71-90K Advise on M1 8gb or 16gb

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sunilyo

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Hello all,

I have been using the Macbook Air, i5 version (early 2015), 4GB model for the past 6 yrs and over the course of this period I have seen it going from rabbit to tortoise in terms of performance. It still works well if not overloaded. I use it only for office work that requires me to open up around 20 tabs on google chrome out of which around 10 will have google sheets, Microsoft outlook, Notes, around 5 tabs on firefox, Microsoft excel and word. With all this open the performance degrades a lot and throttling happens, so I keep closing tabs and apps every now and then. Hence looking to get the Macbook Air M1, but confused if I should get the 8GB version or 16GB. The difference in price is around 19k but I also have a budget and I am getting a brand new model with 8GB / 256GB ssd from Imagine in it. M2 base model is surely out of my league at this moment.

As per reviews that I have read and watched so far, there is not much of a performance difference between an 8gb and 16gb except for memory pressure for high-intensive programs like blender or video editors maybe. I do video editing but not much, so need advise on if its ok to go with the M1 8gb version.
 
sunilyo said:
Hello all,

I have been using the Macbook Air, i5 version (early 2015), 4GB model for the past 6 yrs and over the course of this period I have seen it going from rabbit to tortoise in terms of performance. It still works well if not overloaded. I use it only for office work that requires me to open up around 20 tabs on google chrome out of which around 10 will have google sheets, Microsoft outlook, Notes, around 5 tabs on firefox, Microsoft excel and word. With all this open the performance degrades a lot and throttling happens, so I keep closing tabs and apps every now and then. Hence looking to get the Macbook Air M1, but confused if I should get the 8GB version or 16GB. The difference in price is around 19k but I also have a budget and I am getting a brand new model with 8GB / 256GB ssd from Imagine in it. M2 base model is surely out of my league at this moment.

As per reviews that I have read and watched so far, there is not much of a performance difference between an 8gb and 16gb except for memory pressure for high-intensive programs like blender or video editors maybe. I do video editing but not much, so need advise on if its ok to go with the M1 8gb version.
Click to expand...
any time 16GB version!
 
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sunilyo said:
Hello all,

I have been using the Macbook Air, i5 version (early 2015), 4GB model for the past 6 yrs and over the course of this period I have seen it going from rabbit to tortoise in terms of performance. It still works well if not overloaded. I use it only for office work that requires me to open up around 20 tabs on google chrome out of which around 10 will have google sheets, Microsoft outlook, Notes, around 5 tabs on firefox, Microsoft excel and word. With all this open the performance degrades a lot and throttling happens, so I keep closing tabs and apps every now and then. Hence looking to get the Macbook Air M1, but confused if I should get the 8GB version or 16GB. The difference in price is around 19k but I also have a budget and I am getting a brand new model with 8GB / 256GB ssd from Imagine in it. M2 base model is surely out of my league at this moment.

As per reviews that I have read and watched so far, there is not much of a performance difference between an 8gb and 16gb except for memory pressure for high-intensive programs like blender or video editors maybe. I do video editing but not much, so need advise on if its ok to go with the M1 8gb version.
Click to expand...
Problem with 16gb version is that you can only get it from Apple store and no discounts or sales there. Last i checked it was 1.2L.
 
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i have the Macbook Air m1 8GB model.. if you are looking to open multiple tabs and work on google sheet and all .. i haven't faced any problems.. built some financial models as well and was fine to work with.. but if you have the money and do some light video, i would suggest you can go for the 16gb ram.. do note that macos is much more optimised than windows and therefore even with less ram it works like a charm..
 
My office laptop is a 2020 mac air with i5, the model before M1. 8GB RAM is easy to fill honestly with multiple browser tabs. People say Apple's OS is better optimised for lower amount of RAM, I don't think so. It is very similar to Windows for RAM management. Many times I feel that people who make such statements are comparing mac running on SSD vs Windows running on HDD. I do have 10+ tabs on Chrome at a time though.

Anyways, if you are already spending so much, spend more for 16GB RAM for the headroom as you can't upgrade it later. Apple knows this & has priced 16GB for an unreasonable premium IMO. Just my observations & opinions.
 
