Malcolm Owen
The SSDs used in the M2 Pro and M2 Max-equipped 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro write faster than their predecessors, initial tests reveal.
Drive speeds are an important part of a notebook's performance, which is especially true for Apple's premium models. In initial benchmarks of the latest 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros, it seems that Apple has worked to add more bandwidth in that area.
In a battery of tests performed by Tom's Guide, the M2 Pro version of the 14-inch MacBook Pro scored 5,293MBps for the read speed and 6,168MBps for the write speed under the Blackmagic Disk Speed benchmark tool. The M2 Max edition of the same model managed very similar scores, at 5,319MBps for reads, 6,402MBps for writes.
These speeds are a big jump from the previous generation for write speeds, it appears. Under the same test, a MacBook Pro with a 14-inch M1 Pro manages 5,321MBps for reads, but for writes, it manages a lesser 5,377MBps.
In effect, the new M2 models will read data from disks at the same speeds as usual, but writing will be a bit faster, so saving documents will be quicker.
While the chips used for the SSD storage can impact such speeds, other elements can also make a difference. This can include the total available capacity, such as in the M2 MacBook Air, which saw a reduction in read and write speeds in the lowest storage configuration, simply because Apple used fewer chips.
Charles Martin
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
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Andrew Orr
9 Comments
I hope someone will post other disk benchmarking stats soon, such as 4K random read/writes from something like Amorphous Diskmark. These kinds of stats are in many cases more important for perceived performance than sustained sequential transfer of large files.
These really are incredible machines.
Are articles at odds today, or only reporting different parts of the tests? From a write-up on another Apple-centric site:
"A quick look inside the base-level M2 Pro MacBook Pro revealed something I hadn’t expected to see – or, rather, that something I HAD expected to see was missing. Like the base level M2 MacBook Air, the base level of the latest 14″ MacBook Pro seems to feature fewer NAND chips – at a higher capacity – than the last generation. This results in SSD read and write performance that’s dramatically lower than the previous generation."
Slower yes, but still faster than just about any other laptop in the market.