MacBook Air Notebooks Get Faster SSDs, Luck of the Draw

It looks like Apple has quietly upgraded the SSDs used in the popular MacBook Air notebooks with new drives from Samsung that are significantly faster than the previous drives. Anandtech found that on some MacBook Air models, newer notebooks were using a new SSD instead of the Toshiba.

The new solid state drives are likely from Samsung and offer speedier read and write speeds. Anandtech put the new drives through the paces and found the following speed bumps.

MacBook Air SSD Comparison

AJA System Test: iSebas/DiskWhackTest

Model Read MB/s Write MB/s
TS128C 209.8 175.6
SM128C 261.1 209.6

 

What does this mean for MacBook Air owners and potential MacBook Air buyers? Unfortunately not much. While the speeds are faster, you can’t take your MacBook Air in for an upgrade and as Anandtech points out, when you buy a new MacBook Air you’re going to get whatever you get.

If you do want a faster SSD in your MacBook Air, or more memory than you can order from Apple, check out the OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express SSD upgrade kit which offers larger and faster MacBook Air SSDs. The kits claim to deliver a 68% increase in performance and come in sizes up to 360GB. Unfortunately with prices ranging from $499 to $1,179 you may want to just wait for Apple to offer a faster and larger SSD option or pick up a more affordable external hard drive.

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