Base Model MacBook Air With M2 Chip Has Slower SSD Speeds in Benchmarks

[hans1972]

Would you be ok if the screen got worse?
Or if the newer machine was noticeably heavier?
What if it had half the battery life of the predecessor?

With respect, your line of thinking and argumentation here is non-sensical.

I would defend Apple's right to make such a machine, yes.

Apple should have the freedom to make any kind of machine they want. The only exception should be machines which is dangerous to use or interfere with others (like using electromagnetic frequencies wrongly).

I would also defend your right to buy such a machine. Or not to buy it.

 

[Ethosik]

It is like arguing with a wall, I swear.

No he is right. Working from a video file off a Thunderbolt NVME SSD is faster than on the M1 Air. My video files are larger than the entire 256 drive. So the overall package is faster.

Is an i9 with a 3090 with a SATA SSD faster than an i3 with an RTX 3050 with a fast NVME drive?

 

[hans1972]

Yes it is. That’s part of the overall package. When a component’s performance gets cut in half, that has an affect on the overall package.

So if a woman removes one breast but has a facial makeover, it makes her less of her overall package as a woman?

 

[tobybrut]

Well this is unfortunate. Why would they do this other than to cut costs for themselves? These are 1300 dollar laptops. This is seriously inexcusable. It's not like Apple is hurting in this economic climate. Even with everything going on, they keep managing record quarters. I love Apple products, but this isn't cool.

Ever think they couldn’t get their hands on enough 128GB chips? There is a global chip shortage going on. And since two chips are generally cheaper than one, I seriously doubt this is cutting their costs. It probably costs them more to put the single 256GB chip in than two 128GB chips. Anyone who has done any serious purchasing of RAM or flash would know this to be the case. Rather than pushing their MBA/MBP release back months in order to get enough chips, they used what they could get.

Yes, they are hurting. Cook said their last quarter would have been $8 billion higher if not for the shortages. They weren’t lacking demand. They couldn’t make enough devices due to shortages. While $8 billion may not seem as much to a $2 trillion company, that’s serious cash for most companies. Their stock has crashed along with the rest of the market, losing a ton of its value due to inflation and shortages.

 

[Quasi26]

Apple is marketing the Air and the Pro to different people, and Apple thinks that MBA buyers prioritize those first four things over raw performance. It might the be fourth thing on the M2BA's page, but it's the second thing on the M2BP's page with the first thing being an intro blurb. To be frank, people who value raw performance first really shouldn't be getting a base Air anyways.

Agreed. Its not a raw performance machine.

 

[Ethosik]

Yes it is. That’s part of the overall package. When a component’s performance gets cut in half, that has an affect on the overall package.

This is like saying an i9 3090 but with a SATA SSD is slower than an i3 3050 with a fast NVME drive. The drive is not the only component that is based on performance.

 

[gadgetgirl85]

I literally use it for word and email. Am I going to notice this?

 

[hans1972]

So you're saying that you're theoretically fine with Apple cutting corners on any spec of any Mac as long as the one presented in the footnote lives up to the benchmarks?

There's nothing implied in naming the machine "Air M2" when the previous iteration was named "Air M1"?

"Up to 1.4x faster" can mean "up to 1.4x faster but maybe significantly slower than the M1 equivalent. Though we won't point out which configurations that applies to. Go read some forum posts!"?

Yes.

The M2 implies it has the M2 SoC instead of the M1 SoC. It also implies it's a newer model. I never assume that any particular feature is better or is even there. Sometimes features disappear which might be even worse.

When I read about "up to 1.4x faster" in the section about the M2 SoC I don't assume it will have anything todo with SSD, Wifi, Bluetooth, USB, Thunderbolt or RAM refresh rate.
I also assume that "up to" means that a lot of tasks will have less than that and I also don't assume that no task will be slower.

