Apple released the new M3 MacBook Air this week, with faster performance, Wi-Fi 6E, and support for dual external displays. As it turns out, Apple also addressed another problem that plagued the previous-generation base model MacBook Air: SSD storage speeds.
The backstory here is that base model M2 MacBook Air with 256GB of storage offered slower SSD speeds than higher-tier configurations. This was due to the fact that the base model used one 256GB storage chip, rather than two 128GB storage chips. It was a regression from the base M1 MacBook Air, which used two 128GB storage chips.
As first spotted by our friend Gregory McFadden on Twitter, the new M3 MacBook Air offers significantly faster SSD speeds than the M2 MacBook Air before it. A teardown performed by Max Tech on YouTube confirms that this is because Apple is now using two 128GB storage chips for the base model MacBook Air, rather than one single 256GB module.
As such, the M3 MacBook Air’s two 128GB NAND chips can process tasks in parallel, significantly increasing data transfer speeds.
Testing performed by Max Tech revealed that the M3 MacBook Air can hit write speeds of 2108 MB/s, up from the base M2 MacBook Air’s speeds of 1584 MB/s. For read speeds, the M2 MacBook Air hit 1576 MB/s, while the M3 MacBook Air hit 2880 MB/s.
This suggests that the M3 MacBook Air features SSD write speeds that are roughly 33% faster and read speeds that are around 82% faster. These speeds match and sometimes exceed the speeds of the M1 MacBook Air.
