MacBook Pro M1 16GB vs. 32GB

In the UK, the upgrade from 16GB to 32GB is £400 ($460). If you have the laptop for five years and presuming you are buying the laptop outright with no interest, the additional RAM will work out costing you 22 pence (25 cents) a day. For something as vital to both your professional life and hobbies as this laptop sounds, are you going to miss 22 pence a day?

Additionally, if you sell the laptop at the end of the five years or keep it for seven like your current computer, these daily costs will in actuality be even lower.

Considering that RAM in the Macbook Pro is not upgradeable, buy as much RAM as you can afford now.

5-6 containers simultaneously with other applications?

64gb if you don't want to end up with swap. 32gb is the bare minimum.

Ram on m1 is split between gpu and cpu. 16gb is more like 10gb available to the actual application.

Don't believe in all the hype and misinformation surrounding ram efficiency on m1.

Swap is fast enough for most casual users to not notice the impact but as a developer or creator, you will definitely notice it.

Max Ram + CPU has always been a recipe for longevity of a laptop.

For me, RAM is at least a few seconds saved at every step, which adds up to minutes, hours, days and months saved. Waiting for a computer when you spend so much time on it is not something super worthwhile for me.

RAM remains like increased lung capacity for computers.

Apple silicon appears much more efficient per GB of RAM, which might reduce the need for RAM in average use cases.

It entirely remains to be seen if that effect remains as software and operating systems continue to become complex.

To imagine 32 GB is becoming the standards that 16 GB was a while ago doesn't seem unreasonable.

I'm coming from a hackintosh with 64GB of RAM. My workloads vary, from compiling apps, 4K video editing/rendering, gaming, etc. I keep loads of tabs open (safari though), and rarely reboot and don't close apps for days.

I bought a Mac Studio with 64GB, but I really feel I could have gotten 32GB and it would have been fine.

That said, reading your workload and apps you use, I would get 32GB. Keep in mind that the capacity of your SSD also determines the speed which helps in the event the OS needs to swap, so maybe don't go for the smallest SSD.

Can you afford 32? Get 32... or 64... more ram is always better.

I have an 8, a 16, and a 64

The 8gb was just not enough. It crashed through normal use often

16gb was greatttt but got slow and weird (audio devices would disappear, requiring a restart) , occasionally with Docker Desktop

64gb is a beast and I'm running parallels windows and parallels KDE and even ELECTRON apps simultaneously ( ;) )

If you can afford it, get the 64. If it's too much, I'm guessing 32 will work very well also.

I regret that I've chosen 16GB. I thought with the 1 TB fast SSD I could utilize the swap (also 400€ cheaper) and help Docker continue working seamlessly, but working with many containers and many tabs and App's open I can feel the sluggishness switching between windows. If I were to buy new, I'd buy at least 32.

You'll quickly run of out 16. You'll always need some apps that are bad at memory management.

32GB minimum, 64GB recommended.

I restarted my Mac. Opened one tab in Chrome + Android Studio + emulator then ran a full unit test run. Memory usage spiked at around 27GB, then down to 17GB 'App Memory' when idle.

I typically have 30-40GB usage (heavy browser usage & 2/3 heavy IDEs)

Buy more if you can afford, for the future as you can’t do it later

"Android Studio"

Get the 32 GB.

you might be able to easily outsource some/most of the containers to a rpi/server/vps and save some ram.

Always get the most ram you can afford

I am also facing the same.