2020 Macbook Pro 13" M1. 8 or 16GB?

I have the 8GB Air and it flies editing 4K so I imagine a heavy PS CC would be sweet too. I've only done shorter raw sessions in PS with this computer so can't comment directly.

But seeing the difference in my video editing compared to my previous Macs with "just" the 8gb model wow.
 
No experience of the M1 machines

FWIW If it were me, I would go for the 16gb even though it’s 200 more.

My 2014 MBPro has 16gb ram and 512 gb storage and is still going strong if a bit slower. That said I used to hammer it for work and it’s got a win7 vm running under Parallels.
 
greyowl said:
No experience of the M1 machines

FWIW If it were me, I would go for the 16gb even though it’s 200 more.

My 2014 MBPro has 16gb ram and 512 gb storage and is still going strong if a bit slower. That said I used to hammer it for work and it’s got a win7 vm running under Parallels.
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Hmm.. that’s my thinking too. I have a 512 SSD 8GB RAM on order from the Apple refurb site. They don’t currently have any 16GB RAM available
 
I have the 8gb version, and although I wouldn’t class my editing as particularly heavy, I do often edit images with multiple layers and switch back and forwards between Lightroom and Photoshop, and am yet to experience any lag. I also edit short 4K videos and find playback and scrubbing extremely smooth. Highly recommend it, but if you have the extra cash, I guess it would be good to get as much RAM as possible.
 
ancient_mariner said:
16gb. If you want the machine to be good 5 years from now then buy the spec needed for 5 years time. There's no upgrade path with these.
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Agree with this.

I’m waiting to see what the next chip set brings but I know I will go for 16GB RAM as a minimum as I want it to long a number of years.
With these macs you’re buying for x years time rather than what’s needed now. Having had a 8GB RAM 2012 iMac which couldn’t easily be updated I know from experience you have to get as good a spec as possible on purchase.
 
I'm about to build my next machine (the box of bits is just 6 feet away) with 32GB RAM, PCIE4 MOBO & NVME SSD to match. In 5 years it'll be slow/normal and hopefully still be fine. My XPS that I'm using now came with 16GB in 2014, and hasn't needed more than a storage upgrade. With the M1, hopefully 16GB will be as good as an unintegrated 32GB.
 
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definitely the 16GB version for photo editing. if you can wait a bit longer I'd suggest waiting till you can get 24-32GB version. 8GB is not enough.
I have a 8GB M1 air and have access to 16GB M1 Mac mini (my brother's). I personally wouldn't buy either and I am waiting for a version with more RAM.
 
Always worth going for more but I'm not sure how people are maxing out the M1 in a typical workflow now. It's not the same as 8gb on another system.

In 5 years of course that's another story so investing now sounds wise!
 
Damian Brown said:
Always worth going for more but I'm not sure how people are maxing out the M1 in a typical workflow now. It's not the same as 8gb on another system.

In 5 years of course that's another story so investing now sounds wise!
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8GB is 8GB regardless of the system
LR on its own for example constantly tries to use 12GB. yes the swap space is efficient but still not as good as having more RAM.
When you are trying to stitch panos or stacking night sky images etc you chew through 8GB in no time.
Also if you using higher res bodies the processing slows down with just 8GB.
Most software uses RAM for image buffering and they generally take up a lot of space. efficiency will only get you so far but if a software need more than 8GB it needs more than 8GB to run (smoothly) no matter the efficiency of the RAM.
 
nandbytes said:
8GB is 8GB regardless of the system
LR on its own for example constantly tries to use 12GB. yes the swap space is efficient but still not as good as having more RAM.
When you are trying to stitch panos or stacking night sky images etc you chew through 8GB in no time.
Also if you using higher res bodies the processing slows down with just 8GB.
Most software uses RAM for image buffering and they generally take up a lot of space. efficiency will only get you so far but if a software need more than 8GB it needs more than 8GB to run (smoothly) no matter the efficiency of the RAM.
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I'm not arguing :) Just going by experience with my M1 compared to previous systems. I get that nobody online likes the 8gb :)
 
Damian Brown said:
I'm not arguing :) Just going by experience with my M1 compared to previous systems. I get that nobody online likes the 8gb :)
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neither am I :)
just saying how 8GB gets used up easily on my M1 air since you were wondering
My workflow isn't all that complex or heavy. For most part I use Lightroom and sometimes other software for stacking and noise reduction.
 
nandbytes said:
neither am I :)
just saying how 8GB gets used up easily on my M1 air since you were wondering
My workflow isn't all that complex or heavy. For most part I use Lightroom and sometimes other software for stacking and noise reduction.
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Ye OP definitely would benefit from getting a 16gb flavour :)
 
nandbytes said:
neither am I :)
just saying how 8GB gets used up easily on my M1 air since you were wondering
My workflow isn't all that complex or heavy. For most part I use Lightroom and sometimes other software for stacking and noise reduction.
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what Camera RAW Cache setting are you using?
 
nandbytes said:
5GB.... hmmm... I thought I had left it as the default 1GB but apparently not!
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what free space do you have on your SSD - what size SSD did you opt for?

what size RAW files are you processing?

sorry it's a list of questions

I need to upgrade my stuff - I think that I would go for 16GB and a 1TB SSD - I need to process D850 RAW files
 
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BillN_33 said:
what free space do you have on your SSD - what size SSD did you opt for?
what size RAW files are you processing

sorry it's a list of questions

I need to upgrade my stuff - I think that I would go for 16GB and a 1TB SSD - I need to process D850 RAW files
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I have 256GB SSD, basically have the base model M1 Mac air. I didn't opt for this, it was a gift :)
I am going to make do till there is an option with more RAM. I'd advice going for at least 1TB and 16GB RAM at the minimum.

