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Ask HN: MacBook Pro M1 16GB vs. 32GB

17 points by kujin88 ↗ HN
Hi all I am an engineer/part-time photographer that works a lot with photo/video editing, and at the same time, have a couple of active Mobile Apps as side projects going on. My previous Mac from 2015 is showing sings of slow death and I wanted to jump onto Apple Silicon.

Wanted to see if 16GB is enough for me or would it be better to get a 32GB RAM instead. My idea is to keep it for at least 3-4 years from now. My use case is: Photoshop, some photo editing, video processing, and then, Mobile game development (Android mainly), maybe some work with Docker (running 5-6 containers simultaneously) while having other tools like Android Studio, Zoom, Brave and Edge Browsers with 20 tabs each, etc. open

Thanks a lot for the help!

29 comments

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latchkey
Can you afford 32? Get 32... or 64... more ram is always better.
ikeserbestian
Plus one.

If you can afford 64G is a good investment for longevity. But 32G isn’t a bad option for next years.

Android Studio and Docker sufficient reasons for at least 32G memory but nothing less.

redwoolf
Considering that RAM in the Macbook Pro is not upgradeable, buy as much RAM as you can afford now.
alexfromapex
Yeah 16GB will likely sustain you for a while unless you’re doing something pretty hardcore but if you’ll always wonder what if then go ahead and get the 32 and have no regrets.
arunnanda
You'll quickly run of out 16. You'll always need some apps that are bad at memory management.
michelb
I'm coming from a hackintosh with 64GB of RAM. My workloads vary, from compiling apps, 4K video editing/rendering, gaming, etc. I keep loads of tabs open (safari though), and rarely reboot and don't close apps for days.

I bought a Mac Studio with 64GB, but I really feel I could have gotten 32GB and it would have been fine.

That said, reading your workload and apps you use, I would get 32GB. Keep in mind that the capacity of your SSD also determines the speed which helps in the event the OS needs to swap, so maybe don't go for the smallest SSD.

kujin88
Thank you. I am in a similar boat to yours and looks like 32GB is a minimum for me at this point
Dracophoenix
How would you compare your experiences with the hackintosh and the Mac Studio?
michelb
I'm not an experienced hackintosh builder, it was in fact the second pc I built myself based on advice on the forums, before that I usually had Mac Pro's until they got ridiculously expensive. I can't remember the specs of my last hackintosh but it was fast :)

One of the reasons I switched back was that I no longer wanted to tinker with OpenCore & friends, and make a sacrifice to the gods after every OS update :) The other reasons were that I got tired of the heat, noise and energy consumption, and I started to get weird little issues that I could theoretically solve with reinstalling and/or tinkering with the config. I decided that wasn't for me after all.

I love my Mac Studio (Max, 64GB, 2TB). It's actually silent, even when I push it hard. In terms of GPU I took a slight step back, but I only notice that with some games if I run them on extremely high resolution+settings. In terms of CPU I would say it has similar single-core performance but feels a lot faster because of the fast storage. and the reduced energy usage is immediately noticeable. Rendering video is comically fast, which is great.

To be honest, it feels like the best Mac I've ever had, and I've had almost all of them in the past.

searchableguy
5-6 containers simultaneously with other applications?

64gb if you don't want to end up with swap. 32gb is the bare minimum.

Ram on m1 is split between gpu and cpu. 16gb is more like 10gb available to the actual application.

Don't believe in all the hype and misinformation surrounding ram efficiency on m1.

Swap is fast enough for most casual users to not notice the impact but as a developer or creator, you will definitely notice it.

danwee
> 5-6 containers simultaneously with other applications? 64gb if you don't want to end up with swap. 32gb is the bare minimum.

That's not right in my experience. I have the MBP Pro M1 with 32 GB, and have a few VMs with docker containers inside (plus all my IDEs, terminals, google chrome tabs, music, etc.) and 32GB is plenty. Not sure the impact of having running as well Photoshop while all the VMs are up, though.

ivanvanderbyl
Agreed on 32gb min. My partner has the 16gb model and I have the 32 and developing on hers feels half as fast, it's noticeably slow.
kujin88
Oh, thanks for clarifying on the swap part. I somehow thought it's as good as let's say DDR2 RAM haha
catnip09
It is but it is still an order of magnitude slower than the ram on the chip. You don't use ddr2 ram in your pc today, do you?
kujin88
nope, I just used the DDR2 reference for comparison. Thanks!
9dc
you might be able to easily outsource some/most of the containers to a rpi/server/vps and save some ram.
quintes
Buy more if you can afford, for the future as you can’t do it later
rcarr
In the UK, the upgrade from 16GB to 32GB is £400 ($460). If you have the laptop for five years and presuming you are buying the laptop outright with no interest, the additional RAM will work out costing you 22 pence (25 cents) a day. For something as vital to both your professional life and hobbies as this laptop sounds, are you going to miss 22 pence a day?

Additionally, if you sell the laptop at the end of the five years or keep it for seven like your current computer, these daily costs will in actuality be even lower.

kujin88
It's somehow a huge bump in price here in the US, especially after considering that there are great deals on the "Open-Box" 16GB Macbook Pro. Looking at the 32GB, it's at least 500-600 bucks more :/
maneesh
I have an 8, a 16, and a 64

The 8gb was just not enough. It crashed through normal use often

16gb was greatttt but got slow and weird (audio devices would disappear, requiring a restart) , occasionally with Docker Desktop

64gb is a beast and I'm running parallels windows and parallels KDE and even ELECTRON apps simultaneously ( ;) )

If you can afford it, get the 64. If it's too much, I'm guessing 32 will work very well also.

yilugurlu
I regret that I've chosen 16GB. I thought with the 1 TB fast SSD I could utilize the swap (also 400€ cheaper) and help Docker continue working seamlessly, but working with many containers and many tabs and App's open I can feel the sluggishness switching between windows. If I were to buy new, I'd buy at least 32.
j45
Max Ram + CPU has always been a recipe for longevity of a laptop.

For me, RAM is at least a few seconds saved at every step, which adds up to minutes, hours, days and months saved. Waiting for a computer when you spend so much time on it is not something super worthwhile for me.

RAM remains like increased lung capacity for computers.

Apple silicon appears much more efficient per GB of RAM, which might reduce the need for RAM in average use cases.

It entirely remains to be seen if that effect remains as software and operating systems continue to become complex.

To imagine 32 GB is becoming the standards that 16 GB was a while ago doesn't seem unreasonable.

david_allison
32GB minimum, 64GB recommended.

I restarted my Mac. Opened one tab in Chrome + Android Studio + emulator then ran a full unit test run. Memory usage spiked at around 27GB, then down to 17GB 'App Memory' when idle.

I typically have 30-40GB usage (heavy browser usage & 2/3 heavy IDEs)

kurupt213
Always get the most ram you can afford
muzani
"Android Studio"

Get the 32 GB.

kujin88
thanks, decided on the 32GB.