New Macs With M1 Chip Limited to 16GB of RAM

Apple announced three new Macs today that feature the company's new M1 chip. Notably, the new Macs don't support eGPUs and customer may be surprised to learn that they max out at 16GB of RAM.

The new 13-inch MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini come with 8GB of RAM. You can pay $200 to increase that to 16GB of RAM; however, that's the upper limit. The Intel based MacBooks and Mac mini can be configured with up to 32GB of RAM and even that is limiting to certain workflows.

Additionally, users can not upgrade the RAM on their M1 Macs. If you purchase 8GB of RAM, you won't be able to upgrade to 16GB at a later date. Professional users will need to take this limitation into consideration when thinking about purchasing a first gen M1 device. It's unclear if Macs will need to wait on an M2 chip for additional RAM or whether future M1 devices will be able to support more memory.


You can learn more about Apple's newly announced Macs by clicking here. Please download the iClarified app or follow iClarified on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and RSS for updates.