The beggar version of the M2 MacBook Pro hard drive is halved, basically saying goodbye to productivity

In 2007, Jobs changed the name of Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc., and shifted its focus from the Mac to mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad.

At that time, the Macintosh, which made the country for Apple, also retreated behind the scenes and faded away.

However, with the release of the M1 series of chips, while bringing the ultra-high energy efficiency ratio, it has also brought the Mac, which has fully turned to Arm in recent years, back to the center of the stage.

In this way, the Mac, which has opened a new era of Arm, has evoked the "Apple Computer" era that many people once had.

At the WWDC that ended this year, the M2, which arrived as expected, and the newly designed MacBook Air really stole the limelight of a series of software such as iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS 13.

After the meeting, many discussions were also focused on hardware. The M2, which adopts a new core design and new technology, completely allowed Apple computers to enter the Arm era.

Although the MacBook Air, the most expensive Air series in history, still uses a combination of 8GB+256GB, which lags behind Windows PCs at the same price, users who are on the sidelines are still discussing how to spend their limited budget on the "blade".

Is it to upgrade memory or SSD capacity? I believe this is also a problem that many Mac users struggle with during the purchase process.

Intimately, on Apple's official website, whether it is doubling the memory or doubling the storage, a uniform price increase of 1,500 yuan is adopted.

In Apple's measurement system, memory is as important as storage, and there is no high or low.

In the past, when I made Mac consumer recommendations, I preferred to double the memory with my limited budget. After all, the storage can be externally connected to the cloud, and the flexibility is very high. 1,500 yuan is enough to buy two 1TB high-speed mobile hard drives.

The memory that has been packaged on the motherboard for a long time is difficult to expand by reasonable means, let alone the unified memory architecture used in the M chip, which is even more difficult to expand.

However, the M2 MacBook Pro may completely change the focus of memory-first upgrades.

During our M2 MacBook Pro video testing, the M2 MacBook Pro was significantly slower than the M1 MacBook Pro when decompressing a 13GB zip (7z) archive containing small files, large files, and a clip project. .

In addition, YouTuber Max Tech directly used BlackMagic to test the read and write speeds of the standard 256GB M2 and M1 MacBook Pro hard drives, and found that the M2 MacBook Pro was half as slow.

The 512GB, 1TB version of the MacBook Pro is unaffected, on par with the M1 MacBook Pro.

The SSD speed of the original M1 MacBook Pro is not too fast, close to PCIe 3.0. If it is cut in half, it is really not worthy of the name of Pro.

At present, many Windows laptops have generally adopted the SSD of PCIe 4.0 standard in order to bring a better experience. The read and write speed of its hard drive has far exceeded the level of the M1 MacBook Pro.

I remember that at the MacBook Pro 14/16 conference last year, Apple directly marked on the Keynote that it had replaced the new device with a new SSD, and the storage speed could soar to 7.4GB/s.

In the follow-up real machine test (also BlackMagic), only the capacity of more than 4TB can achieve such a peak writing speed, the standard 512GB and 1TB high-end configuration write speeds are about 4600MB/s~5800MB/s, about It belongs to the level of high-speed PCIe 4.0.

When Windows notebooks were not yet popular for solid-state, MacBook Air/Pro opened the gap with high-speed solid-state drives.

In the M2 MacBook Pro 13 (256GB), its hard drive speed has already lagged behind Windows notebooks by a large margin, and in less than a decade, the feng shui has turned.

In order to find out why the M2 MacBook Pro's storage is slowing down, Max Tech and Create Tech disassembled it and compared it with the M1 MacBook Pro.

In the original SSD welding position, M2 uses only one NAND flash memory particle, while M1 uses two 128GB NAND flash memory particles.

Such an approach is most likely the reason for the significant slowdown in the storage of the M2 MacBook Pro.

The principle is actually similar to dual-channel and single-channel memory. More NAND storage particles have more channels, and the data throughput and speed are naturally higher.

The configuration of only one NAND flash memory particle is also the first to appear in MacBook Pro products.

In querying iFixiit's MacBook Air/Pro disassembly tutorial from 2016 to 2021, whether it is a 128GB entry-level version or a 1TB high-end version, the Mac will be equipped with at least two NAND flash memory particles on the motherboard to achieve normal and reasonable speed. .

Relatively speaking, the configuration of a single block of NAND flash memory particles is conducive to reducing a certain cost. It's just that for the MacBook Pro, which is not cheap, such savings may greatly affect the experience.

Today, the M2 MacBook Pro has a write speed of 1400MB/s, and in many light experiences, the perception may not be as obvious as the numbers.

However, the M2 MacBook Pro only has 8GB of memory. When the memory is full and the SSD is used as virtual memory, there will be a world of difference, which will greatly affect normal use.

In the test, whether exporting photos with Lightroom or exporting videos, the M2 MacBook Pro lags significantly, and even crashes directly when synthesizing HDR photos in Photoshop.

It is true that the M2 makes the MacBook Pro extremely competitive, but coupled with the low-speed storage that has been out of touch with the mainstream level, it is difficult to be worthy of a price close to 10,000 yuan.

At present, the storage speed reduction is limited to the standard 256GB M2 MacBook Pro, and the 512GB high-end version is not affected. Whether this is the case with the new MacBook Air, which will go on sale in July, is still unknown.

Friends who are ready to buy MacBook Air for the first time may wish to wait and see the first wave of feedback, or directly upgrade to 512GB capacity to avoid storage slowdown.

If you add the memory upgrade cost of 1,500 yuan, the starting price of the new MacBook Air will come directly to 12,499 yuan. It seems that the MacBook Pro 14 2021 is more fragrant.

After the M-chip era, in the low-end MacBook Air/Pro devices, M1 and M1 Pro have corresponding reduced-core versions, which can be understood as the i3, i5, and i7 of Apple's M chips.

Strictly speaking, such different configurations will not have a world of difference experience, nothing more than a gap of 85 to 95 points. The same goes for higher capacity storage (2TB, 4TB), the upper limit is raised.

This time, the storage speed of the M2 MacBook Pro is a drop in the experience, and the original basic model (8GB+256GB) experience of more than 75 points is directly lowered to below the pass line, and it is completely reduced to a high-end netbook, which is really inappropriate.

Whether the subsequent new MacBook Air is circumvented, or whether the subsequent MacBook Pro 13 will retain this configuration, can only wait for Apple's next move.

For ordinary users, it is recommended to temporarily avoid the M2 Mac with 256GB of storage at this stage.

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