How many returns?

Are you really desperate to get Samsung parts? It's really not a big of a deal.
Yes, you can do that and waste your time, but you can get flagged by Apple if you do it at least 4 times to the point where they will refuse service to you.

 

If you go for the 512GB variant or 1TB variant, the SSD is definitely Samsung. You're only playing the SanDisk/Samsung lottery with the 128GB and 256GB.

However, the screen is a lottery. I have an A020 (not sure whether it's Samsung or LG) on my 13", but there's no IR after over 2 weeks of constant use.

 

I've got an LG screen and I love it. No problems so far and I've had it for almost 5 months.

 

Please just buy something else. You are creating problems where there are none, and causing extra cost to Apple which in the end contributes to their product prices.

 

Forums are not the place to seek out potential reviews for a MBP. For every 1 vocal customer that is displeased with his/her computer, there are thousands that are perfectly satisfied and don't bother signing up to a forum to say "hey, mine works perfect".

 

Read my sig, my thoughts exactly.

 

Not sure why people are telling this guy not to do this. It's not his fault apple sells two different ssds, one that performs 20% better than the other. Why should he pay the same price as some other guy but not get the same performance and reliability? If the performance and reliability were the same then fine, it would be dumb to exchange. But Samsung clearly makes the superior ssd. If Apple didn't want people doing what the op plans to do, it shouldn't sell two different parts with 20% different performance for the same price.

 

For the record, I have a samsung screen, and DO have image retention.

HOWEVER, it's so minor that it's impossible to notice UNLESS you run an image retention test, and at that point you're just looking for flaws and you'll find some no matter what.

Image retention is impossible to notice in actual usage from what i've found. I didn't even know my screen had this "problem" until about 2 months after I bought it AND ran a test, and at that point I was just like "well I haven't noticed it for 2 months and never notice it when actually using it regularly so who cares"

 

lol. I get where you are coming from but I do not think anyone would see the difference between those SSD speed.

I don't believe Apple is the only company that uses different parts from different manufacturer.

If your LG/Samsung screen has issue then replace it. That I understand but if it is just because you want to change it due to the difference that you can't see/feel it then it's pointless to me.

I would rather just use it then keep exchanging it because there will always be flaw in it.

 

Same sentiments here. Yeah, the Samsung SSD is SOOOO much faster, but do you actually feel the difference? Benchmarks are nice figures to look at, but in the real world, those are just numbers. If it doesn't affect your usage, why bother?

You're going to spend time travelling, getting a replacement, testing, then doing the whole cycle again. When are you going to enjoy your "new" purchase? BTW, you may end up getting refurbished parts, since you won't know what they are doing when you send it in. How's that going to feel?

 

So you are saying Apple should charge customers extra for the Samsung SSD, so that things are fair?

I wonder if the time that the OP will waste returning laptops will ever be compensated by the two seconds faster boot time. I think not, probably not even the time I wasted replying to this thread would be compensated.

I think that, if someone considers buying something that has a 50% or higher chance of not meeting his or her demands, he/she just should not buy, or buy a product that has a higher chance of fulfilling all requirements.

 

How many returns?

That's one option. The better option would be to use parts with equal performance and reliability.

Look, I'm not saying the guy SHOULD return if he doesn't get a Samsung ssd. I'm just saying I wouldn't blame him if he does, and I'd certainly consider returning if it were me. If you are a car enthusiast and you are expecting your new car to have 500 hp but you find out it only has 450 because the dealer gave you an inferior part, I'd say the same thing.

Whether or not other manufacturers do it too is beside the point. If they do, then they shouldn't be surprised if their computers with the inferior parts get exchanged too.

 

If the 500 hp are part of the advertised specifications then it is clearly a problem. Honestly I wouldn't even be so sure that this doesn't happen sometimes... car performance is harder to measure accurately than SSD speeds after all.

I'm typing this with on my sandisk equipped rMBP. I do understand not being fully satisfied, knowing that I only got the second best SSD. In the end I don't care, but that is not the point.

I feel that the OP is setting himself up for frustration and disappointment. He is planning to purchase an item that (with screen and SSD) has only a 25% chance of meeting his expectations. The problem on top of that is that probably 98% of all items are within the specifications of the manufacturer, i.e. as good or better as advertised.

Personally I feel that there are two reasonable approaches:
- accepting that there are small variations
- not buying

Actually here there is a simple solution: Buy the 512 GB SSD. It is not even clear at the moment how to check for the Samsung screen on the 13'' - or is it?

 

Yeah I think you are correct about screen which is why I've focused on the ssd issue.

 

well why would you waste your time and money traveling to a store to exchange and play the lottery game? For one thing i doubt it would be a difference in reliability; speeds maybe a bit but only on benchmarks which not even we professional video guys bother of a slight benchmark difference. A difference of 60-100mbps would be a big difference anything lesser then that would not. But yes if sandisk provided 1500 erase cycles and samsung 3000 that would be a big difference. About the display I had 2 samsung displays on my early 2013 which developed spots. My second screen replacement was a lg and the colors to me felt different to my pals it just seemed brighter. Both are great displays if there is an issue apple will gladly fix it for you.

