The new 13-inch MacBook Pro launched on Friday.

If you are considering the new 13-inch MacBook Pro and faster SSD speeds are important to you, we recommend ordering a model with at least 512GB of storage (or better yet, wait for the new MacBook Air in July). Slower SSD speeds can impact common tasks such as transferring files to an external drive, and overall performance can also take a slight hit since Macs temporarily use SSD space as virtual memory when physical RAM is fully used. We've reached out to Apple for comment and will update this story if we hear back. It's unclear why the new base model 13-inch MacBook Pro is only equipped with a single NAND chip, but costs and/or supply constraints are two possible factors. This difference likely explains why the new model has a slower SSD, as multiple NAND chips allows for faster speeds in parallel. Yuryev disassembled the new 13-inch MacBook Pro and discovered that the 256GB model is equipped with only a single NAND flash storage chip, whereas the previous model has two NAND chips that are likely 128GB each. YouTube channels such as Max Tech and Created Tech tested the 256GB model with Blackmagic's Disk Speed Test app and found that the SSD's read and write speeds are both around 1,450 MB/s, which is around 50% slower reading and around 30% slower writing compared to the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 chip and 256GB of storage.ĭisk Speed Test app numbers shared by Max Yuryev of Max Tech: Following the launch of Apple's new 13-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 chip, it has been discovered that the $1,299 base model with 256GB of storage has significantly slower SSD read/write speeds compared to the equivalent previous-generation model.

Ssd hard disk for macbook pro