13-inch MacBook Pro with M2 gets the teardown treatment

Apple introduced a new 13-inch MacBook Pro with an M2 processor under the hood at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference. (It was that other laptop the company introduced that wasn’t the brand new, redesigned MacBook Air with M2.) It’s been on sale for a bit of time now, so it’s only appropriate that it gets the teardown treatment.

And a proper one at that. Which is where the fine folks over at iFixit come in. They’ve put together a relatively quick video, measuring in at just over five minutes in length, showing off the internals of one of Apple’s newest laptops. And, as you might expect, there’s not much different this time around compared to the previous iteration of the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Apple silicon under the hood.

As noted in the teardown, this new laptop is identical to the previous model, not including the M2 processor, of course. There’s the same Touch Bar, so no changes there. It has the same chassis, so nothing drastic there to note. And the same can be said internally, too.

Things do get interesting when iFixit did a board swap, though. The teardown team actually removed the M1 chip from the previous model, and the M2 chip from the new model, then installed the M2 chip in the older device. Unsurprisingly, it fit! However, the machine wouldn’t work because of the swap. If you change out the processors, key elements of the machine, including Touch ID and the keyboard, stop functioning.

And you may have heard recently that the M2-equipped 13-inch MacBook Pro is underperforming in the SSD department. Which is true, compared to the previous M1 model. And iFixit was able to confirm that Apple is indeed using a single 256GB SSD chip in the M2 13-inch MacBook Pro. That’s compared to the duo of 128GB SSD chips used in the M1 13-inch MacBook Pro.

iFixit believes the reason Apple went this route is because of component shortages. Which is not great, but obviously a reality we live in right now. Some have suggested Apple should have waited to launch the new 13-inch MacBook Pro, but that’s not something Apple would agree with apparently.

You can check out the teardown in the video above.