apps, browsers with a few tabs, documentation apps?

@@JC-tg5xx Well sure 8gb is fine for light use such as the aforementioned tasks, but it'd be hella nice to be able to do more than that. Take my work load atm as an example: 20 browser tabs mostly documentations and a youtube video playing in the background, xcode, discord, and some other background apps and the system is still running smoothly with ZERO swap. My point is: while it's perfectly usable with 8gb, upgrading to 16gb allows you to use the M2 SoC to its full potential. I mean why wouldn't you want to get the most out of your already overpriced ultrabook. Heres a bonus: aside from the apps i have already mentioned, I opened davinci resolve, photoshop, 2 more youtube tabs, netflix and the swap is still ZERO.

What kind of development were you doing??

I immediately thought the same when I saw his zig code and was about to comment about it, but saw your comment and just put this comment as a token of agreement.

This 👍🏻

Still the customization of upgrade to prices is terrible on macbooks. One thing that would put me away from choosing a macbook is the upgrade pricing is terrible. The laptop I'm currently using for work was about 1200 euros and has a i7 10gen CPU and 32GB of ram (my workload requires me to run servers to a total of 13GB of RAM, OS, browser, IDE, etc easily puts me above 16GB so I'd need to go to the top RAM upgrade), and runs buttery smooth, but for the same thing on a macbook, I'm looking at 2200 euros or more...

@@TheShitpostExperience I think one of the main points people are trying to make is that the Apple silicon Macs are great at managing memory. Now, you might have a unique and specific use case here if you need to specifically and manually allocate memory to those servers. Without knowing what software that is, it is hard to say for certain. But you are also falling into the same fallacy that most Windows users have when looking at Mac hardware; the incorrect assumption that you have to match spec-for-spec to get similar performance. I "only" have 16GB of memory on my M1 16" MBP with 1TB of storage, and I'm currently running a Chrome, Firefox and Safari, Excel, Notion, WhatApp, Facebook Messenger, Messages and Discord clients, VS Code, a local 11ty dev server, Local with 2 different WordPress sites under development, DeepL client, Excel, Apple Mail, TextExpander, TextSoap and a couple of other utilities. That's a pretty typical load for most of my day. I have my built-in display and a 1440 external display, too. Everything runs super smooth. At some point, I might look into managing my local dev environments with Docker containers, and that might prompt me to upgrade to a computer with more memory, But for now? 16GB is plenty. So, if your workload looks similar to mine, don't automatically assume you need 32GB. But, if you need to manually allocate memory to specific applications, then yeah, you probably will need more than 16GB.

yes. I got my wife one of the 11" Intel MacBook Airs 9 years ago. Really low specs. 4 GB RAM. 128GB hard disk. She does light work on it so it's fine. It all depends on what you use your computer for. That said, I'm not a fan of Apple's low RAM and horrendous upgrade pricing for their RAM

I'm in my 3rd year of a CS degree and I've been using a 2015 MacBook Air with 4GB RAM and 256GB storage. Haven't had a single problem, even when running PowerPoint + browser tabs + VSCode together, although it does briefly lag occasionally, some hiccups here and there. I can only imagine that the M2 Air with 8GB RAM/256GB storage is WAY MORE than enough for any college student. The only problem you may run into is in an Assembly/Operating systems course, where you would need to use a Windows computer/run a Windows VM on your Mac. With a base M2 you could run that just fine, and I bet I could even run it on my 2015 air. Forgot to mention, I've also been using this 2015 Air since 2015, a lot. Apple really makes some incredible machines.

too long :)

I mean if you have half a brain it’s obvious the choice but i agree a lot of fluff reviewers out there, Alex is a champion.

Well, if I remember correctly it was because the SSD of the 256GB much slower than the 512GB

@@vitalis Yeah that's true, but even still the 256gb ssd was fast enough and the extra ram would be the sensible choice for longevity, in my opinion

@@MrKarco Yes for a software developer. For a college kid or general user 8gb is enough.

Glad it was helpful!

😂 I bugged him on Twitter the other day. What is he doing twitting man. Seriously? I just cannot say Xing, darn terrible name change.

Do you see it struggle?

Apple is all about optimisation. You should have expected that.

Yup absolutely crazy. Apple is all about forcing user to upgrade sooner, ditch their sub-par laptops and cough up cash so Apple can profit more. Witness the macOS abandonware cycle. Apple's newish 2017 laptops already can't upgrade to newest macOS. Witness simple ssd failure on macbooks means expensive motherboard replacement which cost as much as just buying a new one (check Louis Rossmann video on this). Older Apple laptops are rubbish unless you are willing to use windows or linux distro.

Even more crazy how it is still outperforming many windows laptops

You bought now the m1 air? Like hownlong will it have support maximal for 2 more years.

Glad I could help!

for LLM it depends on the size of the model, but even 96GB isn’t enough for some loads

Thanks for the sub!

Glad I could help

Glad you enjoyed it

There is no forever, my friend. The next processor update is around the corner.

Good to be back

How big is your storage?

@@AschKris It is 512GB. I bought that for resale values so when I get the M3 MB Pro 13 (new design), I will be able to sell it more easily. I do not use it even though I could. That is what Thunderbolt is for!

@@andyH_England which channel? Knowing the channels with agenda is good so that we avoid them/their agenda

Would you recommend M2 Air 24gb/512gb ssd over M3 24gb/512gb? They seem closely priced and I'm confused as a software developer coming from a 2015. Refurbished are not an option since they're not available in my country and can only order in Apple store. 😅

good point!

hey, the more ssd storage the faster it gets :D In this case it's the write operation so it's undeniably faster

@@maliceworld 2 drives is faster not the storage amount

Technically it’s upgradable but it requires an expert and a ram from another MacBook

@@ms1-Alex Yeah, not crazy about that approach. I used to just pop in RAM. It would seem that the newer SOC M1 architecture with unified memory might make this extremely difficult and cost-prohibitive.

It makes sense to just spec up your purchase to avoid this being an issue these days

@@TechnoRiff I am old enough to remember that you could have a separate FPU, that has been integrated in the CPU. Far more optimized. Its the same with the RAM, the RAM is now highly integrated in the SoC package, with huge advantages. Just like the Neural Engine, the GPU, the Afterburner used to be an expensive external card, now its part of the SoC. Working with video on an Apple Silicon Machine is incredibly fast, not in the least because of this.

@@BeaglefreilaufKalkar Sure that sounds right - plenty of optimizations due to proximity and resulting shorter signal paths, along with lower costs over time that hopefully get passed thru to the consumer. I also am very impressed with my M1 Macbook. Can't help feeling a bit gouged though for any than the base amount of memory - that decision seems final for that particular machine.

Hey, thanks!

good point. however, much easier to add fast external drive than RAM

m2 wit 16gb ram and 512gb ssd should get you right

Right?!

Glad it was helpful!

Thanks for the sub!

It’s built in to MacOS - Activity Monitor

I missed being here :)

agreed

As someone whose servers consume 12-14GB or more if we need to scale up the mods, I agree, 32GB is what I'd say the standard should be if you run stuff locally.