15-inch MacBook Air
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Apple has finally fixed the SSD speed in the entry-level MacBook M3 Air, thanks to which Now two flash chips are used in parallel instead of one.
Early Apple Silicon MacBook Air had an issue with the smallest capacity models: the SSD drive wasn't always as fast as other capacities. Now it seems that in the third generation Apple has made changes to fix this problem.
In previous releases, it was discovered that the base 256 GB models used only one flash chip for data storage. While other models used two chips running in parallel, such as two 256GB chips for a 512GB drive, the 256GB model used a single 256GB flash chip instead of two 128GB versions.
For end users, this has resulted in a significant reduction in read and write speeds on the entry-level model.
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When AppleInsider reviewed the 15-inch MacBook Air with M2, The 512 GB model had read and write speeds of about 3,100 MB/s write and 2,800 MB/s read, while the 256 GB model provided read and write speeds of about 1,450 MB/s each way, indicating the use of one flash chip.
When we re-tested a MacBook Air M3 with 256 GB of internal memory, the read speed was much higher – 2672 MB/s. This means that Apple decided that the best solution was to use two smaller chips instead using a single larger chip.
Storage speed test showing faster speeds in entry-level MacBook Air with M3
Though this is an improvement that will benefit end-users users, it won't really be a big benefit for most users. As a mainstream model, users aren't likely to use the MacBook Air seriously all that often, and it certainly won't count for typical day-to-day tasks like web browsing.
Mac users who depend on fast storage will likely want better performance overall and will likely choose a MacBook Pro over a MacBook Air.
