Apple’s new MacBook Air may not be as good value as first thought.
According to testing from French site Consomac, the new machine has a slower SSD than the previous 2018 model, with a Blackmagic Disk Speed benchmarking test confirming the slowdown.
When testing the 2019 MacBook Air with 256GB of storage, write speeds of 1GB/s and read speeds of 1.3GB/s were measured.
The 2018 model, on the other hand, saw write speeds of 920MB/s and read speeds of 2GB/s, so whilst the write speeds are a little better than the previous generation, read speeds have suffered a 35 percent drop.
Comparing the entry-level 128GB 2019 MacBook Air saw write speeds of 500MB/s and read speeds of 1.3GB/s, similar to last year’s write and read performance.
The new MacBook Air, refreshed last week, includes a new True Tone display and a price drop, bringing it down from $1,199 to $1,099 for the first time.
Students are able to pick up the machine for just $999 with educational pricing and get a free pair of Beats wireless headphones in Apple’s annual Back to School promotional campaign.
Apple may have decided to slow down the SSD performance so it could reduce the price of the MacBook Air and, as noted by many technology journalists, the change in read and write speeds will probably not be noticeable to everyday users – particularly those who are upgrading from an older model than the 2018 MacBook Air.
Still, it’s disappointing to see that the SSD performance has suffered in the latest release, and it will be interesting to see whether this has an impact on everyday performance and indeed sales.
With the removal of the MacBook, users now have to choose between an underpowered MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro with its controversial Touch Bar technology.
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