Late 2014 13" Air quite slow

[Giuanniello]

I own this late 2014 13" MBAir basic specs, 4GB RAM and 256GB SSD, I only used it to play digital music connected to my stereo system through an external DAC, on normal usage it feels so very slow, slower than my older 11" 2012 Air, to give you an example when loading the OS after the login window it might take as long as a minute or more, nothing running in the background, OS is up to date, I thought of wiping it all off and try a clean install but it would bother me huge time to perform a backup and then a restore of music and playlists (the player is not iTunes), any suggestion or check to perform to find out why so slow?

Grazie

 

[ghanwani]

Have you tried looking at the activity monitor to see what tasks are running and how much CPU they're consuming?

Your best bet might be the clean install.

 

[Giuanniello]

The boot doesn't take long, the login does, I will give it a check, backup my music and playlist and proceed to a clean install, it won't hurt.

Grazie

 

[The Man]

Mm, 4GB RAM is too little, methinks, but it doesn't explain why your older Air 2012 is faster. Same RAM and OS running? Is your SSD getting full perhaps? Have you cleared the user cache (~Home/Library/Caches)? Maybe an app is running in the background without knowing? How is your memory pressure in Activity Monitor? Sure, a clean install might do the trick.

 

[z2000]

sounds your 2014 SSD may have issue. Could you switch two SSD to see if any change?
I don't know it is possible - because Apple change SSD interface from 2012 -

 

[Roykatz]

I have the 8gb ram, i7, 500gb variation and it runs very smooth and fast.
I think you should try to clean install the whole system and if that doesn't work - try using alternative SSD (according to SSD requirements for 2013-2014 MacBooks).

 

[Giuanniello]

Thank you for your suggestions, as soon as I have enough time to back it up I will try a clean install.

Grazie