Apple has equipped the 256-gigabyte version of its 13-inch M3 MacBook Air with faster flash storage than its M2 counterpart.
This is good news for everyone considering the base 13-inch MacBook Air equipped with 256 gigabytes of storage, which retails for $999. By comparison, the previous 256GB M2 MacBook Air was criticized for utilizing slower flash storage than higher-capacity models with 512GB of storage and up.
In other words, people who are in the market for a new M3 MacBook Air needn’t worry about storage speed and paying extra to upgrade the SSD to 512GB or more the base model no longer uses slower storage.
256GB M3 MacBook Air has faster flash storage
That’s because the 256GB 13-inch MacBook Air uses two NAND chips, like higher-capacity models, instead of one like the 256GB M2 Air. The trick is to utilize two NAND chips, which enable the laptop to read and write data simultaneously.
Repair experts at iFixit have torn apart the 256GB 13-inch M3 MacBook Air, and its teardown video confirms that this machine is indeed equipped with two 128GB NAND chips instead of a single 256GB chip, resulting in a significant increase in flash storage performance.
The speed difference isn’t negligible. YouTube channel Max Tech run its own tests, finding that flash storage in the M3 model reads data about 82 percent faster than the SSD in the M2 model, with write speeds up to 33 percent faster. Max Tech published its findings in a new video, embedded right ahead.
Last year, The Verge tested flash storage performance of the 256GB M2 MacBook Air and the 512GB configuration, finding 15-30 percent slower write speeds versus the 512GB model and 40-50 percent slower read speeds. Both The Verge and Max Tech have used Blackmagic’s Disk Speed Test app with a 5GB file size.