March 10, 2024 – Recent tests conducted by a foreign media outlet have revealed a significant increase in SSD speed for the new 8GB+256GB MacBook Air equipped with the M3 chip compared to its predecessor featuring the M2 chip.
The media outlet conducted the tests on both the M2 and M3 chip-powered 13-inch MacBook Air models with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, using a 5GB file and the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test tool to measure the performance. The results showed that the SSD in the M3-equipped MacBook Air exhibited a 33% improvement in write speed and an impressive 82% increase in read speed compared to the M2 model.
According to a teardown video, Apple has equipped the new 13-inch MacBook Air with 256GB of storage using two 128GB chips, whereas the previous model with the M2 chip used a single 256GB chip. This change has contributed to the faster SSD read and write speeds observed in the tests, as the two chips can process requests concurrently.
Just a few days ago, the M3 MacBook Air made its debut in China with a starting price of 8,999 yuan for the 8GB+256GB configuration. As a flagship ultrabook released in 2024, the M3 MacBook Air’s decision to stick with 8GB+256GB as the base memory configuration is indeed rare in the industry. This has led some netizens to comment that Apple’s pricing for memory upgrades is exorbitant.
