Best M2 MacBook Air deals: geni.us/m2macbookair

First video I've ever seen that offers a summary beforehand for the "in a rush" crowd. I honestly never comment either, but felt the need to do so to highlight that. Thanks for doing that!

The quick verdict that you wrote at the beginning of the video is highly appreciated.

Dude i love that you included the summary at 39 sec, thank you

Thank you for that summary at the start of the video! It shows your genuineness in conveying your message!

Thank you!! You are the first one I’ve seen talk about VM’s - great video! - no hype, smart assessment

2:34 Swap is not the only tool macOS uses to manage memory. You’ll notice in Activity Monitor that it also measures Compressed memory. With the rise in CPU speed and core counts, macOS monitors current memory demands and CPU load, and decides whether it would be faster to compress low priority data in memory instead of swapping it to storage. So if a Mac has a lot of CPU cores and enough unified memory is available, it may be more likely to use memory compression to save time over swapping.

Thank you for the summary at the beginning!!!

16gb is the sweet spot. Buying a $1200 laptop with 8gb makes no sense. I could not afford 1400 laptop, so I bought an m1 with 16 as the same price as an m2 with 8gb. I am happy. That m1 16Gb is wonderful, I use revit, solid works through parallels and I have no problem.

Thank you for the quick summary snapshot. Liked and subscribed coz of that screen!

Really informative video. Thank you 😊

Finally a precise video about this topic. Thank you!

This comparison is very clear and it is the definitive answer to most of our questions :)

Would be interesting to see the good old M1 Air 8/256 at the side with those numbers.

Thank you ... Crystal clear explanation!

Very informative and clear video. Thanks a lot!

I am a full time teacher and part time game dev. I occasionally use Parallels to run Windows, and spend a fair amount of time developing in Unity and Construct 3. I almost always have 17 - 18 GB of RAM in use. 24 GB of system RAM is exactly right for me for right now. 32 would be overkill, and I would be using swap with only 16. I know the video-production-centric users out there might feel they can use more GPU cores of the Macbook Pro for rendering, but for my game dev use the macbook Air with 24 GB is cheaper and more performant than a 16 GB macbook pro. The pro is sub par for my use case in every respect that I care about. The key here is that for me 24 GB of memory enables me to do everything without constantly relying on swap memory. 16 GB wouldn’t be enough. Assuming the 13” mba I bought lasts for another ten years like the previous one did, even 24 GB is going to get tight in short order. Bottom line: 24 GB is the best deal around for most people if they are planning to keep their laptop for 5+ years.

Great video, straight to the point with all the required details. Thank you!

Great video, great content, you definitely solve many doubts..

Thank you so much! Finally I made my decision through your video 😊

So helpful. Thank you!

The overview at the beginning is a genius idea,everyone should do it, as a reward I watched all the ads, comment and thumbs up and the 40 second I watch is liquid gold

As a student with a gaming pc already, went for 16gb/512 in silver, cant wait until it arrives

In my honesty opinion, I think the 16GB RAM would be the sweet spot for many moderate users (including myself), at least for a MacBook Air. Heavier users of business applications, and university students, and for occasional light photo and video editing. That amount of RAM (16GB) would also provide some future proofing for those who would be planning on keeping their machines for a long time.

Very informative video thx. I don't have any doubt anymore

big thanks for the quick answer in the beginning

Thanks for the video. You provided me with exactly the content I was looking for. Thanks for sharing relevant content for people who are between the very basic user who opens one app at time and gamers/creators. 🎉

Thank you sm for the video. Exactly what I needed for my buying decision, actually explaining the relevance between the RAM option, the opposite of what far bigger youtubers have been doing. Congrats!!

Very informative and pragmatical comparison - PERFET: your summary math the beginning. So the viewer can decide on hits own, if and how long he want to follow you... 👍👍👍

Thanks a lot! Ur's really helps!

