2015 Macbook Air comes with NVMe SSD!

[Frekedech]

I'm not sure whether this has been posted before. I happened to purchased two Macbook Air 11" with 128GB Storage this year, one in late June and another recently. Surprisingly, the later one uses the updated NVMe SSD just like the 12" Macbook (only in a blade form) as opposed to the AHCI PCI-e SSD.

Tested it with Blackmagic and here's the result:

The verdict: Although the write speed is equal to the PCI-e ranging from 270MBps to 300MBps. Write speed is almost 45% improvement compared to the ~700MBps on late June model.

The PCI-e on 11" 256GB model may have Read and Write speed at ~700MBps while the 13" 256GB has to be ~1400MBps.

Anyone with the 256GB NVMe to confirm and add in the reading? =)

Cheers!

 

[venom600]

Is it just me or is that write speed really, really bad? I got better speeds from a SATAIII Samsung 840 Evo on a 17" Macbook Pro a year ago.

 

[SmOgER]

Not that those sequential speeds differences in 200-800MBps range are noticeable in day-to-day use (except when you are copying huge files from one storage into another which is super fast as well), but yeah, those write speeds are no better than on mSATA mid-2011 MBA.

 

[bizzle]

Not that those sequential speeds differences in 200-800MBps range are noticeable in day-to-day use (except when you are copying huge files from one storage into another which is super fast as well), but yeah, those read speeds are no better than on mSATA mid-2011 MBA.

Really? This is why MR cracks me up. A 2011 MBA only has SATA 2, which is a hell of a lot slower than 1020 MEGABYTES per second, like 3 times slower.

 

[SmOgER]

Oh, sorry. I meant WRITE speeds.

 

[Erdbeertorte]

Write speed should be between 600-700 MB/s for the 128GB SSD. I get 600 MB/s even on a MBA from 2013, but reading is not much faster than writing because it only has x2 link width and the new ones have x4. Is the disk very full?

 

[Frekedech]

Oh, 128GB usually only has half the write speed of the 256GB model. There are some benchmark on Youtube, if I'm not wrong this bottleneck caused by the limited lane or chips inside.

 

[MultiFinder17]

Really? This is why MR cracks me up. A 2011 MBA only has SATA 2, which is a hell of a lot slower than 1020 MEGABYTES per second, like 3 times slower.

The 2011 Air supports SATA III; source, the 2011 11" Air in front of me

 

[Fancuku]

Write speeds are very low indeed. Something is not right. Write speeds should be at least 600.

 

[bizzle]

The 2011 Air supports SATA III; source, the 2011 11" Air in front of me

The chipset supports SATA 3, but that doesn't mean the SSD itself is connected over SATA 3.

See negotiated link speed:

http://www.digitalcupcake.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/System-Profiler-SSD.png

 

[MultiFinder17]

The chipset supports SATA 3, but that doesn't mean the SSD itself is connected over SATA 3.

See negotiated link speed:

http://www.digitalcupcake.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/System-Profiler-SSD.png

Ah, I didn't realize that the Apple SSDs didn't support SATA III. I have an OWC in mine, and it does.

 

[batting1000]

My 2015 Air doesn't have NVMe..

 

[navaira]

My new 13" Air tests read speeds around 800 MB/s. Not that it feels slow but all reviews say it's rocking 1000-1200 MB/s read speeds tested with Blackmagic? How come mine is slower? I got it today so it's not like old age is affecting it...

Edit: I switched off FileVault and hey presto, 1300 MB/s.