So I uploaded a video recently
where I compared the brand new M2 MacBook Pro
against its predecessor, the M1 MacBook Pro.
But during testing, I noticed a really weird issue
with the SSD on the M2.
It was nowhere near as fast as the M1.
And this could have a massive impact
on the performance of M2 MacBook Pro base models.
So what could be the reason for this?
Is it just Apple being greedy?
Is it some secret plan to get you
to spend more money on upgrades
or was Apple forced to do this by external circumstances?
Well, I'm going to do a deep dive
into this topic
and see if we can figure it out.
First things first, let's run some SSD speed tests
to find out just how bad the M2 SSD is.
Starting with Blackmagic Disk Speed Test,
you can immediately see a massive difference in speeds.
The M2 is roughly twice as slow in read speeds.
On the AJA System Speed Test,
but this time with the disk cache disabled,
the write speeds seem about the same,
but the read speeds, again, are significantly worse.
So what the hell is going on here?
Isn't the M2 supposed to be the faster
and more improved clone of M1?
Well, to find out, let's open these two machines up
and have a look inside.
Taking a look at the M2, you can see
that there's only one NAND flash chip soldered on
with a big old empty space to the left.
So it seems
that Apple is using a single 256 gigabyte NAND flash chip
on these base model M2 MacBooks.
When I compared with the base model M1 MacBook Pro,
oh, look, there's a second chip!
It looks like the M1 is using two 128 gigabyte NAND chips
instead of one big 256 gigabyte chip, like the M2.
So I did some more digging
and read through some of my comments
and it looks like Max Tech also has only one NAND chip
on their M2 MacBook,
which basically confirms to me
that this is widespread across all M2 Pro base models.
So this begs the question,
why is having two smaller NAND chips actually faster
than having one big one?
Well, by using two of them, it allows each one to connect
to the M1 or M2 controller separately
and fill two buses in parallel.
No, not school buses.
I mean the communication system that transfers data
between components inside a computer.
Think of a bus as a data highway of sorts,
having two NAND chips using two separate buses
is like having two lanes instead of just one
on a highway.
Traffic or data will be able to flow much quicker
with two lanes.
So on the M1,
you are basically getting double the available bandwidth,
which results in a doubling of the read and write speeds.
Now, if you're familiar with RAID,
it's kind of like using RAID 0.
Although, Apple doesn't technically use RAID,
they have their own way of doing it.
As an extreme example,
here's my 16-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro
with a four terabyte SSD.
The speeds on this MacBook are insanely fast,
at least twice as fast as the M1.
And you can see why. Look at all those NAND chips.
So why is the SSD performance decrease
on the base model M2 MacBook Pro a bad thing?
Well, there are a couple of reasons why.
Number one, I don't really like the fact
that this is technically an upgraded M1 chip
but we are seeing decreased performance on the SSD.
It doesn't really make sense to me.
Seriously, if you check out the M1 versus M2 MacBook Pro
comparison video I made,
the M2 outperforms the M1 in every area.
Sometimes by a whopping 30%.
I'll link that video in case you want to check it out.
Another reason why these slower SSD speeds
might be a bad thing is
if you are simply reading and writing files
onto the SSD, right?
So if you are editing video or photo files
on the SSD
or if you're transferring on and off the SSD
to an external drive, for example,
all of that is going to be slower.
Also the slower speeds
are going to impact overall snappiness and speed
of the system due to swap memory.
Now, swap memory essentially makes your computer faster.
It's existed for a very long time and is actually used
on almost all operating systems,
including macOS, Linux, and also Windows.
Its purpose is to move processes and programs
that aren't currently being used out of physical memory,
which is your RAM,
and onto virtual memory,
which is essentially just temporarily writing
and then reading this data from your SSD.
Now, I have an entire video
on the subject of Mac SSDs
that goes into this in more detail,
which I will link.
But in a nutshell, if you have a base model MacBook
with only eight gigabytes of RAM,
this swap process is actually going to happen fairly often.
For example, when doing intensive work
like rendering or extreme multitasking,
the eight gigabytes of RAM
on the M2 gets maxed out straight away,
and I've seen the M2 need to use up to six gigabytes
of swap memory to cope with the workload
in worst-case scenarios.
And the speed of your SSD will have a big impact
on this process.
Swap memory uses a mixture
of sequential and random reads and writes,
and you likely won't notice a big difference
for the random stuff,
but you definitely will for sequential as you can see here.
Now, to be fair, the M2 is still more powerful
and has an increased unified memory bandwidth
when compared to M1.
So it's still probably faster
even with the slower SSD.
Also the M2 seems to be using LPDDR5 memory
instead of DDR4 on the M1.
So in general, the RAM is slightly faster on M2 as well
as you can see in this amorphous memory benchmark.
So I think that nerfing the SSD
is just such a weird performance bottleneck to put
on the system.
And it's a shame
because out of all the changes Apple made
from M1 to M2,
keeping the SSD the same as the previous generation
is literally the easiest one.
And it's even more of a shame
because it might actually have a negative impact
on the overall performance of the M2
at least on the 256 gigabyte base model.
Now, I'm going to play devil's advocate and defend Apple
for a second here
because there may actually be some legitimate reasons
why they went with one NAND flash memory chip
instead of two.
So first, let's be honest,
you can't do much with a 256 gigabyte SSD anyway.
If you are video or photo editing,
it's likely going to be on an external SSD,
same with storing and transferring large amounts of files.
And at the end of the day,
this is a base model MacBook we're talking about.
Most people aren't really going to be pushing the SSD
to its limits.
So they probably won't even notice the difference
in speed to begin with.
And if they are power users,
they'll likely get at least a 512 gigabyte SSD,
which as we can see from existing videos
on the M2 MacBook
is just as fast as the previous generation
because it's using 256 gigabyte NAND chips.
It's funny how Apple always sends out the upgraded models
for the early access reviews, isn't it?
I mean, if you look at all the big tech publications
like The Verge, for example,
they were actually sent upgraded 16 gigabyte RAM
and 512 gigabyte SSD M2 MacBook Pros.
It's almost as if Apple is trying
to make their new product look as good as possible.
Also, don't forget like I've mentioned in previous videos,
I mean, there is a massive global silicon
and chip shortage right now.
So it might just be that Apple simply cannot get their hands
on enough 128 gigabyte SSDs.
But what is often the case with corporations is
that they're just cost cutting.
Why buy 128 gigabyte SSDs and mix and match
when you can just bulk order millions of 256
or 512 gigabyte SSDs.
It just makes sense from a corporate point of view.
I like to think that there was an Apple engineer
that went to corporate one day
and asked, hey guys, should we continue
to use two NAND chips
on the M2 MacBook Pro,
and corporate just kind of going like, eh, nah,
we don't need that.
Just get rid of it.
And the engineer just kind of shrugs his shoulders
and just walks away.
So yeah, really interesting decision from Apple.
Like I said before,
I don't think it's going to have a massive impact
on most people's workflow.
I don't think you'll see a massive difference,
especially because that base model SSD is just so small
to begin with.
But what I think is going to be interesting is
seeing what Apple does with the new M2 MacBook Air.
And if they use the same one NAND chip strategy
for the base model M2 MacBook Airs.
But apart from that, guys, hopefully you enjoyed this video,
and I'll catch you in the next one.