So for my 3D modeling i decided to go with the extra 512gb of storage because you get the extra gpu cores. That boost from the cores to me was a no brainer because of thermal throttling. The ram can be useful but in a couple years I’ll be upgrading again and have my main PC for the extra power IF I need it. So far it’s been plenty powerful

I have a 16' MBP with 16GB of RAM. I can do pretty much anything without swap kicking in. Under normal conditions, doing school work and not caring what's opened etc, I usually do not use more than 10GB of RAM. If however, I run Blender or sth.. I have to close everything else. 16GB is not enough for 3D work. When you aren't rendering, it's never really a problem. But even a simple scene will take 5-10GB of memory to build and before you know it, you're swapping RAM. The most I've ever used in blender was like 75GB to build a scene during a 16K render and the laptop just crashed.. So.. 32GB for 3D, maybe even more.

I just got the 13.6 M2 MacBook Air with 16 gigs of ram memory, and 512 SSD storage. I've been a Windows desktop user since 1999 with Windows 98. My last Dell desktop had Windows 7 pro with 2T hard drive because I had a website, building my own web pages. That's why I upgraded my ram and storage, even though I don't have a website anymore. This is my first laptop, and I love it, very user friendly. I kept the 8 core GPU though, cause allot of reviewers on here said there wasn't that big a difference with the 10.

I've bought and gone through maybe ten different laptops and I find the sweet spot in both MAC and Windows to be 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD.

Well, I'm pretty happy with my 8gb M2 macbook air (base model). I have like 15 tabs on safari + light python coding + Capture One editing on a 1300+ photo catalog. The system makes a wonderful job managing the resources.

Definitely have my sub. This video answered all my questions. Going for the MacBook Air 15 inch for extra screen real estate 512 gb for the faster ssd speed and 24 gb ram as I have a lot of apps open for multitasking 😊

I got the 32gb M1 Max with 10 core cpu simply and base gpu. I need to work fast and my pc has to work properly. Love it

I was actually in a rush, so thank you for the "preview" but i have to boost the algorithm in some other way...

This video is outstanding!! Thank you. I got the 15” Air in Space Gray with 16GB RAM and the 512GB SSD. It’s spectacular and I never see the spinning beach ball with 30 browser tabs, video editing, photoshop, etc all open and running at the same time. I sold my 16” M1 Pro MacBook Pro because I like this upgraded 15” Air so much more.

A very balanced view. Thank you so much. Confirms modern OSes handle RAM really well thanks to swapping but, crucially, compression. Granted there's CPU cycles to spare effective RAM can grow several gigabytes. That's why modern macOS (Maverick onwards) can manage huge amounts of memory when running non-intensive, burst-wise programs (web browsing, office, background processes ...) with aplomb while won't be as effective if the CPU is busy, having to resort then to conventional purging / swapping.

Great video, thank u.

yeah seems like the m2 air with 24gb of ram will be perfect for my workflow. development can use so much ram even if nothing is that cpu intensive

I like the way he gave a TLDR version. Great works!

I’ve been using M1 macbook air for 2 years now. I am a web developer. 20 chrome tabs + mysql client + local server + 2 editor + finder + apple notes + terminal + 2-3 other apps always open, and I never faced any issues when I thought I should’ve gone for the 16 gb version… Totally flawless

amazing, thanks for the tip on gaming, i was debating whenever i pay extra for ram or not or just get a 8gb ram, but i guess in the end it depends on how much i can pile up, prices are absurd, cheapest one comes at 1500$ and most expensive 1700$(price for imac 2021, 8 core gpu and cpu for touch id and extra gpu and fan for highest performance 1500$, and 200$ extra for 8 to 16gb although even with disconts best i can get is 8gb if i rush and i get it off 200$ so i pay 1300 for mid tier version, while high end comes at no discont 1700$ 400 above the price).

6:41 THANK YOU. For real I'm tired of the tests only taking into account rendering, while it's not that important if it's not unconcievably slow. Which it won't be on these machines. Timeline experience is much, much and much more important. I'd rather have a two hours export for a 10min but butter smooth editing than 10s rendering and terrible timeline experience. You genuinly earned a subscriber and a like just for that lol.

