I don’t get why Android phones have so much ram.
They often have more ram than my wife’s MacBook and the same or my as my desktop.
How much ram is needed if you’re not gaming or video editing?
In my case, it’s a very occasional picture or video recorded and then just social media apps and web. Do I need to get a phone with 12gb? Or is that just thrown in there for marketing?
Entry-level MacBooks come with a pathetic amount of RAM.
Web browsing needs RAM everywhere. High resolution displays need video memory which isn’t dedicated memory in phones but comes from overall RAM.
You need notebooks and desktop PCs with at least 16GB.
As an owner of a second hand entry level Macbook, it’s constantly swapping. You don’t notice it that much because today’s SSDs are very fast, but undoubtedly this will affect the lifetime of the device and reflects a poor choice in memory specifications.
I would respectfully disagree with the last point. For Joe Schmoe who is just scrolling Reddit you will probably be fine with 8-12gb, especially if you intend to cut down on your budget.
Joe Schmoe cutting down on budget shouldn’t throw away money on MacBooks then. I had a low-end notebook 10 years ago that I upgraded for little to 16GB RAM 10 years ago.
Video memory is shared with main RAM on “Joe Schmoe” notebooks. It’s really noticeable when a few browser tabs are open. Source: Me when I had an 8GB RAM HP notebook with an iGPU.
16gb is fine if you can afford it and you are doing lots of thinks on your computer but isn’t necessary if you just have a few tabs on a budget machine.
I would never spec a Windows machine with less than 16.
Even for a casual user. The problems it causes aren’t worth saving $50.