A sizzling potato: The up to date 13-inch MacBook Pro powered by Apple’s all-new M2 SoC has arrived in shops, bringing with it the upgraded efficiency Cupertino talked about throughout the unveiling earlier this month. But whereas Apple’s newest silicon would possibly depart its predecessor within the mud, the M2 Pro’s storage speeds are slower—at the very least within the base mannequin.
YouTube channels akin to Max Tech and Created Tech made the invention when testing the $1,299 base-model M2 MacBook Pro 13, which comes with a 256GB SSD. They discovered the learn and write speeds each got here to round 1,450 MB/s. That equates to about 50% slower reads (2,900 MB/s) and roughly 30% slower writes (2,215 MB/s) than the earlier M1-powered 13-inch MacBook Pro with 256GB storage.
Created Tech confirmed the explanation behind the slower SSD within the newer MacBook Pro: the M2 machine makes use of a single 256GB NAND flash chip, whereas its predecessor options two 128GB NAND chips that work in parallel for quicker speeds.
Having slower SSD speeds within the M2 MacBook Pro will disappoint these anticipating all-around higher efficiency in comparison with the previous-gen machine—as must be the case. Instead, patrons get storage that is half as quick because the predecessor. Those determined for one of many new Pros with out worse SSD efficiency should spend an additional $200 for a 512GB mannequin. It affords the identical, however not quicker, speeds because the M1, which means it most likely has two flash chips.
Why Apple selected to make use of only one flash chip as an alternative of two is unclear, although it is greater than possible a method to scale back general prices. In what’s unlikely to be a coincidence, Apple offered a lot of these finishing up embargoed evaluations of the M2 MacBook Pro 13 with 1TB fashions. It can be attention-grabbing to see if the base-level M2 MacBook Air additionally has slower SSDs speeds than the present model when it lands subsequent month.
