I need a laptop for school that lasts 8 h easily. And since windows laptops don’t do the trick i thought about a used macbook. Buyin an old one, maxing out RAM and SSD and be ready to go. Whats years of macbooks should i look out for? I want to do as cheap as possible. Its just used for google docs and for its battery life.
I’d suggest to just delay your decision for a few more hours, since Apple is going to announce new ones today and this could lead to sales on the existing models. https://www.apple.com/apple-events/
latest macbook that has upgradeable ram is macbook pro mid 2012 (which is what i currently have).
IMO, currently, sure you have 16gb of ram. but your CPU is the bottle neck, what’s the use of having more than 8 - 12 gb of ram.
however, having something used is likely going to have meh battery life too.
if you don’t want a refurbished macbook air (m model) why not go for an ipad and with apple keyboard. surely as a student you’d likely need it mostly for documents, web browser, etc.
Forget 2016-2019 Macbooks. Pre-2016 doesn’t have great battery life though still good computers with OCLP.
Get Apple Silicon.
And by that, i mean an M1 Air.
And also, Windows allocates ram differently than macOS does. MacOS is much more efficient with ram. And don’t use Chrome (chromeisbad.com) , its one of the worst pieces of software next to Teams. So many other good browsers out there.