I previously processed RAW files from Sony A7RIV (61mp ~60mb files) and now RAW files from Sony A1 (50mp also ~60mb files)

I have an external 2TB TB3 NVMe drive that I use for my image processing storage i.e. LR storage.
(no that doesn't slow down my workflow, in fact it has almost no affect on speed, I have tested all combinations)
 
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nandbytes said:
I have 256GB SSD, basically have the base model M1 Mac air. I didn't opt for this, it was a gift :)
I am going to make do till there is an option with more RAM. I'd advice going for at least 1TB.

I previously processed RAW files from Sony A7RIV (61mp ~60mb files) and now RAW files from Sony A1 (50mp also ~60mb files)
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Cache size - I'd try at least 10GB if you have the free space on your SSD - I use a Cache size of 100GB on my 5K, it improved the speed of reviewing images
 
BillN_33 said:
Cache size - I'd try at least 10GB if you have the free space on your SSD - I use a Cache size of 100GB on my 5K, it improved the speed of reviewing images
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Worth a try I guess.... but the settings were imported from my previous Mac (since it was all restore through time machine).
Previous Mac (late 2015 iMac) didn't have any slowness and worked fine for most things.

I have an external 2TB TB3 NVMe drive that I use for my image processing storage i.e. LR storage.
(that doesn't slow down my workflow, in fact it has almost no affect on speed, I have tested all combinations)

I guess there is no harm in trying the increased cache size. The thing is I tried my brother's M1 Mac mini with 16GB RAM and things worked smoothly once again. So I am pretty sure I'm bottlenecked by the RAM since LR really does like having 12GB minimum looking at the activity monitor. Its also no coincidence their online support suggests the same amount for a smooth experience.

Edit:
having said all that my Mac air isn't terrible by any means, its certainly usable and the minor lag isn't annoying. its actually smooth enough for most part. One could even probably think its pretty good if they haven't experience better performance as I have.
 
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greyowl said:
www.apple.com

Refurbished 13.3-inch MacBook Pro Apple M1 Chip with 8‑Core CPU and 8‑Core GPU - Space Grey

The Apple M1 chip gives the 13‑inch MacBook Pro speed and power beyond belief. With up to 2.8x CPU performance. Up to 5x the graphics speed. Our most advanced Neural Engine for up to 11x faster machine learning. And up to 20 hours of battery life — the longest of any Mac ever. It’s our most...
www.apple.com
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Cheers mate. I'm not looking to spend quite that much and am really after the 256/16.
 
Just ordered a m1 13 pro with 8gb ram and 512gb SSD brand new for £1049
Normally I’d go for the higher ram, but after much research and video watching, I can’t justify it for what I do.

The extra ram only seems to be useful when rendering 8k video, which I’m not ever going to do. The 8gb is more than enough when used in combination with the page swap on the SSD. Yes, I know it reduces the life of the ssd by a small amount, but I imagine the laptop will be replaced by a 16 inch m1 or whatever it will be in a year or so Anyway. I’d also normally go for a higher gb ssd, but I can get a 1tb external ssd for £120 as opposed to the extra £200 apple want for the 1tb upgrade. So I can keep all the applications on the inbuilt 512 and store all the photos and videos on the external.

I currently have the 16 inch intel i9 2.3ghz with 32gb ram, and the 5500m with 8gb ram. Looks like the m1 chip trounces it in just about every way and for half the price. Whilst the 16 isn’t slow, it does get very hot and quite loud, and I’d like the option of a bit more portability. The 16 is quite heavy.
 
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LongLensPhotography said:
On some days I struggle with 32gb ram. Don't forget disk space. Basic spec of these m1 machines is basically inadequate
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Certainly not what the majority of reviews suggest. I'll find out myself in a few days. I'm keeping the 16inch for now and will run my own real world testing on the new 13 inch.

Bear in mind the 16 inch cost me over £3k a year ago. The 13 inch just over £1k.
If it can even get close to the 16 I think that's a win. Bit I'm pretty certain it's going to do more than get close.
 
I went with the 8GB Air M1 and I've not experienced any lag or slowdown at all (not even a hint). Typically working through 3000+ RAWs every few days at the moment and it's not put a foot wrong, really happy with the purchase.

Even Luminar AI, which was an utter dog on my PC, runs nice and smooth (it's still not what I'd call quick, but I think that's the software generally), but I only tend to need that for a few hundred a week.

I opted for the 512Gb model and bought a few LaCie external drives, the difference between editing natively and editing off of the external drive is imperceptible to me, I now pretty much use the built in storage for apps and temporary storage, big file dumps ready for editing go straight on a drive.

I had a pretty decent PC with 32GB before and this is better, no question. And yes, that surprised me too.
 
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I've not heard anyone complain about 8GB versions, even pushing them hard but my concern was that I don't want to update every two years and everything becomes more and more power hungry, meaning stuff that works great today may not work so great after 2-3 years. So really I'm just trying to future proof the purchase as much as I can in the hope it'll last longer as a usable tool.
 
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