The bottom M2 14-inch MacBook Professional has an SSD downgrade

The bottom degree 14-inch M2 MacBook Professional reportedly has a slower SSD than its predecessor, in response to checks finished by 9to5Mac. In BlackMagic’s Disk Velocity Check, the 512GB SSD in Apple’s newest flagship achieved learn velocity scores of round 2,970 MB/s and write velocity scores of round 3,150 MB/s, in comparison with 4,900 MB/s reads and three,950 MB/s writes that the M1 Professional with a 512GB SSD was able to.

Which means the 2023 base mannequin has round 39 % slower reads and 20 % slower writes than the one launched in 2021.

The rationale for the distinction is probably going right down to chips. In accordance with 9to5Mac, the 512GB SSD within the previous-gen 14-inch had 4 NAND storage chips, whereas the one on the M2 Professional appears to have two. These are clearly higher-capacity chips, so the computer systems have the identical quantity of storage however with worse efficiency as a result of they will’t parallelize reads and writes as a lot.

Constructing newer generations of computer systems with fewer NAND chips isn’t new for Apple. Each the 256GB M2 MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Professional had slower storage than the M1 variations of these machines. (The scenario was even worse with these machines, which had a single NAND chip.) However these are comparatively entry-level laptops; the 14-inch MacBook Professional is a $2,000 laptop geared toward inventive professionals and builders — it’s not a spot you’d count on Apple to chop corners or sacrifice efficiency.

It’d be much more annoying if the $2,500 16-inch mannequin with a 512GB SSD additionally has this setup, although, so far as I’m conscious, nobody has confirmed this by some means. We requested Apple about it, and the M2 Mac Mini with a 256GB SSD, however didn’t instantly get a response.

Nevertheless, MacRumors stories that the 256GB M2 Mini does certainly solely have one NAND chip, much like Air and 13-inch Professional. Once more, I’d argue that’s extra acceptable on a machine that prices $599. However whereas it’s unlucky that the bottom M2 Mini has a slower SSD than M1 one did, there’s a tradeoff — the M2 mannequin begins at $100 much less than its predecessor. Given all the things the pc presents by way of real-world efficiency, maybe it’s onerous to complain.

Fortunately, it looks as if MacBook Professional fashions with upgraded storage don’t include the identical efficiency hit. Tom’s Information and Laptop computer Magazine examined a 14-inch M2 Professional-equipped laptop computer with a 2TB SSD, in addition to one with an M2 Max processor (which is simply obtainable with a 1TB SSD and up), and the storage turned out to be roughly as quick or sooner than the previous-gen fashions. MacWorld discovered the same scenario with the 16-inch fashions.

Only for reference, Tom’s Information notes that the 2TB SSD paired with an M2 Professional was able to 5,293 MB/s reads and 6,168 MB/s writes, a substantial leg-up from the 512GB mannequin (as you’d hope, on condition that the 2TB SSD possibility provides a cool $600 to the worth of the pc).

This isn’t to say that newer Macs with base-level SSDs can be unusably sluggish. The benchmark screenshots posted by 9to5Mac present that the one within the 14-inch nonetheless has sufficient bandwidth to play again 12K ProRes 422 HQ footage at 60FPS. It additionally nonetheless handily beats the 1TB SSD in my 13-inch M1 MacBook Professional, which has been completely adequate even once I ask it to do heavy video enhancing duties, and is quicker than the 256GB SSD within the M2 MacBook Air and 13-inch Professional.

Nonetheless, it’s a little bit of a bummer to see that, in a minimum of one facet, the base-level M2 Professional machines are measurably worse than their predecessors.