Interesting stuff. I was thinking of getting an M2 Air instead of upgrading my iPad. I have an iPad Pro 12in (the original iPad Pro). I am currently running a 14in Mac Book Pro M1 with 16GB Ram and 1TB HD (the mid-grade model if you buy at the Apple Store) as my main laptop for creative work. But I usually travel with my iPad. So I wanted something light and portable for light work while traveling and in the past the iPad was almost there but you just can't do certain things on an iPad that you can do with a laptop (Apple must hold back the tablets so you still buy a computer). I've been traveling with the 14" and gotta say it's actually lighter and less bulky than my 12" iPad after I put the logitec case with built in keyboard (with the idea to make it laptop replacement), but if the Air is even more portable, and I can leave my $2500ish laptop at home, I think it would be nice to have the second laptop for "non-professional" work and as a basic computer at the park or coffee shop. With the option to occasionally work on some higher caliber stuff if I need to (which is why the iPad as a laptop replacement sucks) and not worry as much about drops, spills and even worse since Apple care doesn't cover, theft. I remember my iPad Pro when I bought it was almost if not just as much as the M2 Air is today. So I wonder if the 8gb M2 Air would be a better alternative to an iPad Pro with a keyboard if someone wants a casual computer for travel and non-office/studio environments for quick work in the cloud. And I wonder bang-for-buck wise, if the 16gb option would be better than the 8gb option as an iPad Pro replacement. Thanks.

I have the 16GB, 8 Core GPU, 256GB SSD. Amazing computer. Ive never noticed any slowdown with the lower storage because I don’t work with large files. I use for Android, iOS and Flutter development and I have used Xcode and Android Studio simultaneously but still not faced any problems. the machine is beast 🔥🔥🔥🔥

I got the 16gb m2 off the education store for coding. The ram really helps day to day use.

I worked with a developer that had a M series macbook pro of some sort last year in a software development environment. I don't know how much ram he had, but I'd assume he had 16gb. That would be fine for 99% of software development, and honestly 8gb is probably also fine for 90% of small software projects and even web development. However, in our case, we were maintaining and adding features to some system that was importing hundreds of gigabytes of data from various third party providers, and migrating that into our client's databases. This system runs on AWS instances with 64-128 gigabytes of ram to perform these data transformation and migrations. The developer I was working with could not run locally one of the transformations because his macbook pro would run out of memory and freeze up mid-way through. Whenever we had to test changes to this particular migration, unless we wanted to provision another EC2 instance, we had to use my workstation, which was a retired gaming PC with 32GB of ram that had become my main work PC. For a pure consumer device, 8GB of ram is still plenty. 16GB of ram is honestly where I'd start for a machine that has to do proper "work". Personally 32GB is my desired amount for a "work" station as, in addition to my previously mentioned anecdote, it just gives so much more capabilities. I can run multiple VM's / docker containers and have multiple projects open and running while developing some systems. For instance, there are multiple projects I've worked on where I need a linux dev environment as well as a windows server to run MS SQL server and .net. Instead of running a windows workstation and linux workstation side-by-side on my desk, I run the windows workstation on my linux workstation in a VM. More commonly though, vIdeo editing with multiple imported source files becomes very smooth with more ram. I wouldn't want to do more than clip together multiple 4k video files in a timeline with anything less than 16GB of ram.

I bought the base mode MacBook Air m2. By the time you add ram and bigger hard drive may as well get the 14inch pro . The base model works perfectly for normal computing tasks. As if you need more power then that it’s probably the wrong laptop to buy

I'm blown by how well the 16GB version of my wife's MBA works. I was hell bent on getting a 64GB system. I'm entirely re-thinking that.

Well as an MacBook pro owner Created Tech is my only tech channel choice

I have the 2020 M1 Air. Great machine. Any I usually don't have much more than Mail open while watching UKposts videos, maybe NeoOffice also. So nothing really huge. And yet, especially after watching a few videos I get the message saying that RAM is tight and if I wnat to free it up. Now I can deal with this, takes about 5 seconds to clear up until the next time it happens. I never get this on a 2015 2.2Ghz Air with only 8 GB RAM running Monterey. My wife also never got it on her 2012 unibody with 8GB running Mojave. Of course he computer is now getting a little long in the tooth and judging by my experience with my M1, and know how she freaks anytime some uninvited message pops up on her screen, when the time comes, I'll go for the 500GB SSD and 16GB RAM for her.

Nice video, congratulations! What is your Mac configuration recommendation for those who are going to use data analysis, both on Mac, but also need a virtual machine with Windows 11 running Power BI?