 

[Zest28]

Yeah. It's literally about how you "feel". I "feel" at home on macOS. Whenever I try to go back to Windows, the whole UI and flow and lack of continuity between interface elements and applications makes it awful to use. macOS has a design language that's locked in that makes it a joy to use across any app. Sure, gaming is cool on Windows, but I've since decided to just keep gaming to my PS5 and everything else on my Mac. I've been using Windows for a long time and I can pretty much solve any issue that arises with the OS, but I don't want to get on my computer to diagnose something. I want to get on my computer to use it.

I don't agree about ChromeOS at all though. That is a very restricting and terrible OS.



That's because higher capacity SSDs are always faster than lower capacity SSDs. That's not what's being discussed here. It's same spec hardware being half as slow as same spec hardware.

To be honest. Windows is superior to Mac OS now.

For some strange reason, the animation on my 2020 13” Intel MBP is not as snappy and fluid as it is on my M1 Max MBP. That is crazy since this Intel MBP has more than enough power.

When I run Windows on the 2020 13” MBP, all of a sudden everything is as fast and snappy like my M1 Max.

Either Apple does this on purpose for “planned obsolete”, or Mac OS is indeed quite bad.

And the battery life with Windows is not bad either. Still can get 6-7 hours, which similar to when it runs Mac OS.

 

[darngooddesign]

Yes it is. That’s part of the overall package. When a component’s performance gets cut in half, that has an affect on the overall package.

Sure, but how much of an effect really depends on what you are doing. People dealing with huge files will notice the drive speed far more than someone using smaller files. But if you are dealing with huge files why are you using a tiny internal SSD? People who multitask between several resource intensive files will notice the drive speed more than those who use a couple of lighter apps. But if your workload is like that, why did you buy the base Air?

Apple should not have used a single 256GB chip, but its being blown out of proportion by people who are trying to get by on the base Air when they should be using a better specced computer. Or more to the point, it's being blown out of proportion mostly by people who would never buy the base Air even if had the M1's drive speed.

 

[hans1972]

So Apple never making any claims on the 256GB Air M2 means that anyone thinking it would be a combo of "up to 1.4x faster" and "1.0x as fast as" the 256GB M1 should know better? How?

Read the technical specification for SSD for MacBook Air.

It doesn't mention anything about speed. Therefore I would make no assumption on speed between those two generations.

And again, the 1.4x number is about the M2 SoC and not the performance of the SSD storage.

 

[tobybrut]

I have an i3 MBA 2020. Missed out on the M1. Anyway, I see myself as the typical base model MBA user. Primarily, I use the following apps:

• Mail
• Messages/What'sApp
• Calendar/Contacts
• Notes
• Facetime/Zoom
• Photos
• iWork/MS Office
• Safari (max 3-4 tabs open at a time, but generally just 1)
• Streaming: Netflix, HBO max, etc..

At most, a couple of times during the year, I might make a simple iMovie (glorified 3-4 minute slideshow with music and built-in effects) for a family birthday or anniversary celebration.

So, here is my question. Given this type of usage, which would perform better: M1 with faster SSD or M2 with slower SSD? Or, does it make no damn difference, since both are way more powerful than I need, and I am effectively driving a sports car in a 25 mph school zone?

School zone, it is. I do most of my web browsing on a 15” MBP from 2016. It does all of those tasks quite well and it’s significantly slower in every way to the M1 MBA. I also have a 16” MBP from 2021 with M1 Max but that’s typically tied to my desk. I’ll usually use either an iPad or the old MBP at my bed side, which is where I do most of my light tasks.

 

[darngooddesign]

For some strange reason, the animation on my 2020 13” Intel MBP is not as snappy and fluid as it is on my M1 Max MBP. That is crazy since this Intel MBP has more than enough power.

So what you're saying is that your computer with the significantly more powerful GPU and a screen with a faster refresh rate has smoother animations.

Its not that Windows is better, but Windows by design is less demanding on the GPU. Whether that makes Windows better or worse is subjective. Then again, may 2014 13" MBP runs MacOS smoothly.

 

[darngooddesign]

I literally use it for word and email. Am I going to notice this?

Absolutely not.

you are going to love it.

 

[bbfc]

To be honest. Windows is superior to Mac OS now.

