MacBook Air RAM Upgrade: What You Need to Know

One of the most common questions we get is, “Can I upgrade the MacBook Air RAM or memory?” Although you can upgrade the RAM on older MacBooks and MacBook Pros, there is no way to upgrade MacBook Air RAM or memory after you buy the notebook.

Apple offers a MacBook Air RAM upgrade, but you need to choose it before you buy the MacBook Air. As part of the process to make this notebook slim, Apple solders the MacBook Air RAM directly to the motherboard.

This means there is no way for you, the average user, to do a MacBook Air RAM upgrade after you buy the notebook from Apple. If you are looking for a way to improve the performance of your old MacBook Air, you will need to look elsewhere.

What you need to know about MacBook Air RAM upgrade options.

Apple also boosted the base amount of MacBook Air RAM to a more reasonable 4GB in 2014. That is enough for many users, especially those that don’t run a lot of multimedia applications simultaneously.

Here are the MacBook Air RAM upgrade options and prices for the current MacBook Air models. You can customize this when buying from Apple. Most of the time you will only see the 4GB MacBook Air memory option at retailers like Amazon and Best Buy, but stores like MacMall will offer some with 8GB of RAM.

When you look at MacBook Air memory upgrade options on Apple you will see;

• 4GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM
• 8GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM

There is a $100 price increase to upgrade to the 8GB MacBook Air RAM option. This is the only time you can make this memory upgrade, so it is something many users will want to choose.

You cannot buy MacBook Air memory upgrades like you can for some notebooks.

If you want more RAM than the base 4GB, you may need to order online as not every Apple Store will stock MacBook Airs with the exact amount of RAM and storage you want. You can still choose delivery to the closest Apple store so you can get help setting up the notebook.

For users with an older MacBook Air, there is a software tool that can help you free up RAM, but reviews show that it may not improve the performance that much. The Memory Booster – RAM Optimizer for Mac app is available in the Mac App Store for free. You can download it to see if it helps deliver upgraded performance. If you find similar options, it is not advisable to pay for an app like this unless you can try it first and you experience a big improvement on your MacBook Air.

While you can’t upgrade the MacBook Air’s RAM, there are aftermarket kits to upgrade the MacBook Air’s SSD.