MacBook Pro M1 - RAM and Memory question

The Apple-Silicon M1 outperforms its Intel counterpart extremely well. You have no worries you have made a philosophical bad choice.

Ignore the noisy posts finding fault with this Mac and evaluate it ONLY on whether it is meeting your needs. I read a scathing review on a photo and video editor's web site. I was concerned until I realized that they were comparing it to the high-end Mac Pro model, and had decided (not surprisingly) that the Mac Pro [at a cost of US$60,000] was superior.

If you are purchasing an external drive, the speed and expense of an SSD drive is not a requirement for ordinary purposes, unless you are using it to hold sources or destinations while actively editing Videos.

Once you have used your computer to produce content, having a backup copy of that content on another drive becomes VERY important.

Your 8GB Unified Memory will serve you very well compared to the 16GB+ RAM Intel Macs.

Coming from a 16GB Intel i7 Mini to an 8GB M1 Mini - it's been amazing and have to say that the new Unified Memory works so seamlessly with the new RISC based M1 processor that it outperforms my Intel Mini which ran hot all the time.

Come to think about it, all my Intel Macs run hot (16" MBP, 15" MBP, i7 quad core Mini)...

The M1 design will far surpass any Intel Mac unless you go into the optional upper CTO/BTO graphics card equipped Intel Macs...

From what I can tell, the base 8GB Unified Memory outperforms the Intel Macs by a long shot - no more cooling fans underneath my Intel Macs!

I'll say you'll get reasonable life out of it yes.

An external drive will be invaluable as the limited onboard storage can become a problem.

The RAM at this stage is tough to call. Since it s a new type of on chip RAM its hard to say what its performance may be like and if it will stand up demands in the future.

It's entirely possible the new unified RAM will be faster, and more responsive than traditional, and any further needs can be covered by the super fast onboard storage, so 8GB may be enough for the next 4 or 5 years. But only time will tell.

I think your most important question to ask, is wether or not the applications you will use can run on the Mac. do note there is currently no way to actually run Microsoft Windows on M1 Macs, so anything that absolutely requires Windows or has no Mac counterparts will not work.

Parallels and VMware said they are working on M1 compatible virtualization options for windows, but no word on when these will be available.

I chose 16GB of unified ram for my M1 MBA and it positively flies in anything I do. Everything opens in a literal second.

And have not needed the onboard storage for swap yet. I am keeping an eye on the 256GB

Though to be honest my apps are rather light in comparison. PHP, Mysql and web dev for the most part.

Coming from a 12GB i5 Intel Dell Inspiron, the difference is like night and day.

Also the Trackpad is a joy to use, unlike the one on the Dell.