Now is the best time to buy a Macbook
Feb 9, 2026
Now Is the Best Time to Buy a MacBook
For years, Apple’s RAM upgrade pricing had a reputation: expensive, fixed, and hard to justify.
In early 2026, the market flipped.
Memory prices have been rising sharply, with research firms pointing to AI and data center demand as a major driver of tightening supply and higher contract pricing. That shift is now visible in consumer RAM kit pricing too, with examples of 32GB DDR5 kits rising several hundred percent over the last year in some markets.
The practical result is simple: Apple’s fixed unified memory pricing looks far more reasonable than it used to. In some cases, buying the RAM you want inside a MacBook is now competitive with upgrading a PC, and you get the efficiency benefits of Apple Silicon.
If you were on the fence about upgrading, this is one of the rare windows where buying a MacBook with the right memory configuration feels financially smarter than “waiting for later.”
The real story: RAM got expensive, fast
What changed is not that Apple suddenly became generous. The broader memory market got weird.
TrendForce has forecast a sharp rise in DRAM contract prices in Q1 2026, citing strong AI and data center demand and a supply-demand imbalance that gives suppliers pricing power.
Consumer DDR5 kit prices have shown extreme increases. One analysis cited 32GB DDR5-6000 kits around €400, up dramatically since mid-2025, even if short-term pricing may be stabilizing after the spike.
Another market update gave a concrete example: a 32GB DDR5-6000 kit rising from about £79 in late 2025 to £351 by January 2026.
So even if your exact kit price varies by country and speed grade, the direction is consistent: memory is no longer cheap and predictable.
Why this makes MacBook configurations unusually attractive right now
On Apple Silicon Macs, memory is unified and built-in. You cannot upgrade it later.
That used to feel like a downside. In a high-priced RAM market, it turns into a weird advantage:
You lock in the memory you want at purchase time.
You avoid the “I’ll upgrade later” trap, which is now far more expensive than it used to be.
You also get Apple Silicon efficiency, which matters for battery life and performance per watt.
Also worth noting: Apple already moved MacBook Air to 16GB of RAM as the standard base starting in late 2024, which made the entry point much more usable for real work.
Our prediction and the practical advice
This is a market-driven take, not a guarantee: if DRAM prices stay elevated through 2026, it would be unsurprising to see pricing pressure show up in consumer devices over time, either through higher configure-to-order premiums or less generous base configs.
So the “buy now” logic is:
If you already planned to upgrade within the next 6 to 12 months, buying sooner lets you pick a stronger memory configuration before the market normalizes or OEM pricing shifts.
If you have an M3 or M4 Mac and it is meeting your needs, you likely do not need to move.
If you are on M1 or M2 and you feel friction (swap pressure, heavier tabs, bigger projects, local AI workflows), this is a sensible moment to upgrade while configs feel relatively favorable.
What to buy
MacBook Air: most people, most teams
If your workflow is web, docs, email, light coding, research, and general productivity, a MacBook Air is still the best value.
Baseline: 16GB RAM is now a solid default for everyday professional work.
Recommended upgrade: 32GB minimim if you want more headroom for heavier multitasking and private, on-device AI tools that benefit from extra memory.
Who it’s for:
consultants, founders, sales, ops, students, analysts, writers, light dev
MacBook Pro: heavy work and long-term headroom
If you do video editing, 3D, large codebases, massive document datasets, or heavier local AI work, go Pro.
A practical “buy it once” approach for pros is:
prioritize more unified memory
prioritize more internal storage, so projects stay local and fast
Apple’s own tech specs confirm large SSD options on 14-inch MacBook Pro configurations (up to 4TB on M4 Pro and M4 Max, and up to 8TB on some M4 Max configs).
Mac vs Windows
If you need gaming or a specific Windows-only stack, you already know why you tolerate it.
For everyone else, MacBooks are increasingly the “get out of your way” choice, especially now that Apple Silicon can handle more workloads locally and efficiently. In a world where local compute matters more, that efficiency advantage is also a productivity advantage.
One more reason 32GB (minimum) matters: private AI on your own files
If you are buying a new MacBook in 2026, the big opportunity is not just speed. It’s what you can do privately on-device.
A lot of “AI productivity” today means pasting sensitive text into third-party model providers. That is a non-starter for many professionals.
With Fenn, you can add a Private Intelligence Layer on macOS:
Search inside your files (PDFs, docs, slides, screenshots, scans, audio, video)
Jump to the exact page, slide, frame, or timestamp
Use AI to extract information from your corpus without uploading it to OpenAI or Google
This is where extra RAM and larger internal storage pay off: faster indexing, smoother search, and more room for projects and archives.