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

[Quasi26]

Does it actually have more screen real estate though? It seems like the huge notch and larger than normal menu bar cut into whatever extra space you’d get. 13.3 vs. 13.6 I believe, right?

I don't know, perhaps it is just me, but the notch space "reduction" seems pretty meaningless to me. The vast majority of the time that is blank menubar space. I guess if you use full screen mode a lot or have dozens of menubar icons it could be a pain.

 

[NT1440]

That woman winning her lawsuit against McDonalds for spilling tea on herself years ago put the ball in motion for everyone to think you can sue over anything and everything and win.

Watch the “Hot Coffee” documentary if you’d like to learn the truth about that suit.

 

[rr23]

Watch the “Hot Coffee” documentary if you’d like to learn the truth about that suit.

Documentaries are never truthful.

 

[G5isAlive]

Going with a single 256GB chip is strictly a cost cutting measure that doesn't feel appropriate for a $1200 laptop. The difference between a 2x 128gb chips or 1x 256gb chip is almost nothing (128GB chips are not difficult or expensive to procure) and for Apple to sacrifice a big chunk of storage performance to shave basically nothing from their BOM cost. This feels like something you would see a ****** PC maker pull and not something you should see from a company who is positioning themselves as a premium product.

I hear this said a LOT, yet wonder if anyone who repeats it has any real world knowledge of the supply availability for these machines or the associated costs. I doubt it. 'common sense' doe not apply. But sure, often the monetary sum of two components is LESS the one component with equal capacity, exactly opposite what you are saying.

 

[NT1440]

Documentaries are never truthful.

The woman in that suit was under an NDA. The only thing the public ever knew about it was what McDonald’s PR team wanted out there.

 

[Quasi26]

Congrats, Apple has limited internal storage for a decade to push you to paying them a monthly fee and you fell for it

Plenty of windows machines have huge amounts of storage space and they will still sell you OneDrive, or Dropbox, or Google Drive, or box, etc. The cloud is more than just storage. And of course you are always free to just not buy it. Some of these conspiracy theories just get out of hand. I bet apple also puts code in iOS to purposely slow down your phone right before the next model to make you upgrade as well.....

 

[CooperBox]

It is a base model Air.

A base model.

Air.

What you gonna do with it?

Render Toy Story 10?

Use it as a high capacity high speed quantum universe time travel data center?

With all the hype that's been built up by the media and elsewhere I was planning to render Toy Story 12 on it!😝
But let's be serious, this newly released mid-2022 M2 MacBook Air - even the base model should be at least as good in every way as the previous M1 model launched in 2020, especially in terms of storage. Once again this cost skimping with the 256GB storage is shameful in my book.
For those defending it, they could well be Apple shareholders and rejoicing drinking champagne knowing that so many will unknowingly purchase the base model and later have buyers remorse. As for those who have pre-ordered, well...... words fail me.
I must confess I was in the market for a MacBook Air, decided to skip the M1 version as I wanted to see how the new ARM-based technology would perform, and decided to wait for the M2 version. Well it's certainly not for me with an extra $300 for the 512GB version, which today should be standard to give performance one expects.
Seriously I don't mind waiting now for the M3 version.

 

[fanboy-ish]

I think this matter is somewhat subjective, and it's not necessarily about performance.

First, when talking about "average users", we should define said users, most "average users" I know can perform all their tasks in a browser, including tasks required by their jobs, so they could easily go for a Chromebook or even a basic iPad - if they're ok with the screen size - and a good keyboard with touchpad, or even a properly set up Linux distro on a cheap FreeDOS laptop you can buy on Amazon.

Then, there's price. I see that most users here are talking about US dollars, but in Euros Apple is asking a lot of money for their M2 laptops:

• M2 Air base model: 1.529 €;
• M2 Air 16/512/7-core GPU: 1.989 €;
• M2 Air 16/512/10-core GPU: 2.109 €;
• M2 Pro base model: 1.629 €;
• M2 Pro 16/512: 2.089 €;
• 14-inch M1 Pro base model: 2.349 €;

So, the moment you spec those M2 laptops in order to avoid the RAM/SSD bottleneck, you're in 14-inch price range.

I think that for that kind of money customers are entitled not to get a nerfed product, or, at least, they are entitled to be informed that the product they're about to order comes with potential performance issues; also, we should not take for granted that people doing creative work are going to buy more expensive machines.

 

[maxoakland]

Plenty of windows machines have huge amounts of storage space

Something you could never say about an Apple machine you didn’t pay astronomical amounts for

 

[ignatius345]

Regarding 512GB, why don't you use iCloud like everyone else?

"Everyone else" is making some big assumptions. There are plenty of valid use cases for wanting to keep data locally.

 

[bbfc]

Paying an extra £250/300 for this over the base model M1 Air, and then having to pay another £200 to get comparable SSD speeds. No thanks. Apple really dropped the ball with this.

 

[seek3r]

That woman winning her lawsuit against McDonalds for spilling tea on herself years ago put the ball in motion for everyone to think you can sue over anything and everything and win.

The mcdonalds coffee lawsuit was actually legit you know. McDonald’s knew their coffee was too hot, and it was made and served above safe temperatures even though they knew better. This isnt anywhere close to the same thing

 

[w5jck]

This article was REALLY late to the table. The internet was buzzing about this a week ago...🙄

 

[Jumpthesnark]

What you gonna do with it?

Render Toy Story 10?

