Should you’re contemplating choosing up one of many newly-released MacBook Professional M2 fashions, be careful: it seems like Apple has lower some corners (presumably within the title of preserving manufacturing prices down) on the subject of the SSD discovered within the entry-level iterations of the brand new laptop computer.

As noticed by @ZONEofTECH (opens in new tab) on Twitter, the 512GB drive discovered within the base configuration of the 2023 MacBook Professional is considerably slower than the SSD used within the earlier M1-powered mannequin. It’s a reasonably main drop; over 400MB/s slower writes and virtually 1,400MB/s slower reads.

This Tweet was later corroborated by 9To5Mac (opens in new tab), who ran their very own checks and acquired related outcomes. Not like @ZONEofTECH, although, 9To5Mac went one step past and cracked open their M2 MacBook Professional to take a more in-depth have a look at the storage on the motherboard itself.

BREAKING: We’ve simply found that the bottom 14” M2 Professional MacBook Professional (512GB) is significantly slower than the earlier 14” M1 Professional mannequin. Apple is probably going utilizing single SSD modules once more (like the bottom 256GB M2 Air and M2 MacBook Professional). Extra testing to come back. pic.twitter.com/3kMiHVDxaFJanuary 24, 2023

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What they discovered confirmed @ZONEofTECH’s suspicions: the 512GB M2 MacBook Professional makes use of fewer NAND modules than its predecessor, leading to slower efficiency. Fashionable built-in SSDs generally make the most of a number of NAND chips for storage; the 512GB of storage within the M1 MacBook Professional was distributed throughout 4 128GB chips (beforehand confirmed in a teardown by {hardware} restore web site iFixit (opens in new tab)), whereas it seems like the brand new mannequin solely has two NAND chips – presumably 256GB every.

Evaluation: How severe an issue is that this, actually?

I’m going to exit on a limb right here and say that this isn’t truly the catastrophe some commentators have claimed it to be. Certain, the SSD pace drop is disappointing, but it surely’s not a distinction that the common consumer will discover. The twin-NAND 512GB SSD remains to be fairly speedy, to the purpose the place your web pace is extra more likely to be a bottleneck for downloads anyway.

Should you’re searching for a MacBook Professional deal, I can affirm that the 1TB and above configurations don’t appear to share the identical downside. I ought to definitely hope not, too; it’s $200/£200 to improve from the bottom 512GB drive, a hefty price contemplating which you can simply snag a superbly good half-terabyte of PC storage for underneath fifty bucks through our SSD offers web page.

An incredible SSD shouldn’t price a lot, and contemplating that it is a ‘Professional’ product with an already-high price ticket beginning at $1,999 (and already carries the notorious Apple Tax), it’s significantly offputting. This isn’t a primary offense, both; as Tom’s {Hardware} (opens in new tab) identified final yr, Apple pulled the identical stunt with the entry-level M2 MacBook Professional 13-inch.

Intriguingly, it seems just like the entry-level 256GB M2 Mac mini has the very same challenge, apparently utilizing a single NAND module as a substitute of the 2 chips discovered within the older M1 model. I’m truly keen to let this one slide, although – the 2023 Mac mini is $599/£629, a generational value drop that probably wouldn’t have been doable with out this SSD downgrade and marks the brand new mannequin out as maybe the best-value compact laptop available on the market proper now.

In the end, this shouldn’t be an enormous issue for many customers – though I’d personally contend that within the fashionable period, 1TB of storage needs to be the minimal – because the real-world influence shall be comparatively minor. If large file transfers are a frequent a part of your laptop computer routine, although, it is best to undoubtedly think about springing for the upgraded mannequin.