**CHECK OUT MY GUIDE FOR THE M1 PRO vs THE M1 MAX CHIPS HERE**
The price difference between 8GB and 16GB on the new M1 MacBooks is £200. It’s a choice you need to get right first time, too, because there’s no user upgradability.
What a head-scratcher, right? Imagine if you bought the 8GB version only to find out later that you should have spent that extra £200…
But who needs 16GB of RAM in an M1 Mac?
If your finger is hovering over the ‘buy it now’ button for a new M1 Mac but you’re totally confused about which RAM option to opt for, I’ve got some real-world experiences that’ll help you with your decision.
What the experts say
If you’ve read or watched me before, you’ll know that I’m not a fan of benchmarks or spec deep-dives.
This is partly because I’m not smart enough to understand what all of those numbers mean, but mainly because I’m far more interested in how devices feel during everyday tasks.
I genuinely don’t care how high a computer’s Geek Bench score is if it helps me become more profitable as a creator.
The RAM debate for M1 Macs is interesting, though. And it has drawn a raft of opinion from people who really know their onions when it comes to specs, benchmarks and really putting these machines through their paces.
For instance, YouTuber, Max Tech, recently conducted a 20-minute deep-dive into the difference in performance between 8GB and 16GB of RAM on an M1 MacBook Pro:
His experiments focused on Xcode, video exporting and Lightroom. In all three tests, the 8GB version lagged behind its 16GB big brother, but it was only the 8K export to 4K in which it was comprehensively crushed.
In that scenario (which is, incidentally, pretty niche), the 8GB M1 took eight minutes longer to complete the task than the 16GB model. Clearly, if you’re into heavy video editing work, 8GB is going to cause you issues. But, then, would you really opt for anything less than 16GB if that kind of video work is your bread and butter?
Over on 9to5Mac, Stephen Hall pushed the 8GB M1 MacBook Air to “the absolute limits of my normal workload”. He was “actively reckless” during the test, leaving multiple apps open and opening as many Safari tabs as he fancied.
The result was not a “single sign of sluggishness”, and he was only able to slow the Air down after opening 12 apps, 24 Safari tabs and six Safari windows (all of which were playing 2160p YouTube videos).
Once again, that’s probably not an everyday use case, but it does demonstrate how far you can push this new configuration of 8GB of RAM. It is mightily, mightily impressive for most people.
My day-to-day experiences with 8GB on the M1 MacBook Air
My first week with the 8GB base-spec M1 MacBook Air revealed the following:
- the battery life is legitimately amazing;
- I ran into zero software problems;
- the lack of a single core of graphics power didn’t seem to matter; and
- I missed the four ports I have on the 16” MacBook Pro.
You can read the full report here.
Since then, I’ve used the laptop extensively and pretty much as my only device. It has all but replaced my 12.9” iPad Pro (more on that in a future article), and is the first thing I use while sitting on the couch during my early morning routine.
Hands up, I’m still using the 16” MacBook Pro for video editing, but that’s mainly because of the screen size. But the M1 Air does everything else, including Lightroom and Photoshop work. It basically runs my entire business.
It never ever misses a beat. I’ve never experienced any form of sluggishness and it hasn’t crashed, misfired or beach-balled me once.
I’ve reached the stage where I don’t think about memory at all. A case in point: I’ve not bothered installing iStat Menus simply because I don’t need to know what the computer’s doing; it just works.
For me, 8GB doesn’t feel like a constraint – it feels like just another number attributed to the system-on-a-chip that is the M1. I don’t really know what’s going on beneath the hood to make RAM such a non-issue, but Apple really has done a fantastic job at abstracting it away from my particular workflow.
‘RAM’ just isn’t’ a thing for me anymore with this MacBook Air. That’s game-changing.
The Final Cut Pro test
A massive part of what I do involves video editing. For the last year, my trusty 16” MacBook Pro has been a video production workhorse. Despite all of the heat and fan noise during intense rendering and exporting, it’s an absolute monster, performance-wise.
That’s why I was so interested to see how the 8GB M1 MacBook Air would stack up against it. So, I ran a little Final Cut Pro test.
The 16” MacBook Pro destroyed the Air when it came to the export test, but that was the only potential hint that 8GB of RAM is a bit dicey if you’re running concurrent, heavy-duty tasks.
