15" M5 Air for web development: Is 16GB enough or should I go 24GB?
I'm planning to buy a 15" MacBook Air M5 during a trip to Canada later this year, and I'm trying to decide between 16GB and 24GB RAM.
My current workflow is:
- Slack
- Chrome with usually less than 7 tabs open
- Next.js running locally
- A Django app running in a single Docker container (started once in the morning and left running during the day)
In the future, our team plans to migrate this Django app to a Next.js monorepo, so Docker usage will likely decrease significantly.
For context, my current machine is a Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 4 with an Intel i7 13th Gen and 32GB RAM. During a normal workday, WSL + Docker Desktop consume a lot of memory and I often see total RAM usage around 27GB. It doesn't completely fill the memory, but it runs hot and isn't the best experience.
One reason I'm buying a personal MacBook is that I don't want to depend entirely on company hardware for work and studying.
My only previous Mac experience was a base M1 MacBook Pro with 8GB RAM back in 2022. It handled my work surprisingly well, but memory pressure and swap were common, and sometimes I even had to reboot it. Back then I wasn't using AI tools nearly as much as I do now. Today I use Claude Code heavily throughout the workday.
Financially, I can afford the 24GB model, but it would require some extra planning before the trip. I'd rather not spend the extra money if 16GB is realistically enough for the next 4–6 years.
For developers using Apple Silicon Macs professionally:
Would you buy the 16GB or 24GB version in my situation, and why?