Now that the M3 MacBook Air has been out for a few days, several reviewers have put those models to the test to see how they hold up to common tasks, and they discovered something that’s now been resolved on the base model after some controversy with the previous model.
When Apple introduced the M2 MacBook Air back in June 2022, which was launched in the following month, several reviewers pointed out that the SSD speeds on the base model were slower than those on the base previous model with the M1 chip. This was because the base M2 model used a single 256GB storage chip as opposed to the two 128GB chips in the M1, which allowed tasks to run in parallel for faster operation. This sparked some criticism that the base M2 model was worse in that regard.
When we look at the new M3 model, it seems that Apple has listened to those reviewers/critics’ feedback. According to Max Tech’s teardown video of that machine, it’s revealed that the base M3 model goes back to using two 128GB chips – the same layout as that of the M1 model, and the Blackmagic’s Disk Speed Tests show that the SSD speeds were about 33% faster in write speeds and up to 82% faster read speeds compared to those in the base M2 model.
Luke Miani also did a comparison of the SSDs of all the MacBook Air models with Apple Silicon from the M1 chip to the latest M3 chip, and he found that although the SSD speeds were faster on the M3 model than on the M2 model, they were still slower than those on the M1 model. Nonetheless, it’s still a substantial improvement that will certainly be a welcome change for customers who care about SSD speeds.
Apple currently sells the M2-based 13-inch Air at a lower starting price of $999; however, customers would be better off with upgrading the storage on that model or going for any of the M3 models if they want the best SSD performance.
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