It’s for this reason (and that screen size) that I have reverted back to the Intel MacBook Pro for video editing, but the fact the M1 Air beat it during the render test gets me incredibly excited about my future Mac lineup.
I need computing speed to be as productive as possible. I don’t want to wait around for renders or exports. The fast they happen, the faster I can get paid – it’s that simple.
However, if my 32GB, top-of-the-line-graphics-card 16” MacBook Pro bit the dust, I wouldn’t feel particularly hamstrung by turning to the 8GB M1 MacBook Air to get some heavy tasks done. And doesn’t that say an awful lot about this new platform?
Can you really get away with 8GB?
Yes. In fact, “get away with it” is a bit misleading, because, for me, 8GB never feels like a constraint – until it’s really pushed under sustained load.
Unless you’re doing seriously heavy lifting in terms of video, audio or coding work, 8GB will do you proud, and I have a feeling it’ll be future-proof, too.
So, if you want to save yourself £200/$200 on that new laptop and fall into the ‘normal’ user category, I wouldn’t think twice about going for the 8GB option.
Oh, and if you’re going for the MacBook Air, you don’t need that 8th graphics core, either.
Great article, Mark. This really helped me with my buying decision. Seems crazy that I’m buying a device with less memory than my last three or four Macs. Heres goes!!
Thanks! Crazy, but not crazy – trust me.
Appreciate the article also Mark.
I have a 32GB system for performing video editing and larger operations/projects for my DAW (Cubase 11 Pro).
I’m looking to buy the Macbook Air 2020 to use as light DAW activities, kind of a musical idea sketchbook (not layers upon layers of VSTs), also want to run Virtual DJ Pro with perhaps one instance of a VST for live synth performance.
I don’t believe in spending excess on hardware if it really isn’t required. I understand storage, RAM and the integration of the CPU with data management to a point, I was really interested to see if you have any thoughts/recommendations on this?
Thanks, Jay. You should be good with the Air, but I’d spec it up to the 16GB version 🙂
Totally agree! The way that you write makes it easier for us non-nerds to understand and also gives us confidence that you have credibility for the average guy on the street. Great job! Keep up the good work!
Thanks, Rick!
A client of mine purchased 4GB Air four or five years ago. It was running just five years ago but years after year his computer became more and more sluggish and I tracked it down to RAM deficiency. So he ditched the 4GB Air and went with a second hand 16GB Pro. Seeing how the apps, especially browsers, hog RAM more and more each year, I would suggest to go for the 16GB today, so that you wouldn’t regret it down the road. In the future, the 16GB version has a better aftermarket value as well.
Or your plan may be also to get the 8GB version and sell it later and get something newer down the road.
Either way it’s a win for Apple who makes sure that you spend more than you had to in the old times when the RAM was user upgradable. Good job, Apple!
“Seeing how the apps, especially browsers, hog RAM more and more each year,” – I think this is an important point we don’t talk about too often. The reality is it is the nature of app developers to squeeze out every ounce of performance from upgrade machines and who could blame them when they want to provide the best experience possible for their apps? A major consideration is “now vs later” when you will feel compelled to upgrade given the future demand. In other words, are you upgrading for what you’ll have now or what you think will be needed for the foreseeable future? When you think HD is the best, 4K is already becoming fast obsolete and who knows…
I’m writing this comment on my aluminium late 2008 macbook “pro”. I upped the specs from 2gb ram to 8. 256gb of SSD card. Of course, the moment I turn on youtube and do some photoshop, it would almost seem as if a helicopter is hovering around me. And yes it is a bit sluggish. And yes I am looking into buying either the macbook air with 16gb or macbook pro (with the 16gb). In a way, I like the idea of futureproofing, but I’m not entirely convinced, especially since we have no idea how the 8gb is going to be like performance wise in the following months ahead.
People have to understand this : the architecture of the new M1 chip is such, that the RAM acts in an entirely new way. It is fixed to the chip itself. This has the downside that you can’t upgrade it, but the upside that the M1 needs *far less* RAM than any Intel chip does for the same performance. An 8gb M1 is basically equivalent to a 16 gig Intel, and the 16 gigs to 32 gigs.
If you’re currently using a 2008 Macbook Pro…. you’re not ready. I’m using a 2012. The M1 is so far ahead of any laptops I’ve tried in my life, it’s something else. It’s much faster than even iMacs I have used professionally! The difference will be so huge that you won’t see a thing. For you, going 8gb or 16gb will make *no difference at all*. I bet you can run at least 6 instances of PS before the M1 memory starts to slow down!
