Our research revealed that Apple's new M2 MacBook Pro has faster internal storage speeds than the M1 MacBook Pro it replaced. However, this is not true for all models. As 9to5Mac found the M2 MacBook Pro's storage performed worse than the M1 version on his entry-level 512GB storage device.
The M1 Pro MacBook Pro 512GB model hits 4,900 MB/s read and 3,951 MB/s write in our high-level Blackmagic Disk Speed test, while the M2 Pro model hits 2,973 MB/s read and 3,154.5 MB/s. Get write. reached. That means 40% slower reads and 20% slower writes.
The NAND flash memory chips Apple uses for SSDs seem to make all the difference. According to his iFixit breakdown, the older MacBook Pro used four 128GB NAND chips in the 512GB SSD, while 9to5Mac's M2 Pro MacBook Pro appears to use two 256GB NAND chips. Apple's spending may decrease as the number of processors decreases, but SSDs also have fewer places to read and write at the same time, resulting in lower overall performance.
This development is not entirely unexpected. The MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro M2 models performed similarly poorly, both using less dense his NAND chips than the M1 model. The new MacBook Pro maintains much faster storage speeds than the 256GB versions of the M2 MacBook Pro and Air. This is because the 512GB edition of the M2 MacBook Pro uses two NAND flash chips instead of one. However, when looking at the performance of the new Pro, these storage speeds are perceived by the majority of users as "fairly fast." Overall performance numbers are comparable to good PCI Express 3.0 SSDs such as Samsung 970 Evo Plus, SSD 980 and Western Digital WD Black SN750. Not what you would expect from a brand new $2,000 laptop. These drives are all a few years old or designed for cheaper PCs, but they're usually not slow enough to affect performance.