The retina macbook is a marvelous laptop enjoy the unboxing ceremony and first power up don't be bothered of samsung/sandisk/lg parts. Btw my samsung screen had some image retention which i only would notice after 10 minutes of testing for retention while during normal/professional use not a bit of it.

 

ALL parts have different performance. You play this "lottery" every single time you buy ANYTHING.

Abusing Apples, frankly lenient, exchange practices just to get a supposedly more reliable component when there is no actual problem is border line return fraud.

There's also the problem of the non-scientific nature of these claims about "20% better performance". You guys are basing these conclusions on a handful of internet DIY he-saids done by different people under different circumstances using potentially different methods.

All companies have internal QC for their products and you can bet that Apple has minimum performance standards that all components must, and likely do, meet.

 

So you are saying that two Samsung SSDs might have 20% different performance, the same way that a Sandisk and Samsung will have 20% different performance? Prove it. Show me a single benchmark of 20% difference of two properly functioning Samsung SSDs of the same size in an rMBP. You won't find one. Yeah, two Samsung SSDs may literally not have identical performance, but I can guarantee you there won't be a 20% gap. Maybe 2 or 3% from test to test, which is a far cry from 20%.

Border line return fraud? Instead of focusing your fury on consumers who don't like the idea of playing the SSD lottery, why don't you focus it on Apple for even putting consumers in the position.

Sometimes 20% is significant, sometimes it's not. If a Honda Civic were expected to get 40 mpg, but you happened to buy one with a different engine component resulting in a max MPG of 32, would you feel like you had gotten what you had paid for? What you feel a bit shafted because, due to luck of the draw, you were missing out on that 20% performance?

I'm not saying it's a perfect example, but if a given consumer has the time and wants to put forth the effort to get a Samsung SSD, which has 20% superior performance to the Sandisk, I don't see how an exchange even comes close to return fraud. You might think it's a waste of time for that consumer to care about the 20% performance difference, but different strokes for different folks, right? Return fraud? No... just no.

Not really. It's pretty well settled that the Samsung SSDs pull speeds of about 20% higher than the Sandisk. Yeah, these are synthetic benchmarks that don't necessarily translate to real world use, but they are repeatable and verifiable, as countless benchmark screenshots posted to this very forum have proven.

Keep in mind I'm not the OP, nor am I necessarily saying the OP should return a laptop 50 times to try to get a Samsung SSD. In fact, I tend to agree with many of the posters in this thread that doing multiple returns would be a pretty huge waste of time. But if he has the time and wants to do it, I don't see any problem with that. Again, if there's any problem here, in my view it is that Apple is shipping parts that have such a significant performance difference from others, be it a real-world difference or not... enthusiasts care about benchmarks, right or wrong.

 

Yeah I also should say that I finally went to check what Apple says on its website, and indeed they actually advertise "sequential read speeds up to 775 MBps", which clearly the sandisk is not able to do (mine reaches 700).
Of course there is an "up to" and in the footnote they say that it is based on benchmarks on a 512 GB model, but it does leave a bit of a bad taste.

 

my rMBP had a LG screen. I didn't want to believe that IR happened on all LGs. Unfortunately it did and thank goodness my instinct kicked in to purchase AppleCare together when I bought my rMBP. About a year and 2 months later, the retention came and it was so bad to the point I couldn't edit my videos and photos and restarting and screensaver didn't help at all. Called apple, they told me I was lucky to have purchased AppleCare and changed my screen to a Samsung. Samsung screen gave me no signs of retention at all. In life, when you have a choice to play with luck.. don't.

 

What you have failed to include is the specs of the test machine.

Barney

edit: Just re-read and you have mentioned it.

 

So Apple isn't misleading anyone. "up to 775 MBps" would be the high end of the performance range. Apple never specifies a minimum speed, and the wording indicates that individual performance may vary. That's pretty standard across the board when it comes to computer manufacturers. As far as blaming Apple for second-sourcing SSDs, EVERY manufacturer second-sources components, whether RAM, HDD/SDDs, or screens. Second-sourcing is the reason why AMD became a manufacturer of x86-compatible processors during the 286/386/486 era, so it's not a new practice either.

 

How many returns?

Again, second sourcing is itself not the problem. Second sourcing with a part that is 20% slower than the alternative is the problem. Show me two sticks of ram with the same specs that have 20% different performance. You can't, because there is no such performance difference so second sourcing is irrelevant.

Whenever there is a 20% performance difference I guarantee you that some subset of enthusiasts is going to care and will return return return until they get the faster one. And I don't understand why anybody is outraged by that.