SO true what you said about rendering is only a fraction of work

I have the 8 core 16/512 M2 Air and I would definitely not want less ram. I am not a pro user, literally only use it for school and the sims. When I have like 5 Safari tabs open, Spotify open and Onenote for school, it always uses around 10 gb ram. I am REALLY glad I spent the extra money on upgrading the ram

I am subbing due to the summary for the in a rush crowd. W

My macbook M2 is 24 GB RAM. I develop apps with vscode and emulators, and consistently consume 16-17 GB of RAM.

Would running multiple apps and web tabs with 2 external monitors deplete more RAM? Can you make a video on this?

Playing league, discord multiple tabs at the same time and some ocasionally video editing on premier. What do you recomend?

If you are a developer I recommend getting 16 gb one. You can live with 8 gb but feel yourself very limited, and pressure on ram rises too.

Personally to me it doesn’t matter how much ram I have on my MacBook, but when it comes to my iMac I need at least 16 or 32.

Every created tech video: Unless you edit high resolution 4K videos and game seriously on your Mac, you don’t need that 16GB RAM. Me: I’m *both*

I have 8gb ram and I run 5 desktops with around 5 chrome tabs on every desktop on average. Also 4 to 5 apps running all the time but somehow it works fine, no issues so far.

I bought the 8gb (M1) Air. I must admit I do regret not going for 16gb, the lack of ram causes me quite a few issues.

Are you related to Optimum? you sound a lot like him and have similar video style, I love this

Have 8GB 2018 Macbook Pro Touch Bar i5 and doing great for me. Even can do some easier video edits in After Effects (not that video editor), use Photoshop, Illustrator etc, but mainly using Sublime for coding part. Only thing today is battery. Using many many tabs at once. But i'm exited for M3 chip and looking for possible update. If M3 arrives I believe Macbook Air will be great one with 16gb 512ssd. Only thing is the missing fan... will it affect a lot if at some point I want to Edit more videos. Downside is, that newer Macbook's gives you less usb-c ports (MBY M3 will change it). Currently have 4 of them by default and it's great. 3 should be default as minimum.

Cheers very much. Good info. I'm at the crossroads, looking at all the signs right now. Thinking Pro (for the first time ever).

Boy am I late to this party :) With that said, this was one hell of a party, and I'm glad I joined, albeit late. I do want to chime in, I wonder if the tests would have yielded different scores if you used M2 MBA w/1tb of storage, which will have the fastest SSDs (i believe 1tb and above have faster than 512, and 512 is double the speed of 256gb), and will work better with memory swap. Not that I blame you -- even if you're returning these, buying three M2 MacBooks Air with 1tb, with those different RAM options, would make this quite an expensive video. I just wish there was a way we could get those benchmark numbers with 1tb SSD versions of the computer.

I was until recently creating music on my late 2013 MacBook pro. The Air M2 base model is totally fine for music production.

