Agreed. Some of the reviewers have shown it’s slower than the Pro, but that’s what’s expected.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Base Model MacBook Air With M2 Chip Has Slower SSD Speeds in Benchmarks
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Well I replied to you anyway, which is allowed here as far as I know. I guess you have no retort for what I said though.
How will you know if its sufficient for your real-world needs without theoretical benchmarks?
I wonder what we're missing out on then if all the super-serious computer users spend their time running benchmarks.
Where has this been proven?
How much is it actually throttling?
What tasks was this test on?
Because I highly doubt this is going to affect the average consumer that purchases this laptop who use it for web browsing, email, zoom calls, maybe basic photo and video editing.
It was proven while maxxing out he CPU and GPU by running extended benchmarks so.... super relevant.
Here is one example. But if you search on YouTube there is probably more. Everyone has to draw ones own conclusion, but it seems that the 'total M2 package' can be slower than the 'total M1 package' due to a combination of slower (256 GB) SSD performance and the M2 producing more heat (and therefore throttling earlier) than the M1. I leave it to the selfproclaimed armchair 'experts' on this thread to tumble over each other while discussing the ramifications
. I won't be part of that.
Last edited:
Now everyone has been going on about how the 256 is 50% slower, but the part where he talks about comparing the 8/256 to the 8/512 the difference is actually 15% with 50MP photo exports. That's why real world tests are superior to raw benchmarks. that being said what it looks like is that if you run-in single app mode there is no real difference between the M1 and M2, but once you had several apps open it slowed down.Here is one example. But if you search on YouTube there is probably more. Everyone has to draw ones own conclusion, but it seems that the 'total M2 package' can be slower than the 'total M1 package' due to a combination of slower (256 GB) SSD performance and the M2 producing more heat (and therefore throttling earlier) than the M1. I leave it to the selfproclaimed armchair 'experts' on this thread to tumble over each other
In the real world, if you are running the 256GB with photo and video software your internal drive is already pretty full with applications and user files so you're keeping your project files on an external drive and the SSD doesn't affect you much. If you are the kind of creative that likes to keep your working files on your laptop's internal drive (I am which is my MBP has a 1TB SSD), you're not buying one with a 256GB drive. Hell, one day of photography can easily give you 100GB+ of RAW files, 200GB if you have a higher-res sensor; there is simply no way you are working on them with a 256GB drive.
Again, benchmarks vs real world.
PS. Apple should not have gone with a single NAND.
Last edited:
My question is if the skeptics are right, and this truly was purely a cost cutting measure to save pennies… why did they choose this particular component?
There are plenty of other corners They could have cut on this laptop to save them pennies.
Did they really need to include a color matched braided cable? Even the MacBook Pro doesn’t come with one of those. they could’ve easily just cheeped out on a regular white cable for everyone.
Did they really need to include a 1080P WebCam? even the new 13 MacBook Pro doesn’t have one of those.
Did they really need to include a high impedance headphone jack? I mean it makes sense for the new 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pro‘s but I don’t know anyone who is asking for that on the air.
See what I mean?
there were plenty of other corners they could have cut, and no one would have even noticed.
Oh, it doesn’t include a braided color matched cable? Well, when has it ever?
It doesn’t include a high impedance headphone jack? That’s clearly a pro thing.
It’s these things that make me skeptical that it was purely just a cost cutting measure, and make me believe that It’s a lot more about supply constraints on 128 GB chips.
There are plenty of other corners They could have cut on this laptop to save them pennies.
Did they really need to include a color matched braided cable? Even the MacBook Pro doesn’t come with one of those. they could’ve easily just cheeped out on a regular white cable for everyone.
Did they really need to include a 1080P WebCam? even the new 13 MacBook Pro doesn’t have one of those.
Did they really need to include a high impedance headphone jack? I mean it makes sense for the new 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pro‘s but I don’t know anyone who is asking for that on the air.
See what I mean?
there were plenty of other corners they could have cut, and no one would have even noticed.
Oh, it doesn’t include a braided color matched cable? Well, when has it ever?
It doesn’t include a high impedance headphone jack? That’s clearly a pro thing.
It’s these things that make me skeptical that it was purely just a cost cutting measure, and make me believe that It’s a lot more about supply constraints on 128 GB chips.
I also had the thought that Apple may not have been able to guarantee the necessary supply of 128GB chips. Say what you will about Cook being profit driven, but he knows that the M1s have been knock it out of the park successful due to how good they are. He doesn't strike me as being a penny-wise, pound-foolish kind of person.
