At Apple’s latest event, the new line of M3 Macs were introduced, including the updated MacBook Pros and the new iMac. But some buyers have noticed and are questioning why Apple has now made 8 GB of ram the baseline, and if it is enough for their needs?
The new MacBook Pro has a lot to offer: it has a beautiful vivid and sharp Liquid Retina XDR display, which now goes up to 600 nits, a 20% improvement, along with its stellar performance, amazing battery life, and the well-known build quality, there’s a lot to like about these machines. But many users and potential buyers are complaining about 8GB of RAM still being offered on MacBook Pros in 2023.
Yes, the only real downside to the base M3 MacBook Pro is the amount of RAM that it comes with. The base model comes with 8GB of RAM, which is not enough for many users who need to run multiple applications at the same time or who use demanding applications like video editing software. If you need more than 8GB of RAM, you will need to upgrade to the 18GB model, which costs an extra $200.
M-series chips include high-performance unified memory, which is more efficient than traditional RAM. This means you can do more with unified memory than you could with the same amount of traditional RAM. According to Apple, here is what they believe the use cases are for the following ram sizes:
8GB: Great for browsing online, streaming movies, messaging with friends and family, editing photos and personal video, casual gaming, and running everyday productivity apps.
16GB: Great if you will be multitasking across a large number of memory-intensive apps, including professional video editing.
24GB or more: Best if you typically work on advanced projects that require enormous files and content libraries.
All in all, If you know you’re going to be using heavy productivity apps or will regularly have dozens of tabs and apps open, 8GB of RAM isn’t going to cut it for you. In that case, spend the extra $200 to upgrade to 16GB. But, if money is no object you could spend $2,000 on the M3 Pro MacBook Pro, which ships with 18GB RAM, an extra USB port, and a more powerful chip.
What Mac is ideal for you?