Malcolm Owen
Apple has finally fixed its SSD speeds in the entry-level model of M3 MacBook Air, with it now using two flash chips in parallel instead of just one.
Early models of MacBook Air with Apple Silicon suffered a problem with the lowest-capacity models, in that its SSD storage wasn't necessarily as fast as other capacities. It now seems that, for the third generation, Apple has made a change to eliminate the problem.
In previous releases, it was discovered that the base 256GB capacity models used only one flash chip for storage. While other models used two running in parallel, such as two 256GB chips for a 512GB capacity drive, the 256GB model would use one 256GB flash chip instead of two 128GB versions.
To end users, this resulted in much slower storage read and write speeds in the entry-level model.
When AppleInsider reviewed the 15-inch MacBook Air with M2, the read and write speeds of the 512GB capacity model were about 3,100 MB/s for writes and 2,800 MB/s for reads. At the time, the 256GB capacity model managed read and write speeds of around 1,450 MB/s each way, indicating the use of a single flash chip.
In a retrial of an M3 equipped MacBook Air with 256GB of storage, the read speed was much higher, at 2,672MB/s. This means Apple has decided that using two smaller chips was the best move instead of using a single larger chip.
A storage speed test showing higher speeds in an entry-level MacBook Air with M3While this is an improvement that end users will benefit from, it's not really going to be a major benefit for the majority of users. As a mainstream model, users are unlikely to be seriously tasking the MacBook Air that often, and it certainly won't factor in to typical day-to-day tasks such as web browsing.
Mac users who depend on fast storage are likely to want higher performance overall, and will most probably lean towards owning the MacBook Pro over the MacBook Air.
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Christine McKee
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Amber Neely
9 Comments
Just how many years can Apple go on thinking that 256GB is sufficient, even for an entry-level model? I know streaming is removing much of the need for storage but most people have a large back-catalogue of DVDs and Blu-rays which we want stored at high quality plus our lives' music and photo collections. Then there is the requirement for working storage. Even if you just want to make a Youtube video to share with friends, there is a large amount of space required during editing.
I would have thought Apple would have upped the entry-level storage by now, before its reputation is (further) tarnished.
It seems this was an easily avoidable mistake. Did they not test these models, or did they just say “good enough” and shove them out the door?