Nice article, but I would like to point something out that is hidden behind 8GB performance – heavy swap.
Because all M1 devices are equipped with really fast SSDs, swap performance is significantly higher and with some optimizations, you will not even notice it, unless you really push it hard and process needs to rely heavily on swap.
However, your SSD lifespan will going to notice it, because swap is A LOT of writes to SSD wearing it down more quickly than a 16Gb version would, and since none of the M1 parts are exchangeable – that is something I would most certainly take into account.
That alone is reason enough to buy 16Gb version if you have any workload which is relying on swap with 8Gb version (and any heavier work will).
You can also easily check it – start your daily workflow and in the middle check Activity Monitor, Memory tab and then look at the bottom of the screen “Swap Used”.
If you have there more than 0 bytes, you should have took 16Gb version 🙂
Yes… and no. First of all, the RAM architecture on the M1 chip is vastly different than other CPUs because it’s buit-in and thus incredibly efficient. 8gb of RAM on the M1 is equivalent, give or take, to 16 gig on Intel… Now… How many instances of SSD failures in modern laptops to we have? I mean, modern SSDs can run hundreds of therabytes of writing cycles before failure. Is the drive aging faster? Well, yes… because there is more swapping. But, between you and I, have you ever seen a laptop Nvme drive fail *from age*?! That would take at least 8-10 years, even during heavy use!
I doubt the swapping have actual real-life impact on performance, I really do.
I totally agree!
Not very well substantiated, since M1 is a new chip and years haven’t yet passed.
It’s true for now, though.
8Gb is just isn’t enough. The tests mean nothing unless you are gonna call Doc and Marty to travel 3-4 years into the future…. But I bet you will have found out that “the damn thing doesn’t work (at all)”
Haha! Although I disagree, I’m afraid – 8GB is perfect for a large number of people (me included when it comes to the MacBook Air).
Great article!
It seems that no one reviews use-cases similar to mine, though. If any of you could shed any light on my use case, that’d be great.
I multitask a lot, mostly with things that aren’t very heavy, but when I hear reviewers talk of 20 tabs open as if that’s a big number, I’m left puzzled. I’d say on a normal day, I’d have about 30 tabs open. One of them might be streaming video, then at least one gmail tab, one (or more) facebook, one twitter, and quite a few others. On top of that I’d often have some word or excel files open (often more than one).
And then I also edit video (using DaVinci Resolve), but my videos aren’t very heavy. usually 1080p timelines, that are no longer than 30 minutes, with some basic effects and color corrections, but no major animations or anything like that.
And then, some reviews make it seem as though I HAVE TO get 16GB, while others make it seem completely pointless. Considering that money definitely is a big deal for me (but at the same time, that if I am spending this much on a new computer, I want to be really happy with it) – I really don’t know which way to go.
Would really appreciate your thoughts.
Tal
Hey, Tal. Given your use case, I’d spend a little more and get the 16gb, mainly for peace of mind, but to also give you some headroom for all those tabs!
you pretty much nailed it on the 8 vs 16. It is so interesting to me that people keep saying “this is there first shot at putting a chip in a mac”. They have been practicing for years with the phone and tablet. I am really i terested to see how the imac works as eventhough it has the same processor I wonder if the wattage is higher, therefore more power. I have a mba as you do and it can do everything. What I also noticed as I recently went to Affinity photo, designer and publisher along with FCP is that because basically everything on my mac now is native for M1 not only is is smoother but its not fetting stuck at all when doing many tasks. That is why to me the future proof argument almost goes in reverse.
Hello! I was wondering what would you choose between MBP 8GB and MBA 16GB (7 cores) if you’ll be playing The Sims 4 a bit (not necessarily all day but 3-4 hours every few days)?
I would absolutely go for a 32gb config with 2tb of ssd for Sims4.
[…] guide won’t delve into the merits of 8GB versus 16GB of RAM, how much storage you need or whether you need to worry about the 7-core GPU option. I’ve been […]
[…] when you start to think about where the additional improvements are going to come. For instance, RAM is becoming a more divisive topic than it ever has been, therefore I question the merit of simply giving us increased gigabytes to add to our […]
Do you think Macbook Air 16gb or Macbook Pro 8gb is better?