For some strange reason, the animation on my 2020 13” Intel MBP is not as snappy and fluid as it is on my M1 Max MBP. That is crazy since this Intel MBP has more than enough power.

When I run Windows on the 2020 13” MBP, all of a sudden everything is as fast and snappy like my M1 Max.

Either Apple does this on purpose for “planned obsolete”, or Mac OS is indeed quite bad.

And the battery life with Windows is not bad either. Still can get 6-7 hours, which similar to when it runs Mac OS.

Very strange. I had a 2020 Intel 13” MBP up until about a month ago and mine was fine.

 

[Zest28]

So what you're saying is that your computer with the significantly more powerful GPU and a screen with a faster refresh rate has smoother animations.

When my 13” Intel 2020 MBP runs Windows, it is just as fluid and snappy as my M1 Max.

Apple is making the animations not as fluid with software.

 

[fazalmajid]

I completely expected this based on the MBP 13 M2 benchmarks, so as I was shopping for a school laptop for my daughter and B&H had the base M1 MBA for $900 in Space Gray (vs. $1000 for the other colors) and the base M2 MBA is $1200, it was an easy decision to get the old model.

 

[NT1440]

I completely expected this based on the MBP 13 M2 benchmarks, so as I was shopping for a school laptop for my daughter and B&H had the base M1 MBA for $900 in Space Gray (vs. $1000 for the other colors) and the base M2 MBA is $1200, it was an easy decision to get the old model.

Which is going to be an absolutely great for her as a school machine, nice deal.

 

[currentinterest]

From what I understand other manufacturers who provide single 256 GB SSD configurations report similar speeds. Are there benchmarks for WinTel 8/(single)256 machines to compare SSD speeds and overall performance? That would be the real test. Isn't there an 8/256 Surface Pro? Perhaps we can see the SSD speeds for that?

 

[86Hawkeye]

Maybe it's just you who incorrectly inferred that the SSD performance is better when Apple made 0 reference to it.

Maybe I should've assumed it would be significantly worse or even just as good?

No one is suing Apple for deceptive marketing practices here (yet). It's just a reasonable assumption that a newer model would be at least as good as the previous model in all material aspects. I'd say the performance of the SSD is a "material aspect".

I guess the judge would have to make that ruling.

 

[tobybrut]

I literally use it for word and email. Am I going to notice this?

I doubt you’d notice anything. If you put a stopwatch on it, you’d probably get better performance on the M2 MBA than on the M1 MBA since those apps are more CPU intensive and the CPU cores are superior to the ones on the older M1. While storage speed matters on everything you do, we’re probably talking milliseconds of delay more than compensated by a single core that’s running 11% faster than the previous generation.

The overall package of the M2 Air is much better than the M1 version. There will always be cases on every computer where you can find it to be slower but for normal tasks, they’ll be so insignificant that they wouldn’t be noticed. Some say web browsing is slower. If it is, it wouldn’t be noticeable since we’re far more affected by Internet speeds than by local machine speed. If your browser isn’t loading quickly, most people curse their ISP, not their slower storage, though with this forum crowd, I can see that changing. Some people just like being upset by things.

 

[AppleFan1998]

They really have to stop sourcing from China somehow. The supply chain is a mess still from the Covid lockdowns

 

[boak]

Maybe I should've assumed it would be significantly worse or even just as good?

No one is suing Apple for deceptive marketing practices here (yet). It's just a reasonable assumption that a newer model would be at least as good as the previous model in all material aspects. I'd say the performance of the SSD is a "material aspect".

I guess the judge would have to make that ruling.

You should have 0 assumptions and expectations. Always test the machine out by yourself.

 

[darngooddesign]

When my 13” Intel 2020 MBP runs Windows, it is just as fluid and snappy as my M1 Max.

Apple is making the animations not as fluid with software.

Apple is not slowing your computer down. Windows feels snappier because its animations simpler and easier to render (simpler is not an insult). Going back a while Windows XP felt snappier than Vista because Vista was more visually demanding.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I literally use it for word and email. Am I going to notice this?

No.