M1 Memory issues

[marxxx]

We bought a new macbook air M1 - 8gb ram and a 16gb mac mini for christmas. We setup the new macbook and it ran great for a week, then started with warnings that memory was running low to quit applications.
The concerning part is it was typically a web page eating up a large chunck of memory -with just the web browser open 6.5 gb of 8gb ram was being used.

I searched on it and there are reports of others having this problem with no help from Apple support (some responses included "return it", "it's just an inconvenience" etc.
Anyway, I called support and they had no idea what to do. The big issue now is we are running up against the wall to return it. So, we got an RMA for both machines.

Now I feel stuck. I am afraid to have so much invested in machines with serious problems.
So, what to do now? Upgrade that to 16 gb unit (we never opened the mini to try it, by the time I spoke to apple I just asked to return it unopened)? Wait and see when they work out the memory issue and buy new M1 based machines? Buy 2020 intel based machines?

Exisiting computers are running but are old and need to be replaced before long. We do have some time, but have reached the point they need replaced.

Thanks in advance!

 

[darngooddesign]

Upgrade that to 16 gb unit (we never opened the mini to try it, by the time I spoke to apple I just asked to return it unopened)?

To be frank, you absolutely should have tested your 16GB Mac to see if the problem was the computer or the site.

Which site are you using? What happens when you close the tab and load it in a new window?

Thats a lot of RAM for a single site to be using.

 

[marxxx]

We tried a variety of sites and the same thing happened with different sites.
Closed the browser, disabled all browser extensions, rebooted and still occurred.
I did some searching on it and people reported it with different browsers. Unfortunately we didn't have a lot of time to troubleshoot with the return window closing.
At the very least I wanted the air to go back and get one with more ram - though I am concerned this could be a wide spread issue.

The issue has been reported on apple forums, several on reddit etc.

 

[darngooddesign]

Test your Mini and send the Air back.