As a Windows user of the past 22 years and Mac in 10 years before that, I presume that the Mac's OS has better memory management and needs less power, like Linux, than Windows. But moving from academia to the business world made Windows a requirement. To me, XP SP3 made it tolerable, 7 improved and 10 is sort of OK. Except, with layer's on layers of cosmetic changes called improvements, the overhead load increased too and at the same time apps on this platform became less and less frugal in resource usage. So it depends on our applications. When my previous powerful workstation died on me, I thought to replace it by a 12 core 16GB RAM notebook with discrete GPU that has its own 4GB video RAM. That notebook has Thunderbolt 3 and formally supports 2 displays of 4K (which its internal is). At that time, I moved to a mirrorless camera system and at that from 24MP to 46MP. With two 4K displays, Adobe's Lightroom Classic (LrC), and these 46MP raw images, I ran into the problem that LrC calculates previews based on horizontal display resolution (that's 7,680 for 2x 4K display). The short version is that with the help of senior techies from Adobe and the notebook's manufacturer, I was not able to get this to run so stable that it would not crash. To work, it needed a cod reboot and nothing started so I could open LrC. Nothing else. Try to go to Photoshop (Ps)? Crash. No blue-screen, just a stop and reboot. As I had hoped to make this a success, I concluded I could not. Goodbye to a 100 Watt (plus 2 displays) system. The notebook now demoted to the studio as tethering station with an empty LrC catalog that collects shots from the camera so these can be reviewed on the larger (15") display. The replacement that does the job? 16 core workstation running at default 5.1GHz with 64GB of the fastest latency RAM. This has Thunderbolt too, e.g. for the card reader. The GPU sports 11GB of very fast video RAM. In it, there's a RAID 0 array of smaller SSD drives that store data volumes of very high Write/Read character: LrC catalogs, cache, pag file. This build scored 98th percentile in the SPEC benchmark at the time it was new - everything running at default speed. Oh, there are a few RAID 1 arrays in there as well for (generally write once) read many volumes, at the level of the Intel chipset. Aside from raising availability, these also can make reads faster. Yes, it is very fast, in the Intel/Windows world, now about two years later. How much of that memory do I really need? It depends of course on what is open. With my 46MP raw shots, I easily exceed 8GB of video RAM in the GPU, so an upgrade to a newer GPU with 8GB - many power gains in these newer cards are targeted at games and a bit of video - does not seem worth my while. The base RAM frequently exceeds 32GB and incidentally 48GB. I have no problems processing very large images (32,000 pixels on one side) - for example stitching a bunch of these into one gigapixel image in Ps take there from LrC. While having several Office apps open, and several browsers, and play a 4K video, and a few smaller tools. Issues? Well, in the last 12 months or so, more and more software developers (or maybe the compilers they use for their apps) have "discovered" the GPU as processing powerhouse and base graphics plus LrC using the GPU in raw processing no longer have exclusivity. Rather, I see all sorts of apps hogging the "video memory" space. Consequently, I can run into a graphics memory shortage when ai have a few folders open set to extra large icon view and holding thousands of files each. That did not happen, say, a year ago, when Windows Explorer had not "discovered" graphics processing and memory yet. The workstation sports a 750W "Titanium" class PSU that is very efficient an probably should have been 850W or more in another efficiency class. With two of these workstations running, with their displays and some NAS storage, I guess the associated energy consumption is some 3,000 kWh per year. Imagine I could replace this all with ARM-based architectures ...

I have the 16GB, 10 Core GPU, 256GB SSD. Amazing computer. Ive never noticed any slowdown with the lower storage because I don’t work with large files. I use safari, office, email, and specialized economic modeling software. Everything works great.

What do you recommend, m2 8gb ram or m1 16 gb ram?

I have a Mac mini M1 base with 8 gigs of RAM. I mostly use my Mac mini for making music and logic I don’t use a lot of sample based instruments it’s mostly just.. Even bringing in projects from my old Intel Mac that were using 16 gig I’m still not seeing any more than 45% memory pressure I’m not saying anymore swap than I am when I’m watching UKposts and twitch with a few tabs of each open.. I’ve been monitoring the hard drive read and write using i-STAT menus which basically gives you a live feed of the activity monitor in the menu bar.. As much as I would love to have 16 gigs I’m not even utilising the eight gigs that I have to a point that would warrant me needing 16 gigs.. By the time it comes to a point that I need more RAM the M1 chip won’t be powerful enough for my needs and I’ll end up getting a new machine in a few years.. So personally I would equate my 8 GB Mac mini to the same as my old 16 GB intel MacBook. I’ve edited videos on my eight gigs without any issue at all.. And to be honest it wasn’t any different to my custom built PC with 64 GB of RAM and a 3080 TI, obviously the 3080 has its advantages because da Vinci resolve is able to leverage the power of a dedicated graphics card.. But all in all I don’t feel like I’m disadvantaged in any way shape or form with my M1 Mac mini and I absolutely didn’t need to get the 16 gig which I didn’t so I’m very happy with my choice

I am used to desktop pcs with atleast 32gb. I thought with 18 having to close background apps while working would bother me but honestly it helps me focus better

the summary given at the beginning of the video shows that this channel deserves to be subscribed

I have a Mac Mini with 16G ram and a 512 sd and the TV app with files on an external HD takes a full 12 seconds to open.My older mac did not take this long.

The beauty of getting 24Gb RAM is that you can run Windows in an virtual machine with 8Gb allocated (using UTM, for free, not the Parallells scam which is $90 per year), and the remaining 16Gb allocated to MacOS, and essentially get 2 ultra-fast laptops in one.

You need 16 gb period. 24 is overkill, but 8 you're definitely on the line. I've had 8 gb on both a PC and a mac, and i've constantly run into resources issues for my general workflow. Even with just web browsing. We also do a lot more video calling these days, and that sucks up a lot of memory, and normally when video calling, you are sharing content etc. Go with 16!

