Cheapest option 2012 11.6" SSD upgrade?

I bought the Jet Transcend drive off Amazon a couple years ago and it’s worked great for me. I got the 480GB option but they make smaller drives too. They come with an external holder for the SSD you remove so you can use it as fast external storage.

Here’s a link for the 240GB option. It’s ~$200
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00JKCHNQS/

 

+1 for me. I also have the 480GB Transcend unit

Lou

 

I hope that the 2018 Mac desktop & notebooks will use industry standard M.2 SSD specifications instead of these Apple-only connectors. Although I doubt that would happen.

I was looking for ways to upgrade my Mid 2012 Macbook Air's SSD.

The most straightforward solutions were from OWC & Transcend.

The problem with these two brands is that their $/GB is out of step with the rest of the SSD industry without any improvement in throughput.

OWC (drive-only) review
240GB $150 @ $0.63/GB
480GB $250 @ $0.52/GB
1TB $450 @ $0.45/GB

Transcend (drive + enclosure) review
240GB $230 @ $0.96/GB
480GB $350 @ $0.73/GB
960GB $600 @ $0.63/GB

Crucial MX500 M.2 SATA SSD (will need to verify if it's short enough to fit)
250GB $73 @ $0.29/GB
500GB $120 @ $0.24/GB
1TB $230 @ $0.23/GB

Buying the OWC solution is like buying two SSDs at the same storage capacity while buying Transcend is like buying three SSDs at the same storage capacity.

For the M.2 SATA SSD to work with the Apple SSD on connector you will need any of these adapter

$15 http://a.co/9yzrB5C Sintech
$17 http://a.co/6v5fIQB (Sintech for double side memory SSDs)
$12 http://a.co/9MpRxzv
$12 http://a.co/iUvCDV1
$16 http://a.co/ajMHbIV

The replaced SSD can be made into an external drive using any of these enclosures.

$23 http://a.co/2fTFlcw Sintech
$49 https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MAU3ENVOY12/
$25 http://a.co/7qJ8tgs


Installation video is below.



Other Mac notebooks have 3rd party SSD replacements as shown below. So logically they should have adapters as well.