Dear Mark,
I follow you on YT and I am a big fan of your very realistic outlook. I was wondering if you could maybe help me – I will be perhaps buying the Macbook Air M1 after WWDC (following your advice: to see if there is anything truly revolutionary worth waiting for, but I am pretty sure there will be nothing for the price of the current Macbook Air). My use case looks like this:
– on most days I just use the office stuff: because I can’t stand the “mess” of more than a few tabs on browsers I don’t usually have more than 10 open
– I use MS Teams in the background for studies
– every week or so I use Lightroom to edit and export up to 5000 photos, usually RAWs 20-30 MB to small JPGs. It is usually one long session when I import the photos, pick the good ones, apply some of my own filters and let it all export in one or two batches
– on most days I edit some photos in Lightroom, but not really big batches, maybe up to 50 daily
– every week or so I edit a video for my YT channel – usually a film no longer than 15 minutes either 1080p from a Canon Camera or 4k60fps from a phone.
My current laptop is from 2017 with Intel’s then i7 (ASUS 430ua) and 8GB RAM and it barely handles the aforementioned task of exporting such large quantities of photos and the export of such a huge set of files usually means I have to leave it at night to process as you can’t do anything at the same time. I also edit films on it, but it got quite slow and irritating, yet possible. Thus I wonder if I should rather get the 8/512 GB model (as I use quite a lot of storage and don’t like dongles) or 16GB/256 for future proofing – that’s my budget for today, not much of a chance for 16/512.
Addenda. I actually misspoke. I never do 5000 full RAWs to JGPs, that would be ridiculous (esp. that it’s not art photography in this case). It’s rather regular, 5-10 MB JPGs to compressed small JPGs for social media, but indeed in high quantities up to some 5000 pictures. Every week or two or three during the weekend. My current laptop (4 years old ASUS i7) takes up to 10-12 hours processing all this. I can only guess M1 even total base model would be much much better.
As for RAWs I only edit and export 24MB ones and no more than a handful dozen per day, every few days.
All things considered I am quite decided for 8/512GB model – especially that this is my first Mac so it’s still testing waters. In any case from what I read one can easily sell it for not a bad price if it happens that with time I need to go more pro (I don’t really know yet).
All the best!
Hey there, I really enjoyed of reading this attitude. I am going to buy a mac book air m1 2020, but I am still confused about what to choose! I am UI/UX Designer and absolutely need photoshop and illustrator,.. some times programming what do you suggest? 8GB or 16GB
[…] 8K video or require a NASA-like setup of multiple displays. And when it comes to unified memory, 16GB will still suit the vast majority of users; I’d only go for more if you work with very large files in video or audio production, […]
Hi, as most people have said, your article is really well put together, and makes good reading. I have a different need – I run Windows in a VM – I have to, for other purposes. I use VMWare Fusion. To run Windows well generally needs more than 4 Gb memory. Wouldn’t it advantageous to have 16 Gb instead of 8 Gb? Thank you for your opinion.
Thanks for the kind words! Yes, it would make sense to upgrade to the 16GB version 🙂
I do an immense amount of technical research online. I followed the advice of your article earlier this year and acquired MB Air M1 8GB to temporarily replace 2016 MB Pro that has motherboard issues until the M1 Pro’s come out. To be fair many articles at the time were espousing that 8GB is definitely enough.
Oh how I wish every day that I had not been such a cheap b#####d and just forked over the extra $200 for 16GB. Both Chrome and Safari are enormous memory hogs. I like to keep a lot of tabs open for a very long time because I’m researching a dozen topics at any one time. It simply does not work. The machine grinds to a halt with 20-30 windows open.
I will research this further since it’s entirely possible that perhaps I’m ignorant of settings that will allow me to keep many many browser windows and tabs open without slowing M1 MB Air to a crawl. At least now I know that when I spend $$$ on MB Pro M1 in early 2022 I had better choose 16GB or 32GB memory upgrade.
I’ve heard it’s best not to use Chrome on Macs. Chrome was behind the memory swap problem with the M1s (allegedly – I heard it on the Inter! ?)
I am using my new M1 in a similar way to my MacBook Pro 2018. I continue to get “out of memory” errors and have to shut down.
I am not the only one as I googled it and it yielded multiple threads. Wish I’d known before buying and I would have forked over the extra $$ for the 16GB personally.
