Apple’s latest base MacBooks are a really
great value compared to last year, especially
the base MacBook Pro which now packs a powerful
quad-core processor, the Touch Bar, and the
T2 chip.
And what’s most impressive is that it’s
still priced at only $1300 and it performs
close to as well as the more expensive $1800
model.
The MacBook Air didn’t really change much
at all since last year, but it actually got
$100 cheaper.
So you may be asking, what’s the catch?
How was Apple able to offer so much more value
this year, and did they have to sacrifice
something?
The answer is, yes, they did, and it has to
do with the SSDs.
After some testing with the new 2019 MacBooks,
we’ve found that the storage transfer speeds
have actually gone down.
For example, the 2017 $1300 MacBook Pro with
the base 128GB SSD got around 2300 MB/s read
speed, compared to only around 1300 MB/s on
2019 base model.
That’s a 1,000 MB/s drop in speed.
And even if you upgrade to the 256GB SSD,
it’s still around 1000MB/s slower than the
256gig on the $1800 MacBook Pro, which shows
that only the base model has been affected.
And we see the same thing on the MacBook Air
as well.
This years’ model dropped by around 600
MB/s read speed when comparing two 128gig
models.
So we can see that the SSDs are definitely
slower this year, but the biggest question
that we have is, will the slower storage speeds
negatively impact the machines during day-to-day
use, and by how much?
And even though they’re slower, are they
still fast enough for most people?
Well, for starters, we compared the $1300
base MacBook Pros SSD to Dell’s brand new
XPS 13 laptop with a 256GB SSD, and we found
that the MacBook was still slightly faster
than the XPS.
And that’s the story for most Windows laptops,
packing SSDs that are slower than the ones
that come in MacBooks, even with the speeds
being slower this year!
And interestingly, if you jump to a 256GB
SSD or larger, the write speeds actually go
up significantly, and that’s because the
larger storage drives have more individual
NAND flash chips on them than on the 128GB
SSD, allowing them to work together to provide
faster write speeds.
But the point of this testing is that for
many years, Apple was putting in top-of-the-line
SSDs, which in my opinion, were overkill for
most people, especially on the base models.
So to find out if they old SSDs were actually
overkill, and if these new ones are still
fast enough, we decided to run a few tests
to see if the extra SSD speed actually makes
a noticeable difference in day-to-day tasks.
So we took the base 2019 MacBook Pro with
a 256GB SSD and compared it to the $1800 models
matching 256GB SSD, which has around 1,000
MBps faster read speeds at 2600 Mbps instead
of 1600 on the base Pro.
Our first test was a simple restart test,
which has to read and load up all of the system
files to start up, and the base MacBook Pro
was only a few seconds behind.
We then loaded up two identical Libraries
in Final Cut Pro X, and the $1800 MacBook
was again, just slightly faster.
We also opened up Lightroom Classic, and saw
exactly the same results as before.
So it seems like opening apps and starting
up macOS is just slightly faster going from
1600 to 2600MBps read speed, so in this case,
I’d definitely take higher performance instead
of faster SSD speeds.
So we moved on to seeing if we could max out
the SSD speeds during heavy workloads using
Final Cut Pro and Lightroom, and then opening
up the activity monitor to see how much data
was being read or written per second, and
throughout all of our testing, we didn’t
see it go higher than 87 MB/s for either read
or write speeds.
That’s nowhere near the maximum transfer
speeds of even the slower 2019 SSDs.
And the main reason we only saw a high of
87 MB/s is because the storage has to wait
on the processor and graphics to render and
export the files, which is what you’ll experience
while using basically every app out there.
We then hooked up one of the most popular
external SSDs, Samsung’s T5, and transferred
large file from it to each of the MacBook
Pros to see which one finished first, and
both took exactly the same time.
That’s because the MacBook SSDs can only
transfer data as fast as the connected device
can transfer data, and most external SSDs,
like the T5, are limited to only around 500
MBps read and write speeds.
And basically every flash drive and even UHS-II
SD card readers are even slower than that,
so you basically won’t see any difference
in transfer speeds unless you’re using a
top-of-the-line Thunderbolt 3 external SSD,
which are extremely expensive.
And if you’re willing to buy one of those,
and can actually put those high transfer speeds
to use, you most likely will be buying a higher-end
MacBook Pro with faster SSD speeds.
The point I’m trying to make is that most
people who are in the market for a budget-oriented
13” MacBook probably won’t be able to
max out the speed of even the slower SSDs
that come on the new base models.
And even though there is a small difference
in boot up speed and loading up apps, the
base SSDs are more than fast enough already.
So if I had to choose between having better
processor performance, extra features or a
cheaper price instead of having a faster SSD,
I would sacrifice the extra SSD speed every
single time.
We’ve gotta give props to Apple for making
this choice, because getting $100 off the
MacBook Air or getting much more performance
and features on the base MacBook Pro for the
same exact price is well worth the slower
SSD speeds that most people in that market
probably won’t notice anyway.
And due to the amount of users that commented
on our videos saying that they’re finally
gonna pick up a MacBook thanks to the awesome
value the new base models pack, we’d have
to say that the general public agrees with
us as well.
