While the 16GB was better this is really pushing it if this is what you need your computer to handle.Īn 8K ProRes project is up next and that should be a little bit interesting since it is optimized a lot more for the M2 chip. The base model was locking up even going to check the measurements. This wasn’t silky smooth playback, but it did show the 16GB model holding in a much better position than the 8GB. The multicam project has about an hour of footage and six camera angles and this is starting to push the computers to their limits. It was obvious that memory was getting pressured on the base model and swap was being relied on a lot. Honestly, most adjustments and effects were not making either of these computers stumble. This did start pushing the 16GB into swap memory territory, though not a lot, and it did finish up a few seconds faster than the base model. Optical flow slow motion effects are a bit more intensive and that showed here, though again we are getting similar performance. What is interesting is that the 16GB model was running about 10 degrees cooler, probably because it wasn’t maxing out all the different parts of the computer to make it work.Īdding in a few new clips and running stabilization on them showed that both computers performed very similarly.

On the 8GB model this meant that it was quickly jumping over to using the swap memory while the 16GB version was just fine. This project seemed to be using anywhere from 6-8GB of memory.

Looking at the actual memory usage data you can see that the 8GB was feeling more pressure. In the initial test the projects played back surprisingly smooth on both models. The projects are being run off external SSDs, so the variations in internal drive speed shouldn’t have a huge impact. The two different models of MacBook are the base model with 8GB memory and 256GB SSD and an upgraded version with 16GB memory and a 1TB SSD. 8K RAW footage transcoded to ProRes 4444.Mix of 4K footage configured as a multicam project with 6 camera angles.Mix of 4K H.265 and H.264 footage at frame rates of 30, 60, and 120 fps.Kevin put together a few different timeline options in Final Cut for the tests: Plus, he wants to see if the M2 MacBook Air with its new design is good enough for editing in general. YouTuber Kevin Ross picked up a couple versions of the new laptop to figure out whether 8GB or 16GB memory is needed for video editing. The M2 MacBook Air is the latest release and has a few options. Apple silicon muddies the water even more since it uses a completely different architecture than older systems so that even the conventional wisdom doesn’t always apply.

Every new Apple computer is bringing with it tons of questions about which configuration is best.

Photo editor on macbook air