MacBook Pro 2023 SSD speed is slower than older generation
In mid-January, Apple announced the 14-inch and 16-inch versions of the MacBook Pro 2033 with no design changes from the previous generation, but upgraded the chips in the M2 Pro and M2 Max. Meanwhile, the Mac Mini 2023 has also been released with the M2 or M2 Pro chip.
However, acc 9to5Mac, the two standard versions of the 14-inch MacBook Pro and Mac Mini that use the M2 chip have smaller hardware compared to the generation equipped with the M1 chip. Apple uses fewer NAND memory chips, resulting in much slower SSD read and write speeds on newer models.
Plot of SSD speed on Macbook Pro M2 compared to the previous generation. A photo: 9to5Mac
When tested on this tech site, the 14-inch MacBook Pro M2 Pro with 512GB SSD read and write speeds were 39% and 20% slower than the MacBook Pro M1 (2021), respectively. Specifically, the 14-inch MacBook Pro M2 has a read speed of 2970MB/s and a write speed of 3150MB/s, while the generation with the M1 Pro chip has 4900MB/s and 3950MB/s, respectively.
The Mac Mini M2 with 256GB SSD has read and write speeds of 1482MB/s and 1431MB/s, respectively, which is almost half the speed of the Mac Mini M1 (2020).
On a standard 14-inch MacBook Pro M1 with 512GB of internal storage, Apple installed four 128GB NAND chips evenly distributed on either side of the board. i fixed it. Meanwhile, the 14-inch MacBook Pro M2 has a 256GB NAND chip on each side.
This is similar to the Mac Mini M2, where Apple used a 256GB NAND memory chip instead of the M1’s two 128GB chips.
Increasing the capacity of the NAND chips on hard drives reduces costs, but read and write speeds are slower than using multiple low-capacity NAND chips in parallel. After edge, edge, these changes are even more difficult to accept in computer models under $2,000, such as the 14-inch MacBook Pro. However, for simple tasks, users rarely notice the difference as the read and write speeds are still very fast.