M4 w/32gigs vs M4 Pro w/24gigs

[Shiva77]

I am leaning towards buying the new M4 MacBook Pro with 32 gigs of RAM. I use my MacBook for pretty much everything from mild video editing, to zoom calls with multiple users, with both Safari and chrome websites open to multiple websites.
I’m wondering if going to the M4 pro with 24 gigs would be a better choice? I guess I’m from the old Windows school where more ram was always better than processor speed. There is not a huge price difference between the M4 pro with 24gigs and the M4 with 32 gigs.
In a nutshell, my question is: is it better to get an M4 with lots of RAM compared to an M4 pro with less RAM?

 

[cassmr]

The m4 pro is a pretty big step up in performance. I think it would be hard to find workloads where the 24gb pro was any worse than the m4 with 32. They no doubt exist but would be niche. The pro would be noticably better in most use cases. Although very simple day to day tasks, like email, web browsing unlikely any different.

Given they are the same price, personally, it'd be the m4 pro all day.

Would also be helpful to know what current mac you have?

 

[Shiva77]

In Canadian dollars, the M4 with a 1 terabyte hard drive and 32 gigs of RAM is $2849. The M4 pro with 24 gigs RAM and 1 terabyte is $2950. So only $100 more but much less Ram. I’m upgrading from a 2019 MacBook Air with a i5 processor and only eight gigs of RAM, too many spinning wheels!

 

[cassmr]

I dont know if i'd call 24 gb 'much less' ram than 32. For most people and most tasks 16 is more than sufficient (keeping in mind plenty of people seemed satisified with 8gb, even if they would have preferred or noticed a benefit with more), 24 provides some good future proofing. 32, honestly is a bit of a waste on an m4 chip, as the advantages of that extra ram are likely to be bottle-necked more by the CPU than the ram.

Ram is a weird upgrade, it can make a significant difference or none at all. If you arent using that extra ram, it wont make your machine any faster.