Get 16GB. 8GB will frustrate you.

Yes, significantly. Android Studio with an emulator on 8GB is like trying to cook a five-course meal in a dorm fridge. It works until it doesn’t.

The emulator alone can chew through 2–4GB of RAM depending on what you’re running. Android Studio itself is a memory hog — Gradle builds, lint checks, code analysis. Add Chrome tabs, Slack, Spotify, and you’re quickly swapping to disk. Swap means your build times double or triple while your machine chugs.

With 16GB, you have room for the IDE, emulator, and a few other apps without hitting swap. Builds finish faster, the emulator doesn’t stutter, and you don’t rage-quit during a compile.

If you only work on tiny projects and close everything else, 8GB is possible. But “possible” is not the same as “pleasant.” For Android development, 16GB is the real minimum.