Roger Fingas
Storage and peripheral maker OWC on Tuesday introduced a new Aura N line of internal SSDs, meant specifically for upgrading compatible Macs.
The drives use twin PCIe 3.1 connections, and have write speeds up to 1.1 gigabytes per second. Reads peak at 1.6 gigabytes per second.
Capacities, meanwhile, range up to 1 terabyte. OWC is also promising less heat and power consumption than previous Aura models.
A variety of order options are available depending on the exact Mac a person has. An upgrade kit for 2013-2015 Retina MacBook Pros and 2013-2017 MacBook Airs costs $164.99 for 240 gigabytes, $229.99 for 480 gigabytes, and $299.99 for 1 terabyte. Equivalent prices for a Mac mini kit are $134.99, $179.99, and $259.99.
If they have the necessary equipment, people can alternatively buy drives on their own at costs of $97.99, $159.99 and $229.99.
William Gallagher
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Wesley Hilliard
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Amber Neely
10 Comments
Before buying one for my 2014 MBA I requested someone do a real world test with a similar computer using one of these drives, and they noticed a negligible improvement in speeds over the built in Apple drives. Be sure to know how your specific machine performs before wasting your money on this.
Apple SSDs are said to have a speed advantage (I forget why) but that's not the only reason to get these.
There are a lot of legacy MacBook Air owners who have the base 128GB model, and I'm not sure 1TB was ever even an option (it isn't now.)
Paying $300. to upgrade to 1TB aftermarket doesn't sound so bad. (Apple charges an extra $400. to move a new legacy MBA to 512GB.)
This thread is probably a good read for anyone who is interested in replacing their SSD: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/upgrading-2013-2014-macbook-pro-ssd-to-m-2-nvme.2034976/
I paid ~120€ for an Intel® 660p 1 TB, and 15€ for the converter. The tools I already had. I have read/write speeds at approx 1300MB/s.
Wouldn't mind an AI review of these. Skipping out this chassis generation on my 2014 15" here, and could go for a storage bump.