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What quality are the Apple SSD's?

turbineseaplane

turbineseaplane

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Original poster
Mar 19, 2008
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Does anyone have any idea what "quality" the original 2015 Apple SSD's compare to?
(or even the newer ones also actually...)

Are they essentially Samsung Pro models in terms of components?

I'm really blown away with how well my Apple 1TB SSD that came in my 2015 15" holds up vs the HP EX950 2TB I've been testing.

Storage amount aside...I'm to the point of maybe even returning the EX950 as the Apple SSD seems to beat it in a few metrics and somehow still just feels snappier (or at least not any worse)....

I just don't get it.

All I can think is that the Apple SSD's are actually higher quality than maybe I realize?

Anyone have any thoughts?
 
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They do tend to use very high quality SSDs (MLC rather than TLC and pretty bleeding edge speeds) I seem to remember the 2015 model year computers got a quite significant storage speed bump over the 2014s. I don't know if being MLC in itself would mean increased speeds due to fewer bits of information being stored per memory cell?
 
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The quality of the Apple SSDs from Samsung would be really high in my opinion. Many appear to use MLC chips, Samsung controllers with custom Apple/Samsung firmware, and a decent amount of cache.

Although the original Apple/Samsung drives are older, they still perform quite well. They may not benchmark as high as some of the newer drives but they would have more endurance.
 
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The original post refers to 2015 MBP that uses a blade-style SSD.

With the newer MBPs having the storage chips being soldered directly to the logic board, I believe this would also speed up reads and writes since Apple has eliminated the need for a slot-type connector in the pci-e bus.
 
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Audit13 said:
The original post refers to 2015 MBP that uses a blade-style SSD.

With the newer MBPs having the storage chips being soldered directly to the logic board, I believe this would also speed up reads and writes since Apple has eliminated the need for a slot-type connector in the pci-e bus.
Click to expand...

Missed that. 2015 is a Samsung K9LDGY8S1D-XCK0 I believe?
 
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SDColorado said:
According to Laptop Magazine the speed is due to the APFS file system using instant cloning to speed up file file copies, more than the quality of the drive.
Click to expand...

I guess what I don’t understand there is that both these drives (the Apple one and the EX95) I’ve been testing are blade style and both using APFS.

Is APFS helping the Apple Drive keep up but the newer and faster HP just doesn’t/can't get any faster as a result?
 
Last edited:
turbineseaplane said:
I guess what I don’t understand there is that both these drives (the Apple one and the EX95) I’ve been testing are blade style and both using APFS.

Is APFS helping the Apple Drive keep up but the newer and faster HP just doesn’t/can't get any faster as a result?
Click to expand...

I honestly don't know if it is some proprietary optimization? Lenovo used Samsung’s SM951 drive that it is based on, but I don't believe they ever matched the speeds from Apple.

https://www.kitguru.net/lifestyle/m...ngs-ultra-fast-3d-v-nand-ssds-in-its-laptops/
 
turbineseaplane said:
I guess what I don’t understand there is that both these drives (the Apple one and the EX95) I’ve been testing are blade style and both using APFS.

Is APFS helping the Apple Drive keep up but the newer and faster HP just doesn’t/can't get any faster as a result?
Click to expand...


APFS' clone function only speeds up data duplication in scenarios like editing a template. For raw data write/read, APFS does not have magic performance boosting sauce. There are many aspects to SSD performance. NAND used, controller, firmware, connection and protocol. What Apple typically does extremely well is balanced, high performance. That is; Some vendors may have a setup that benchmarks extremely well under some circumstances, but poorly under other. Apple SSDs perform well overall, and are generally really high quality.
And since Apple retains at least partial control over the firmware and in T-chip equipped Macs also the controller, their SSDs will not necessarily be 1:1 equivalent with their retail counterparts. Let's say, for the sake of argument, Apple uses a Samsung PM981 - I don't know if they do, but for the sake of argument - Their PM981 may only be a PM981 in NAND and nothing more, if the Mac has a T-chip, since Apple then controls the controller and at least partially the firmware, giving them much more control over the characteristics of the drive.
In pre-T-chip Macs like yours I don't think Apple has a custom controller, but their performance has consistently been top notch since SSDs became standard in MacBook Pros.
 
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Apple bought a company that developed SSD controller software some years ago and since 2016, the MBP has used an Apple-proprietary SSD controller. There are only a handful of companies that develop SSD controller software. Besides Samsung , I think all the major consumer SSD manufacturers now use 3rd-party controllers for at least some (WD/SanDisk uses both in-house and external controllers) of their SSD's. The SSD manufacturers work with these SSD controller companies and some have controllers tweaked to their specific products. I don't know if the 2015 MBP SSD's had tweaks specific to Apple but at it's core, it's still a Samsung controller (for those MBP's that had Samsung SSD's).

turbineseaplane said:
Does anyone have any idea what "quality" the original 2015 Apple SSD's compare to?
(or even the newer ones also actually...)

Are they essentially Samsung Pro models in terms of components?

I'm really blown away with how well my Apple 1TB SSD that came in my 2015 15" holds up vs the HP EX950 2TB I've been testing.

Storage amount aside...I'm to the point of maybe even returning the EX950 as the Apple SSD seems to beat it in a few metrics and somehow still just feels snappier (or at least not any worse)....

I just don't get it.

All I can think is that the Apple SSD's are actually higher quality than maybe I realize?

Anyone have any thoughts?
Click to expand...

With regards to the HP EX950, I can't find (didn't spend a lot of time searching) direct benchmark comparisons between the EX950 and the Apple SSD but benchmarks with close analogs show that the EX950 should be faster but there are a lot of factors involved. But if you were to ask me which of the following technologies has held up the best (performance-wise) in the 2015 MBP - CPU, SSD, GPU, IO (Thunderbolt, USB) vs. what is currently available in comparable MBP models, I would say the SSD. If you were to have the 2015 MBP SSD performance in a 2018 MBP, 99.9% of people wouldn't be able to tell the difference unless they ran benchmarks.
 
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Apple has used Samsung, Toshiba, and SanDisk. depending on year/model of mac and capacity.
none are low quality but in tech circles, preference tends to be Samsung > Toshiba > SanDisk.
but realistically it will make little difference.
 
Anarchy99 said:
Apple has used Samsung, Toshiba, and SanDisk. depending on year/model of mac and capacity.
none are low quality but in tech circles, preference tends to be Samsung > Toshiba > SanDisk.
but realistically it will make little difference.
Click to expand...

it's a big difference, SSD SSUBX Samsung from 2015 or newer are the best, others not so much
 
My 1TB Apple SSD from my 2015 15" is an SSUBX - glad to hear I got a good one.
It was really amazing how well it performed relative to the EX950 I've now sent back.
 
_Kiki_ said:
it's a big difference, SSD SSUBX Samsung from 2015 or newer are the best, others not so much
Click to expand...
probably why samsung has the reputation for being the best, honestly every client ive had with a 2015 has either had a samsung or I upgraded them to one aftermarket so i dont have 1st hand experience.
not to mention i dont just randomly benchmark peoples computers, if i've solved there issues they get off the bench cause i can only work on so many machines at once
 
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