M1 MacBook Air 8GB vs 16GB Performance Difference for Video Editing

[Dammster]

Guys, I hope you can help me with the decision.
At this moment I have the following configuration and want to switch to M1 as I don't like battery life my computer.
I am heavy Safari (tons of tabs open), Powerpoint, Excel, Word, Parallels (need windows environment) user.

A few years ago I tried MB Air with 8Gb, and it was too slow for me, so I switched to MBP with 16Gb. Now I can work without thoughts but battery life sucks, fans are going up time to time.

Should I take 8Gb or 16Gb version? Can someone do a test with 8Gb machine: Open Safari (30 Tabs), Powerpoint (8 pcs with 200-400 slides inside), Excel (2-3 files with 100-300Mb information), Parallels (if possible with Windows 10). And do a screenshot of Activity Monitor (Memory).

Thanks for your support.

View attachment 1674117

Do not forget that you will be not able to run Windows (even in Parallels) in the nearest future, until it is somehow supported.

 

[mlykke]

Guys, I hope you can help me with the decision.
At this moment I have the following configuration and want to switch to M1 as I don't like battery life my computer.
I am heavy Safari (tons of tabs open), Powerpoint, Excel, Word, Parallels (need windows environment) user.

A few years ago I tried MB Air with 8Gb, and it was too slow for me, so I switched to MBP with 16Gb. Now I can work without thoughts but battery life sucks, fans are going up time to time.

Should I take 8Gb or 16Gb version? Can someone do a test with 8Gb machine: Open Safari (30 Tabs), Powerpoint (8 pcs with 200-400 slides inside), Excel (2-3 files with 100-300Mb information), Parallels (if possible with Windows 10). And do a screenshot of Activity Monitor (Memory).

Thanks for your support.

View attachment 1674117

Absolutely get the 16 GB for that load. People keep talking about the M1 like it can overcome basics of computing. The M1 is very very impressive but ram is not related to the speed of the processor, but how many apps and data you can keep in memory before having to swap and load from disk. And even with a fast SSD, loading from disk is MUCH slower than ram. The real test of this stuff is opening a workload similar to what you mention and keep it running for a day or more - Thats when you're gonna see the real usage. Not 5 seconds after you open a single app.
Thats the next mistake people do - They compare the M1 to the iOS devices and how they run with lower ram. They all just seem to forgot that the iOS devices run a single app at a time, which is very different from a computer where you often can have dozens of apps open at the same time.
So I would highly suggest getting 16 GB ram for any workload that runs more than a few simple apps at a time.

 

[torncanvas]

How much RAM does an iPad Pro have?

6GB, and based on reviews I’ve watched, for heavier content creation tasks it’s not enough to maintain good performance.

Some YouTube creators enjoy the form factor so much they edit 4K video on it using LumaFusion, though. Like as their everyday machine.

 

[Woodcrest64]

I know its Apples to Oranges but (no pun intended) but if a M1 16GB is comparable to having an Intel machine with 32gb of Ram when editing 4k video. Is 16gb the "new" 32GB of ram?

 

[jdb8167]

I know its Apples to Oranges but (no pun intended) but if a M1 16GB is comparable to having an Intel machine with 32gb of Ram when editing 4k video. Is 16gb the "new" 32GB of ram?

Maybe for a particular workflow but not in general. When an application needs RAM, outside of memory compression, it is going to need the same amount of RAM no matter what computer architecture is used. If you run out of space for the application RAM requirement, you are going to swap to SSD. For most workflows, that will be order of magnitudes slower than RAM resident. On the other hand, it might be possible that Big Sur running on the M1 has more memory that can be swapped out than when running on Intel. Apple has claimed that they engineered the M1 along with Big Sur for performance. Reducing the memory working set required by the OS/kernel is something they could have done.