Hello, I am considering getting the M2 Air and am wondering if it is a good idea to upgrade the RAM or SSD. I can't really afford both. The slow ram speed of 256GB doesn't really bother me other than it being slower swap memory. Would upgrading to 16GB make it so I don't have that problem? I dont really need the extra storage and if I do then I could just get external storage rather than buying the worlds most expensive SSD. I plan on using it for school, maybe video editing in the future and some occasional gaming on games like CSGO. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Hi brother can anybody help me out!! I was planning to buy macbook air m2 15 inch. My specification is 256gb ssd with 16gb ram. But in stores they have only base models which is maximum 8gb ram. Can anybody advise how to buy this 16gb model??

Thanks for the discussion on video editing. That’s where I got stuck in terms of what to buy. I was planning on the MB M2 Air but am just getting into creating video. I wonder if it’s worth spending more for the 14” or if o won’t need it. I don’t imagine doing deep video work but I will probably produce and edit video for the foreseeable future. I love the lightness of the Air but the base model 14” isn’t that much more by the time I upgrade to 16GB and probably 1TB ssd. How do you decide? Is the base model 14” that much better than an MacBook Air?

Planning to buy macbook air m1 base model. My current workflow is: Browser with ~15 tabs, Intellij(for coding), discord, ms to-do app. I'll use fl studio & some graphic designing tools later. What do you think?

gooddd video!!

I'd also choose RAM over SSD upgrade since Macbook Ram's aren't expandable and external ssd's are much cheaper compared to built in Mac ssd's. Very good review sir. Keep it up

Have 8GB of RAM on my Mid-2012 unibody and that allows me about 40-50 open Brave tabs with smooth running.

Do you think the 8gb would be ok for light video editing in iMovie? I am just going to be transferring files from my iPhone, editing them (mainly cutting and spicing and adding background music and then uploading them to UKposts? This is the first computer I will have had in YEARS. I am currently doing everything on my iPhone 12 pro and it works fine, I just want some more fine tuning. Great video.

What would be a better upgrade for the 15” m2 the ram upgrade or the storage upgrade as I am thinking of using this computer for at least 6-7 years

I feel like if I'm going to upgrade, I might as well get an M1 Pro 14" MacBook Pro right away....

❓Rookie question: Is there a way to suspend tabs on Safari on a Mac as there is on Chrome on a Chromebook (an extension or Chrome itself)? I bought an 8/256 M2 MacBook. I'll be a light user for sure, but now I wish I got 16/256, because I'm worried that having several programs open plus many many tabs will cause hiccups and slowdowns. Any knowledgeable advice would be appreciated on this question as well as how to maximize my existing RAM.

Im watching this on the m2 MacBook Air 8gb of ram and I haven't really had any problems it runs smooth but I've only had it for 4 months

Swap memory isn't just a mac thing. In windows you can literally customize your swap size.

What would you recommend for someone owning a Ecommerce business? Mostly using 10-15 browser tabs, slack and discord, lots of excel sheets and i need to store like product photos and descriptions

I’m a day trader, so im thinking 24 for ram for the MBA i want to buy. However, im debating on getting a MBA for on the go at 16g, and a MacBook Pro 16 for desk at home. I run TOS (Trading software) on a 49” monitor, on top of a zoom call on a 35’ monitor, and discord on another 35” monitor. Safe to say ill probably be needing the pro 16 for all that, or a loaded up MBA m1 or m2. I’d love to be able to have a MBA that can do it all, as id also use it to trade on the go when needed, but realistically speaking I don’t think it will be able to keep up with my daily work load on all my monitors

Totally agree. 16 GB of ram is the best config for casual users but also the base config for pro users.

8GB is not enough for me. Never again going for the lowest tier option. 😅 but other than that the Mac does surprisingly well even with intensive tasks.

if u r a software dev, i would recommend 24gb as my 16gb m1 pro 14 uses swap just by having 2 IDE open, 1 android emulator, youtube and a few browser tabs.

If you work with development, buy one with 16GB ram. You can get the job done with 8GB, but it does a lot of memory swap, it's health in a long term.

What do you guys think is the best macbook for graphic design, I’m a second year graphic designer and still don’t know what to get