My advice.Īlways buy the system with the most RAM and the biggest hard drive. Premiere and Resolve aren’t taking full advantage of the M1 chips and aren’t using the RAM efficiently yet. It’s pretty clear that what we’re actually figuring out with these M1 Mac tests (and many other similar tests) is that we’re just seeing the results of beta software. RAM usage shows that while rendering, Resolve uses 3GBs more RAM on the 16GB model, which would be expected but still doesn’t really improve performance. Rendering in the background shows just a slight advantage for the 16GB version with it finishing just a few seconds ahead of the 8GB model, but that is even almost too close to even tell. The software opens at the same speed, renders in Premiere and Resolve are virtually identical, and scrubbing/playback speeds are too close to even notice. Guess what? They’re pretty dead even in this test as well. The RAM has impacted nothing with the 8GB and 16GB rendering performance – both systems are barely seconds away from each other. The render times for exporting from Premiere and Resolve using a system with the M1 chip is nearly identical. Software applications like Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Resolve eat up a lot of our systems resources, but will more physical memory improve our render times with the 16GB M1 MacBook Air? We all know RAM plays a big factor when you’re editing video.

Was it just the lack of RAM in the new 8GB M1 MacBook that was holding us up? Now that we’re finally seeing the 16GB versions out in the real world, Created Labs put the two to the test, hoping for a massive difference.

Apple initially announced the M1 with two choices for RAM (8GB or 16GB) however, as the systems started shipping, the only one you could get your hands on was the 8GB M1. We all want to stare into the eyes of the past, vividly remembering those awful days when we were stuck in stale, dark edit rooms in some basement somewhere with hard drive sounds roaring and monitors beaming light into our tired, bloodshot eyeballs, and scream in defiance a statement that starts with the letter “F” and ends with the word “You” as we hold our paper thin editing notebooks and head outside.īut all of the murmurs we keep hearing about the M1 MacBooks are telling us that, although these are good laptops, they aren’t that pleasant of a machine to edit on.

8gb vs 16gb ram macbook air