RAM advice M1 (or M2 I guess) Mac

[avalon 7]

Hi all. About to purchase either an M1 (most likely) or M2 mac book air.  Would 8Gb suffice with EN?  I have no experience  with the M1 chips and how these computers handle life.  Essentially EN, email, calendar, goodnotes, MS word, MS powerpoint and safari/chrome with multiple tabs would be running at the same time. Nothing more intensive than that. Its just Ive noticed EN is a bit resource hungry on the old machine - but as I mentioned, I have no idea how this compares to the newer M1s.  Id really rather not pay for 16GB RAM if I dont need it.  Are people finding 8GB sufficient to keep everything running snappy?

[PinkElephant 5,157]

No issue with 8GB for what you described.

You can’t compare the M-series with Intel architecture. Apple uses a dead fast SSD. They will swap between RAM and flash faster than you can notice.

For office and browsing the 8GB will do fine. Better put your money into a better sized SSD - this helps with several aspects. Put at least 512GB, better a TB. External SSD can be attached, but it is way slower than the internal beast. There is no swap with external drives.

More RAM is beneficial when doing video or photo editing. The M-Chips use the same RAM for CPU and GPU. Loading a lot of data for graphical use will reduce the RAM available for general use.

[avalon 7]

Thank you! Just what I needed to hear.