[gnicholas]

Before buying my M2 MBA, I had the opportunity to try one out that had 8 GB of RAM and another that had 16 GB of RAM. I set up each as a restore of my main laptop, which included hundreds of browser tabs, slack, email, messages, calendar, notes, keynote open at all times. There was no noticeable difference whatsoever.

I ended up getting the 16 GB machine (my RAM usage was around 12 GB most times, and never north of 15 GB), but I would be fine recommending an 8 GB machine to my parents. Even from a future-proofing perspective, their use is so lightweight (some photo editing, web browsing, and email) that they would never need more than this.

I could see a case for offering the new version with 16 GB and up, but keeping around an old M1 version with just 8 GB. But I don't think it's necessarily in everyone's interest to pay more for that much RAM.