Is 16gb RAM enough these days?

[daveo228i]

My own experience I bought a MacBook Pro in October 2020. I chose the 16 MB of ram over the 8. I’m glad I made that choice. For my loaded apps, photos, it’s fine.

 

[Isamilis]

Just bought MBA 8/512

• No slow down at all on working with few tabs Safari open, plus Word, Excel, Ppt, PDF Expert, Mail and some few other apps. Ram free is still about 3gb
• Monterey (preinstalled) is rock solid. Can’t talk about Ventura.

 

[rm5]

I think 16 GB of RAM is enough for some people, and even 8 GB works well for others, as pointed out by @Isamilis. I think for heavier workloads, especially given the fact that Apple Silicon chips have unified memory (so that the RAM and VRAM are shared, for example), 16 GB still isn't enough. That's certainly the case for me. Like I pointed out earlier, it all depends on what you're doing with the machine.

 

[throAU]

The base model M2 14“ MacBook Pro is listed at $1999 on Apple’s website. The RAM upgrade to 32GB (that you don’t need today and probably won’t even notice tomorrow, unless running specific very heavy workloads) costs $400.

That’s 20% of the price of a new machine - or the equivalent of buying your next laptop in 8 years down the, road instead of 10 years. These two years are much more likely to make a difference.

This is what i try to tell people who tend to over-capitalize***. Sure, you can purchase more RAM or storage today but those aren't the only things that will make the machine obsolete.

IO ports, storage speed, CPU instruction support for new features, and software support will all kill the usefulness of a machine too. I tell people to budget on replacing every 3-4 years - if it lasts longer, great - but you'll generally get a huge bang for buck upgrade after 3-5 years anyway, be covered for most of that time by applecare and maintain software update support. You don't fall too far behind with new IO port standards (and security features) either.

All you're doing by over-capitalizing is buying things you MIGHT need in future at a vastly more expensive cost than they will be by the time you require them. You're also locking yourself out of new breakthrough technology (should it happen) for years longer than if you plan to flip a machine more frequently.

Shifting from your old working mac to a new mac is relatively painless these days during install. Definitely easier than if you're trying to migrate because your old machine totally died.


edit:*** if there's an actual need for higher spec that isn't over-capitalizing. but if its to anticipate some nebulous possible future requirement... it's just throwing a lot of money at expensive hardware today that will be much cheaper in 3-5 years and come with a host of other benefits.

 

[Wokis]

In the grander scheme I guess it depends a little on why you went for a Pro. If it was primarily for a bigger and better screen, louder speakers and the like, then the 16GB model makes sense.

If it is because you need it to do heavy-duty tasks, 16GB has the potential to ruin some of those workflows.

OP's case sounds a bit like like the former. Though if you imagine yourself keeping it for a while and actually get into video editing relatively soon, you will not regret having gone for 32GB+ instead. I'm in that field and can quite easily saturate my Air's 24 GB.