Thanks for the reality check, Mark. I was just jumping down that ‘if I just spend £200 more’ rabbit hole! I think 8 core will be fine for a hobby FCP / Logic Pro user. Haven’t completely talked myself out of 32gb RAM. My current Mac has lasted nine years and the next one will have to do the same! All the best.
This seemed to be the overwhelming consensus on RAM from reviewers that 8GB is absolutely more than enough for most people. I started running a new 8GB Macbook Air base spec I got on a deal- because the difference in upgrading the RAM to 16GB was £380 more. £740 vs £1079.
My previous machine was 16GB Retina 15″ Macbook Pro Mid 2014.
I had 4 windows open in Chrome, one window with about 40 tabs, two with 4, the other with one. Maybe 15 of those were videos, one playing. I switch backwards and forwards plenty, start/stop etc. I started noticing lag in the operating system, glitches- really noticable. I looked at RAM and there was 2 or 3 GBs in the swap, RAM was overloaded.
Yes there was some lag in my 7 year old laptop but it was much more about the CPU being old, the RAM didn’t get overloaded. Doing the same thing on a Macbook Air M1 8GB- overloaded the RAM. Now I’m testing new web browsers to try and get the RAM usage down, Brave was similar, now on Firefox and it’s still in swap but only marginally. Safari might be better but, if a browser hasn’t got a decent ad and tracker blocker then it’s no good and I’m not seeing a great one in Safari despite messing about to find one.
Long story short- yeah I do take the mick when browsing the internet, but, it’s not ridiculous and doing that- Chrome overloads 8GB RAM. Something it didn’t do on a 7 year old laptop with 16GB RAM.
I bought this machine as a bridge machine so I can wait out 2022 in peace until all the new stuff comes out. I don’t want to pay 50% more for the extra RAM but already I am now doing all kinds of things to restrict what I am doing so I don’t use swap and fill the RAM. And that simply doesn’t match what I’ve read about 8GB never being a problem. Like right now, I’m on Firefox, which has been a bit easier on RAM. I’ve got 21 tabs open in this window, four in another, three in another, one another and the RAM is full using 36mb of swap. 12 are videos, none are playing. So I’m doing half of what I would usually do, on a less demanding web browser, with no other apps running, and the RAM is full. If there’s no operating system lag, ok, but RAM is still full. On my old laptop I’d have twice the tabs, music playing, loads of apps open, it’d be fine.
To be fair- the m1 air laptop is amazing, the power is amazing, the size, form, keyboard, screen- all absolutely amazing. It’s obviously the ultimate travel machine- full stop. No question. But at home plugged into a desktop dock, being both a travel and home machine- yeah I don’t think it’s gunna work for me. I haven’t even started editing photos yet and I’ve filled the RAM cache just browsing the internet so- no way is 8GB enough at all for me and I’ve got to make a decision about whether to return or keep pretty quick. I paid £740 for a new base model 8GB Macbook Air. 16GB Air model is £1079. Hard drive is still too small on that one at 256gb. We’re talking £1708 for new Macbook Pro 14″. £700 more for double RAM, double hard drive, serious bump on screen and more performance. Difficult. Slightly less portable, much more capable desktop… but, if I buy that, it’s not a bridge machine and they’ll only come out next year and put face ID in the notch or some really annoying thing they should have done on first release. Over 20 years I never buy laptops on first iteration, I buy on the last- like a facelifted car- everything is gunna be the best it can be. New models have issues.
When you buy a new machine after waiting years and years and years, the last thing you want to be doing is immediately looking for everyway you can to take it easy and do less than you did on the old machine, so it’s not glitching and slowing down. That’s like buying shoes that are too small- doesn’t make any sense. With 16GB this macbook air for me I think, it would nail it, but for an extra £380 that’s just into a price bracket that’s different. My situation is unique but, if like me you use lots of tabs, and want to play music, drop into some photo editing work have comms apps open all at the same time etc- I’d probably get 16GB RAM. Base specs always got larger as the years went on. Now the M1 is out and performance is much higher, hard drives are smaller, RAM is smaller and it’s just greedy upselling from obscenely greedy Apple in my humble opinion.