You guys should hear the vergecast podcast where Dan Seifert (the reviewer of the M2 Air), Nilay/verge team discuss the performance, skip to 20:00 mins. Hopefully, Apple's super defence force can hear it and take their feedback in to account.
Vergecast: MacBook Air M2 review, Elon vs. Twitter, and Apple beta season
Verge reviewers and editors discuss the latest gadgets.
www.theverge.com
I love how we are labeled as Apple shills or defenders for pointing out that people don't have to buy the base model if it doesn't meet their needs.
You guys should hear the vergecast podcast where Dan Seifert (the reviewer of the M2 Air), Nilay/verge team discuss the performance, skip to 20:00 mins. Hopefully, Apple's super defence force can hear it and take their feedback in to account.
Vergecast: MacBook Air M2 review, Elon vs. Twitter, and Apple beta season
Verge reviewers and editors discuss the latest gadgets.
Good link
Nice to hear them be properly critical of the pricing strategy here
The M1 Air really shines in comparison, as they highlighted so well.
I think a good way of looking at it is unless there is a particular aspect of the new M2Air you really want, which is perfectly valid BTW, the base M1Air is a better base computer than the base M2Air if for no other reason than base computer buyers are often primarily driven by costs; you can even apply the money saved to a single upgrade. When it comes to doing a single upgrade on the M2Air, do SSD instead of RAM. If you already know that you want 16/512GB, consider stretching up to a discounted 14" MBP, but the 16/512Gb M2Air is also a really nice computer which is almost one pound lighter than the 14" MBP.
From this, I'm assuming it's more important to go 8gb/512 than 16gb/256?
Like adult diapers it depends.
If you are a creative user and you keep your working files on an external drive (which I have a hard time believing you wouldn't with only 256GB to work with) then 16GB makes more sense with the added advantage that not only will you not be hitting the slower SSD for swap memory nearly as much, but keeping your files on an external drive means that opening, saving, and exporting won't be affected by SSD speed.
But otherwise, I think 8/512 makes more sense because the swap memory will be nice and quick.
IMO 16/512 is always the superior configuration if you will be keeping your computer for like five years.
Last edited:
Well, really the way to go on M2 is 16/512, which gets to the root of their frustrations with the M2 vs M1 MBA
It's a lot more expensive to get the RAM you should get (16gb) and get away from the "half the speed of before" base SSD on the M2.
Am I crazy or were the benchmarks for the "slow" SSD always being shown while exporting a 4K HEVC file in the background?
If so, how many people buy a BASE MODEL Air to do that anyway?
If so, how many people buy a BASE MODEL Air to do that anyway?
Who knows -- people use all the computers for all the things nowadays..
I could see an Air getting used to crank out presentations by upper management folks, and in this day and age that could very well include 4k HEVC content
Users are doing everything with all the models now it seems.
If your workload is dependent on quicker export times of 4K HEVC files, you should be getting a higher end machine. The base model MacBook Air isn't for you.
Note that a dependence of SSD speed on SSD size (which, IIUC, really means number of modules) is not unique to the Air and 13" MBP. It's also seen in the 14"/16" MBPs, where SSD speed progressively increases with storage size up to 4 TB. And we also saw this on my 2014 MBP, where only the largest SSD (1 TB) got 4-lane PCIe; all others had 2-lane PCIe.
So the fundamental issue isn't that different storage size gets you different SSD speeds. It's that the SSD speed was reduced for the same SSD size, in a newer and more expensive machine, because of the change from 2 modules to 1.
So the fundamental issue isn't that different storage size gets you different SSD speeds. It's that the SSD speed was reduced for the same SSD size, in a newer and more expensive machine, because of the change from 2 modules to 1.
Last edited:
One of Apple's key suppliers is Kioxia (Toshiba) and Kioxia suffered major production contamination earlier this year. This may be contributing to NAND shortages and consequential compromises resulting in a single 256GB. Regardless, there is an expectation that a newly released product will be superior to the product it is replacing particularly so when it costs hundreds of dollars more. If 128GB NAND was not available, then Apple could have walked the more honorable path and simply not released the 256GB version of the M2 Air until the appropriate NAND became available. Because the base models are the most frequently purchased, we now wait for M1 and M2 256GB models to be tested side-by-side with some real applications. Does the cooler running M1 with reduced latency dual 128GB NAND negate the benefits of the M2 with throttling and latency of the single NAND.
I remember a lot of these instances. Steve had a strong reality distortion field. He was not perfect. He was the perfect BSer in many respects. But he was also a visionary and a genius. And he could definitely be a penny pinching BS’er too.
Last edited: