Oliver Haslam·

Don’t Buy The M2 MacBook Air With A 256GB SSD If You’re All About Performance

Apple’s M2 MacBook Air goes on sale tomorrow and the early embargo for reviews has finally lifted. While the machine has received largely positive reviews, there is one issue that we all saw coming.

Just like the M2 MacBook Pro that came before it, this new MacBook Air has a secret.

That secret is that the base 256GB model comes with a single NAND chip for storage, rather than the two 128GB parts that would offer the best performance. That’s the case because two chips can be written to and read from simultaneously, while that obviously isn’t possible when there is just a single chip.

Machines with more storage don’t suffer from this because they have a pair of NAND chips, again, just like the MacBook Air.

The Verge did get a response out of Apple when asked about the 256GB performance hit, although it’s less than telling.

Thanks to the performance increases of M2, the new MacBook Air and the 13-inch MacBook Pro are incredibly fast, even compared to Mac laptops with the powerful M1 chip. These new systems use a new higher density NAND that delivers 256GB storage using a single chip. While benchmarks of the 256GB SSD may show a difference compared to the previous generation, the performance of these M2 based systems for real world activities are even faster.

While it’s true that the M2 chip is faster than the M1, it’s also true that the storage in the M1 machines was faster than that in the M2 versions, at least at the base storage model. With that in mind, those looking for the best possible performance should upgrade beyond 256GB.

You may also like to check out:

You can follow us on Twitter, or Instagram, and even like our Facebook page to keep yourself updated on all the latest from Microsoft, Google, Apple, and the Web.