I am SO ANGRY that Apple is making me wait to see Toy Story 10 all because of the SSDs in their base model laptops.

 

[seek3r]

I don't know, perhaps it is just me, but the notch space "reduction" seems pretty meaningless to me. The vast majority of the time that is blank menubar space. I guess if you use full screen mode a lot or have dozens of menubar icons it could be a pain.

It moves the menubar up to take the place of the bezel though, so it really does free up space underneath on the main screen area

 

[ian87w]

How much is this likely to impact real-world usage for most people? (Genuinely asking here)

A lot actually, since the base model only have 8GB of RAM, meaning once you start running multiple apps, swapping will occur, and the much lower SSD performance will affect responsiveness. Now that might be fine for, let’s say, a $600 laptop. But this is a $1200 laptop (or $1500 of he M2 13” MacBook Pro). This kind of cost cutting measures shouldn’t be acceptable for a premium positioned product.

 

[seek3r]

Why didn’t the M1 models use 1 256 drive since it’s cheaper?

I actually doubt this is a cost issue. Buying a single higher capacity chip is actually typically more expensive, not less. I’d bet this is a supply chain issue, chip shortages are a major problem right now. It probably simplifies supply chain issues above the base too for apple since they likely use two of these same 256gb chips in the next most common model - the 512gb version.

 

[xbjllb]

Oi vey. Someone's in big trouble.

 

[Howard2k]

This article was REALLY late to the table. The internet was buzzing about this a week ago...🙄

No, that was the M2 Pro. This is the M2 Air. They're different machines.

 

[Silverstring]

what if i don't need 512GB?

should i just cough up the extra £200 and "Move on"?

nah, **** that. you might not mind multi trillion $ companies walking all over you but not me.

If you don’t need 512—don’t buy it.

If you don’t like the price/performance ratio of the 256GB option, or just don’t like the read/write speeds—don’t buy it.

Everyone should buy what they want at a price they think is fair.

Do I like that Apple has made a component switch with lesser performance than a previous model? No.

…but saying these things are like being “walked all over” or even funnier, “fraud”…is patently silly.

Did I miss where/when purchasing Apple products became compulsory? Apple isn’t claiming that the 256 SSDs specifically in the new MBA are faster, nor are they claiming that it is 2 chips as it was previously (and they didn’t claim it was any # in the last model, either). It’s not “fraud” if something was never claimed or even implied. It’d be different if Apple said “the self-contained fastest benchmarking SSD we’ve ever put in a laptop!” Even PC systems, other parts, and/or standalone SSD drives don’t list the amount of NAND chips that comprise total storage.

If one doesn’t like a particular product at a particular price—don’t buy it. Making an independent assumption about what one thinks might or should be in a product and then buying is not fraud or being “walked on”.

I’m not “defending” Apple’s component decision here—I’m simply saying it isn’t being misrepresented. These are separate things.

 

[SteveJobs2.0]

Still waiting for the day Apple makes 512GB/16GB standard.
256 8 has been the starting config for like a decade now.

It used to be 128 GB SSD and 4GB RAM for base MacBook Air in 2013. I know because I had to pay to upgrade both.

 

[compwiz1202]

So this is an awesome topic. My wife and I started out in 2015 buying the base Airs and using them for a few years then upgrading. 2017 we bought a midline MBP and noticed the enjoyment factor was a lot more. In 2022 I finally went loaded M1 max and ... yeah... I can say that the enjoyment factor is 6x a base MBA for me. Of course price difference is crazy and I can use it for work if I want.

We got a base MBA from Best Buy for like $700 in 2015.
Midline MBP in 2017 was $2800.
And of course the loaded M1 is more than double the 2017.

So let's say $950 every 2 years vs $2800 every 3-5 years (my wife is still using her 2017 MBP today).

The price difference isn't all that much once you start going out that far, especially if you trade in.

We traded in our 2015 MBAs for almost 50% of what we paid for them. About 40% for my 2017 MBP.

I noticed the resale on the M1 Max is bad... lol. So if you're looking to save $, near base models and trying to keep them for 3 years is probably best. All depends on what you do I guess. 😀

I'm planning on keeping the M1 Max for 5+ years if I can. It'll be the first laptop that I even want to attempt that in.

Exactly. I remember years ago when I was pondering a MacBook they were a little over $1k. Then boom the price flew up, and now a 16" is $2450 "on sale" Wish they would make 16" Airs for a lower price.

 

[compwiz1202]

Why is everyone so obsessed with speed? Slow down and smell the roses. Thank you, Apple, for doing your part to slow us down.

I agree especially when the increases are slightly better. Now years ago, speed increases were definitely noticable. I would never ever go back to a magnetic drive after getting my first SSD. Look away for an instant and it's at the login screen.

 

[Quasi26]

Something you could never say about an Apple machine you didn’t pay astronomical amounts for

This is totally accurate, but exists in other markets too. If you want a huge amount of horsepower in a car you can buy a chevy corvette. If you want the same amount of horsepower in a Mercedes or BMW you will pay lots more.

 

[compwiz1202]

If that happens, what's the likelihood that developers will simply start making all Mac apps more RAM intensive, causing the new floor to become the old floor?

We've seen that with storage. As operating systems get more bloated, they take up more space, so we need larger drives just to have similar space to older days. What's to stop the same happening with RAM?

Not an argument against your point btw. Just theorizing about where that takes us.

This is the story of tech since it existed. Apps start to push the hardware until it crawls; new hardware comes that blazes with current Apps; then the cycle repeats over and over...