AppleInsider StaffTLD Today benchmarked the 128GB SSDs shipping on both the 11- and 13-inch models and discovered a discrepancy in the performance of the flash drive speeds.
The 128GB Samsung SM128C SSD in the 11-inch MacBook Air achieved 246 MB/s write and 264 MB/s read speeds while the 128GB Toshiba TS128C SSD in the 13-inch model was only able to achieve speeds of 156 MB/s and 208 MB/s, respectively.
Engadget followed up with a similar series of its own tests and was able to verify the discrepancy.
“During our tests, the 256GB Samsung drive in our older [MacBook Air] model achieved 214 MB/s write and 251 MB/s read speeds, while the 128GB Toshiba drive in the new MacBook Air scored 184 MB/s and 203 MB/s during write and read tests, respectively,†the publication said.
Users can check which drive is installed in their MacBook Air by clicking on "About This Mac" in the menu bar and going to More Info -> System Report, and finally, clicking on Serial ATA.
Despite the seemingly significant drop in speed, the impact is likely to be negligible in day-to-day usage. The discovery, however, remains interesting and may suggest that Apple is using Samsung parts to supply the manufacturing lines for the high-end 11-inch MacBook Airs and Toshiba parts for the low-end 13-inch model.
The entry level MacBook Air comes with a 64GB SSD while the high-end 13-inch offers a 256GB SSD as standard.
Readers are encouraged to report their own findings in comments.
Wesley Hilliard
Marko Zivkovic
David Schloss
Malcolm Owen
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41 Comments
During the few weeks I spent researching SSD's before I bought my 256 GB Crucial C300, I found that the speed of the drive increased with the size with all manufacturers. At first I was only going to buy a 120-128 GB drive but when I saw how much faster the 240-256 GB drives were in real world use I couldn't resist going with a 256 GB model.
It's been a while since I read into it, but it has something to do with the way the actual chips are made. There's an actual physical limititation keeping 64 GB drives from being anywhere close to as fast as their 256 GB older brothers.
I thought this was common knowledge among semi-educated SSD consumers?
funny....but good [for me].i have a Sammy in my (not too) low end 13".....and Its flying too!
I suppose there might be differences since one company may be trying to get around their competitor's patents and still offer a similar product.
Ignorance of SSD Technology causes bad articles to be written.
During the few weeks I spent researching SSD's before I bought my 256 GB Crucial C300, I found that the speed of the drive increased with the size with all manufacturers. At first I was only going to buy a 120-128 GB drive but when I saw how much faster the 240-256 GB drives were in real world use I couldn't resist going with a 256 GB model.
It's been a while since I read into it, but it has something to do with the way the actual chips are made. There's an actual physical limititation keeping 64 GB drives from being anywhere close to as fast as their 256 GB older brothers.
I thought this was common knowledge among semi-educated SSD consumers?
Another possibility is that since the larger SSDs have more free space, they can run longer before write performance starts to decline from having to overwrite data.