16GB of RAM should be plenty for most folks buying a new MacBook Pro

Planning to buy one of those new MacBook Pros and deciding whether to fork out an extra US$400 to upgrade to 32GB of RAM? My advice: save yourself some cash and go with 16GB instead.

That’s what I’ve used in my various Macs (desktop and laptop) over the years, and it’s served me just fine. With 16GB of memory and Pages, Safari, iTunes, Mail, Calendar, Photos, and Pixelmator Pro usually all open at the same time, there’s almost never a hiccup in performance.

My experience has led me to conclude that 16GB is a perfect amount of RAM for pro work and most demanding games. While it’s true that a Mac with more RAM feels noticeably faster, that’s only true up to a point. For example, if you upgrade from 4GB to 8GB or 16GB, you’ll feel like your Mac has been turbo-boosted and turned into one of the best laptops for Sims 4 and many other titles.

However, for most users, if you upgrade from 16GB to 32GB, you won’t notice much of a speed increase.There are, of course, some caveats to my 16GB recommendation. You can never have too much memory, so if money is no object, sure, go ahead and spring for 32GB. That amount is good for enthusiasts and workstations.