I currently have a 2015 MacBook Pro that has a 2.7GHz i5 and 8gb of memory. When I run Safari with a few tabs, Anki, and Zoom for instance, all things begin to stutter. I would like to be able to run YouTube in Safari, Anki, Safari with many tabs, Zoom, Adobe Acrobat, and maybe a few other programs at the same time. Would the 16in MacBook Pro with the 18gb be able to handle that? Or would I need to get the 36gb of memory. As you can tell, I like to keep my laptops for a while, and would like to be able to use this laptop for the foreseeable future. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
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Coming From 2015 MacBook Pro
- Thread starter nmeed
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This doesn't fully answer your question, but, FWIW: You can determine if the 8 GB RAM is causing your issue by opening Activity Monitor, switching to the Memory tab, and checking the memory pressure window (at bottom left) when you're experiencing stuttering. You want it to be green.
If it's green even with your 8 GB, with everything open, that tells you that RAM isn't your issue, so 18 GB should be fine. I personally would like to have more RAM than that, but your usage is different from mine, and I can understand wanting to avoid the added expense.
If it's yellow or red, that tells you 8 GB is not enough, but doesn't tell you if 18 GB is.
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A 16GB M1 MacBook Air would be more than enough to meet your requirements. My M1 Air handles far more than that with ease.
You definitely don’t need a 16” MacBook Pro for this workload. A MacBook Air would be fine, as would 16GB of RAM.
Agree, the Air is good enough, and I wouldn't get less than 16GB. Before you buy a new computer, have you ever cleaned the fans of the laptop you already have? But check memory pressure first, if that's the bottleneck no amount of fan cleaning will help.
I have the 8Gb M1 MBA and run much more than you are without any slow downs at all!
Any modern M series Mac would run rings around your 8 year old MBP.
Any modern M series Mac would run rings around your 8 year old MBP.
Thank you all for your wonderful replies! For a minute I was debating whether or not to get the M3 Max because you know that Zoom is something… 😂😂
Looks like I stay under 8GB. Thank you very much for the suggestions. I think 18GB will be more than enough.
And yes I have cleaned my laptop fans, they barely ever turn on anyway FWIW. Thank you once again.
Looks like I stay under 8GB. Thank you very much for the suggestions. I think 18GB will be more than enough.
And yes I have cleaned my laptop fans, they barely ever turn on anyway FWIW. Thank you once again.