Need help deciding on how much RAM to get for my Mac Mini.

Rule of thumb is: get as much ram as budget allows. You'll never find yourself thinking, "Man I have too much RAM, wish I would have gotten less".

For high demand tasks like Premier Pro. more is better. I would not get less than 24GB. 32 may be a bit overkill, but if budget is no issue, I would go for it.

You can currently find it on Amazon for $889 at the time of wiring this with 24GB RAM and 512GB SSD. And you can add Apple Care+ if you want to.

click here ➜ M4 Mac Mini, 24GB RAM, 512GB SSD - Amazon.com

Unless you are editing large movies or photos the basic 16 GB that the Mini comes with should be acceptable. I have a Mini M4 with 16 GB of RAM and can open and edit a 500+ MB Photoshop image. The opening time is a bit slow as it's on an external SSD @ 500 MBs read and write speed but once opened there's no problem. I've not done any video editing with my Mini so can't comment on that.

If you're concerned with RAM the next step is 24 GB for the Mini at a $200 price increase. Personally I'd spend the extra money to get as large an internal SSD (I got 1 TB) as financially possible.

When the M1 and M2 had a base RAM of only 8GB, numerous tests appeared on YouTube to see the difference between 8GB and 16GB and most testers were hard pressed to see much improvement . . . at best it was marginal and unlikely to be significant in normal use.

That was a doubling of the RAM.

The basic M4 already has 16GB so in order to detect just a marginal improvement you would need to double it to 32GB . . . 24GB RAM is just a complete waste of money playing the numbers game.

I have an M2 and an M4. The M4 has double the RAM and is 50% faster than the M2 but that has nothing to do with RAM. It simply has a faster processor.

Surprisingly to most people, I use my 8GB RAM M2 all the time for video editing etc. and have rarely used the M4 since I got it . . . I really just bought it to test and see what it could do . . . and I needed to get rid of some cash at the time.

RAM is one of the best examples of the Law of Diminishing Returns that you will encounter.

Unless you are doing symphonic movie scores with the Mac mini , I suggest 24gig active memory with 512gig storage,

with a Qwiizlab verticle External SSD hub enclosure with a 2 terabyte or more NMVe SSD. Unless you are comfortable with paying Apple a higher amount for more internal storage.

one thing I suggest if you get an external SSD enclosure is NEVER completely SHUT DOWN the system or disconnect external drive , but to ONLY set into SLEEP mode.

But it's OK to turn off your controller, keyboard and speakers,

Also, I'd like to add that you could always upgrade to more memory on your external hard drive. If you do make sure you save your data before you remove any SSD.

I really hope this helps answer your question and let me know what you decide what to do anyway,

Thanks.

The internal SSD can be supplemented with external drives easily if needed and there are now aftermarket options for larger SSDs for Mac Minis at less than what Apple charges, so RAM is always a better proposition to upgrade since that can't be upgraded post purchase.

I would forgo a 1TB SSD in favor of more RAM every time.

Good. Enjoy the Mac and Happy Computing!