Anyway that’s my 10pence. Glitch on operating system because I’m browsing the internet- did not expect and before I get shouted at for having lots of tabs- compared to some folk, it really isn’t. “Use less tabs!” yeah well, I didn’t before on a 7 year old laptop and it worked just fine so, old school approach of getting most RAM you can afford still applies for me. If you’re still alive after reading all that then great! Get a cuppa tea 🙂
I’m so glad I won’t be the only one here with a negative viewpoint on the base 8 GB models. I recently modernized my office setup from a Late 2012 Mac mini Core i7 2.3 GHz, 16GB RAM and 500GB SSD, to a new Mac mini, M1, 2020, with 8GB RAM and 500GB SSD. I went with the 8GB based on the by-far majority opinion on the subject from the copious reading I did beforehand. And for the first time ever with a Mac, I have buyer’s remorse. The old one was 10 years old. I had installed the SSD myself, replacing the original HDD. But it was still a very solid performer. Since it could not be upgraded to the current macOS, I was kind of pressed to upgrade.
On the old system, I never experienced a lagging cursor, slow genie-effect minimizing windows, delays of perhaps 1-2 seconds pasting text from one app into another (e.g. Google Translate in a Chrome window to a WhatsApp chat), or multiple browser videos skipping and lagging badly.
The processor itself does seem super fast, I’m really happy with that, and in general the overall speed is great if I’m not doing too much at once. But apparently “what I do” is considered “too much at once;” I guess we live and learn.
Sadly, I plan to give this machine to someone else in the office. I have a 16GB unit ready to deploy to my graphic designer, and I plan to take his current 2018 Mac mini, 16GB instead. Bummer that I paid $200 extra for the larger SSD, which I do need, and didn’t go for the RAM upgrade too.
I hope that in another year or so I’ll be able to do a more successful M1 upgrade for myself, and I will definitely not be skimping on RAM next time, no matter what magic is promised by Apple.
Chrome will do that to ya lol but seriously that is a A LOT of tabs/videos/etc.! More than normal, I would assume! I thought my 13 open tabs were anxiety inducing enough lol – it’s like my to-do list.
I appreciate the comments here. May I ask about a scenario where one runs Windows 11 in VMWare, Parallels or VirtualBox? It is generally recommended that one allocates at least 4Gb memory to W11. Has the M1 MBA been tested in that scenario? Would its performance drag with just 4Gb memory to use? If this question has been answered elsewhere, I would appreciate been linked to that source. Thank you for your help. I enjoy your YouTube posts, and your answer would help me to save $200, or not.
Thanks for the kind words, Ola! I’m afraid I can’t answer that question as I have no experience with VMWare, but hopefully, someone else can chip in!
You answered me previously. Old age… Sorry for asking the same question twice.
[…] was in response to my advice for choosing between 8GB and 16GB of unified memory when buying an M1-based […]
i think in general its good to understand how much ram you need before you purchase a device that does not allow you to add more ram in the future. Nobody wants to spend even a grand on a Macbook Air only to realize a year into it you run apps now that max out ram and are using swap memory. Now you may not think swap memory is a big deal because its fast too unlike the days of spin drives. But, SSD’s have only so much read/writes so that plays into life of the SSD which again isn’t replaceable. I guess don’t plan your purchase purely on price but also on being realistic about your needs and how long you need the purchase to be viable. If you replace or upgrade a lot, maybe 8 Gb is fine, but consider the future and not just today.
Great article. Thanks
Great article. Thank you
The big-huge problem with 8gb of ram, is memory swap. Let’s do some google copy pasteing:
What is swap memory?
Memory swapping is a memory reclamation method wherein memory contents not currently in use are swapped to a disk to make the memory available for other applications or processes.
AKA, the CPU will decide: “Eh, we’re running low on RAM, there’s this stuff here we’re not using as often as the rest. Guess I’ll just write it to the hard drive and call it a day.” Then it reads it back when it’s required.
This is a HUMONGOUS problem if you don’t have an easily replaceable SSD main drive. Because it __WILL__ die much sooner because of this.
So, 8gb is a death sentence. YMMV, but unless you open more than one chrome tab while watching netflix, it will probably kill your machine years sooner.
Thanks for the great real-world usage write-up. Helped me click by on the 8gb M1 Air for my wife. I have the newish M1 13″ MBP with only 8gb and it’s fine for me (mainly web based stuff, zoom/vtc, couple email clients, photos, etc., so light work, really) – in fact it’s been better than fine – it’s much better than the Intel 13″MBP I exchanged it for. Love the new M1. Thanks again! Cheers!