Who said that Apple doesn’t listen to feedback from the press and its users? Singled out for the poor performance of the SSD of its 256 GB MacBook Air M2, the firm has clearly rectified the situation with the arrival last week of the MacBook Air M3…even if everything is not yet perfect.
Without offering any major new features apart from their new M3 chip, the 13- and 15-inch 2024 MacBook Air still improve on at least two points. In addition to their support for two external displays simultaneously (which the M2 models could not do), the two new MacBook Airs now include significantly faster storage in their “base” 256 GB configuration.
A faster SSD on the 256 GB MacBook Air…
We talked about it in 2022 in our test of the 13-inch MacBook Air M2, the 256 GB configurations of the device have until now made do with a rather confusingly slow SSD. From one device to another, transfer speeds fluctuated between approximately 1500 and 1700 MB/s for reading and writing. Figures worthy of an entry-level SSD from 5 years ago.
This reduced performance was due to a deliberate choice by Apple. The firm was in fact content to add a single NAND memory module to its old 256 GB MacBook Air… instead of two on configurations with 512 GB of storage or more. The latter thus benefited from SSDs with significantly more honorable transfer speeds.
This difference, quite difficult to justify at this price level, has therefore been erased with the arrival of the new 13 and 15 inch M3 models.
…but Apple is improving without impressing
Indeed, as noted by YouTuber Max Tech in the video above, Apple is now adding two 128 GB NAND memory chips to the motherboard of its new MacBook Air M3 256 GB. The measured speeds thus increase to 2880 MB /s reading and 2108 MB/s writing on the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test utility… compared to just under 1600 MB/s reading and writing previously.
Let’s be clear, these speeds remain modest for a product marketed from 1300 euros, but they are nevertheless significantly more generous than in the past. It’s also nice to see that Apple listened to community feedback to at least partially correct what was, in our opinion, one of the biggest flaws of the MacBook Air M2.
The fact remains that the M3 models are still marketed with 256 GB of SSD only in the basic configuration (which is still too tight in 2024 compared to what the competition offers at the same price). We will also add that no hardware upgrade is possible after purchase since this SSD is soldered to the MacBook Air motherboard. Two faults that must be taken into account and which we will have the opportunity to talk about again. A complete test of the 15-inch MacBook Air M3 will indeed arrive on Clubic in the coming days.
Source : Wccftech
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