Apple released the new M3 MacBook Air this week, with faster performance, Wi-Fi 6E, and support for dual external displays. As it turns out, Apple has also addressed another issue that plagued the base model of the previous generation MacBook Air: SSD storage speeds.
The backstory here is that the base model M2 MacBook Air with 256GB of storage offers slower SSD speeds than higher-level configurations. This is due to the fact that the base model uses a single 256GB storage stick, instead of two 128GB storage sticks. That was a step down from the base M1 MacBook Air, which uses two 128GB storage sticks.
As we spotted for the first time Friend Gregory McFadden on Twitter, the new M3 MacBook Air delivers significantly faster SSD speeds than the M2 MacBook Air that preceded it. tearing down Performed by Max Tech YouTube confirms that this is because Apple is now using two 128GB storage sticks for the base model MacBook Air, instead of a single 256GB unit.
As such, the two 128GB NAND chips in the M3 MacBook Air can process tasks in parallel, greatly increasing data transfer speeds.
Testing conducted by Max Tech revealed that the M3 MacBook Air can reach write speeds of 2108MB/s, compared to the base M2 MacBook Air's speeds of 1584MB/s. As for read speeds, the M2 MacBook Air reached 1,576MB/s, while the M3 MacBook Air reached 2,880MB/s.
This indicates that the M3 MacBook Air has approximately 33% faster SSD write speeds and approximately 82% faster read speeds. These speeds match, and sometimes exceed, those of the M1 MacBook Air.
The full YouTube videos from Greg and Max Tech can be found below.
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