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i got mac mini m1 16gb . not much experience as hardly used it tbh but I went for it for future use with 3-4 years atleast in mind.

my main purpose is video editing. i did my research and 16gb is definitely value for money if you want to go little serious with video editing specially 4k and even 6k but not 8k that is different beast.

if not then also you will be fine with 8gb. it is plenty but like they say more is always better.

also selling 16gb in near future might give you better offer incase you do decide to sell and move to something else.
because 8gb is being resold here often at very decent price but 16gb is rare to find easily.

hope this info helps.
Party Monger said:
Problem with 16gb version is that you can only get it from Apple store and no discounts or sales there. Last i checked it was 1.2L.
Click to expand...
that is almost evil thing to do to force consumers to buy from them for better specs.
But apple was never consumer friendly so we have to deal with it.
 
Last edited:
sunilyo said:
Hello all,

I have been using the Macbook Air, i5 version (early 2015), 4GB model for the past 6 yrs and over the course of this period I have seen it going from rabbit to tortoise in terms of performance. It still works well if not overloaded. I use it only for office work that requires me to open up around 20 tabs on google chrome out of which around 10 will have google sheets, Microsoft outlook, Notes, around 5 tabs on firefox, Microsoft excel and word. With all this open the performance degrades a lot and throttling happens, so I keep closing tabs and apps every now and then. Hence looking to get the Macbook Air M1, but confused if I should get the 8GB version or 16GB. The difference in price is around 19k but I also have a budget and I am getting a brand new model with 8GB / 256GB ssd from Imagine in it. M2 base model is surely out of my league at this moment.

As per reviews that I have read and watched so far, there is not much of a performance difference between an 8gb and 16gb except for memory pressure for high-intensive programs like blender or video editors maybe. I do video editing but not much, so need advise on if its ok to go with the M1 8gb version.
Click to expand...
I use a m1 8 gb (brought in 2020) and a desktop (i5 12th gen + 32gb ram + rtx3070)
For productivity usage, the former is in general faster.

Obviously the m1 cannot do a lot of what the latter can do (e.g. graphic intensive games ) but for office work, it just sails through without any slowdowns .
Bear in mind that some software level perf differences will exist but I guess that is out of purview for this discussion. For example Outlook for Mac is in general is a whole lot faster intrinsically than the windows version… while the same is true for excel for windows
 
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superczar said:
I use a m1 8 gb (brought in 2020) and a desktop (i5 12th gen + 32gb ram + rtx3070)
For productivity usage, the former is in general faster.

Obviously the m1 cannot do a lot of what the latter can do (e.g. graphic intensive games ) but for office work, it just sails through without any slowdowns .
Bear in mind that some software level perf differences will exist but I guess that is out of purview for this discussion. For example Outlook for Mac is in general is a whole lot faster intrinsically than the windows version… while the same is true for excel for windows
Click to expand...
The ssd is pretty fast and on rare occasion it caches to drive, it will still be very fast. So 8gb is fine for most if you can save 30-40k.
 
solo_wing said:
The difference is 20k between 8gb and 16gb .
Click to expand...
If you have HDFC credit card, you can buy the M1 Air with 8 GB RAM for 80k from Flipkart right now. But 16 GB model is only available on Apple's website where there are no additional discounts. So you'll get it for 114k, making the difference a whopping 34k just for 8 gigs of additional RAM.

@sunilyo since this is a work laptop, can you charge it against business expenses? If yes, then absolutely go for 16 GB model since the effective cost is Amount paid - GST - Income Tax Savings (on depreciation).

If this is not the case, then if you can try out a device before buying, do that.

I use 8 GB Mac Mini and the performance is really good. I haven't faced any stutters. But I've also not used it a lot, especially for heavy tasks. It might be sufficient for your use, might not be. Since Apple has made it so we cannot upgrade later, going for 16 is the safe option, but if you can try, that would be the best.
 
gourav said:
If you have HDFC credit card, you can buy the M1 Air with 8 GB RAM for 80k from Flipkart right now. But 16 GB model is only available on Apple's website where there are no additional discounts. So you'll get it for 114k, making the difference a whopping 34k just for 8 gigs of additional RAM.
Click to expand...

Whoa...That's crazy expensive for just 8gb extra.
Anyways others have put some valid suggestions.
 
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Spend that 20k and get the 16gb model - save it from any other budget and you will thank yourself 1-2 years from now.
Do you have any other electronics purchases lined up soon?
 
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16GB if you can afford it, is the better option.

On the Apple website, there are at times student discounts offered. Look out for those. Some discounts are decent, like iPad Air came with free AirPods few months back.
 
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