Hands on: The 2019 MacBook Air is a bargain, but SSD speeds fall

2»

Comments

  • Reply 21 of 37
    matrix077 said:
    chasm said:
    MisterKit said:
    It may very well be that the average MacBook Air owner would not notice the difference with this reduction in SSD read speed. There are some people who might notice a difference. Maybe a person takes a new Air on the road and wants to edit/mix some Logic Pro projects. That person should have bought a PRO if he wanted to work with PRO apps. That person is a bit stupid to expect PRO performance from an AIR. It would be interesting to hear an explanation from Apple as to why this decision was made.
    I would have thought it obvious: slower SSDs cost less to use. My understanding is that SSDs are like RAM when it comes to pricing: all RAM of a given class is the same -- the price varies by how far they got before failing the higher-speed quality tests. It would seem to me (though I could be wrong) that this same principle applies to SSD chips.

    Apple made a decision with the Air, figuring SSD performance wasn’t as important.  They may also have put in a “less” reliable SSD figuring the Air would see a lower workload.  We obviously don’t have Apple's breakdown, but we can figure most SSD’s will fail outside of the warranty period/system life.  I’m going to assume the Air’s resell value will or should decline.  Having the SSD soldered on is...unfortunate.


    Do you have any concrete proof of this? My 2011 MBA is still going strong and I haven’t experience noticeably SSD slow down.
    I think you're focusing on the wrong part of the sentence.  He's saying that most SSDs won't fail for a long time, so don't worry about it.  Everything fails at some point.
    gatorguywatto_cobra
  • Reply 22 of 37
    neilmneilm Posts: 985member
    I just bought a 2019 rMBA this week for a new hire at the office, and have been setting it up. I always used to buy the old MBA for general use (sales, customer service, admin, etc.), but switched to the non-TB rMBP when the new style MBP came out in 2016. We continue to buy the TB rMBP for more demanding uses, especially now that they have a quad core processor. I haven't counted recently, but we must have around 20 Mac laptops of various vintages.

    Testing the 2019 rMBA with BlackMagic I'm seeing near identical read/write results at about 1320/1280 MBps, with ±25 MBps variability between test runs. Note that this rMBA is optioned to 16/512GB, so will likely score better than models with lesser storage.

    Overall this 2019 rMBA feels plenty, err, snappy.
    MisterKitchiawatto_cobra
  • Reply 23 of 37
    lewchenkolewchenko Posts: 122member
    I almost bought a 2018 Air but 2 things put me off ... keyboard and the dimness of the screen (very noticeable next to the MacBook Pro ... I had them side by side in the store and decided to walk away)

    In the 2019 model .. 

    Is the true tone screen any brighter ? This article didn’t mention this aspect unless I missed it. 

    keyboard ... might or might not be much better. Hard to tell. My gut says still a risk until they get rid of the butterfly approach. 

    Disappointing about the SSD. Leaves a sour taste in the mouth that Apple screwed you a little to maintain margins. (Even if a small real world difference)

    Apple’s price for the 256GB vs 128GB is yet again , a slap in the face. 

    Probably seems relatively expensive compared to the base Mac book pro now considering the processor  hasn’t been upgraded from its low power 2 core model. 

    Remember these are are still over a grand , so hardly “budget” models. Just cheaper than the pro range. Still feels like they should be cheaper for the tech you are being given. 

  • Reply 24 of 37
    zimmiezimmie Posts: 651member
    MisterKit said:
    It may very well be that the average MacBook Air owner would not notice the difference with this reduction in SSD read speed. There are some people who might notice a difference. Maybe a person takes a new Air on the road and wants to edit/mix some Logic Pro projects. This person is going to hit the wall sooner. Maybe there is enough headroom. Maybe not. It is just a puzzling situation when a spec jumps backwards like this. 1700MB/s down to 1200MB/s is almost a one third reduction. It would be interesting to hear an explanation from Apple as to why this decision was made.
    Funny you should say a 1/3 reduction. The 2018 MacBook Air had three 43 GB flash chips for 129 GB total. I bet the 128 GB 2019 is two chips. Further, I think they've cut the internals to only have two pad grids for flash. This would explain the weird 1.5 TB max capacity of the 2018 model dropping to 1 TB max capacity of the 2019 model. A teardown would confirm, but this is almost certainly what's going on.
    MisterKitwatto_cobra
  • Reply 25 of 37
    lorin schultzlorin schultz Posts: 2,771member
    When the latest Mac mini came out there was some discussion around how Apple maybe didn’t need to use the fastest storage on the planet in that model, that maybe the value proposition for that model would be better served with slower and less expensive storage. The rationale was that even “slower” SSD storage is still really, really fast, and certain machines may benefit more from cost control than absolute state-of-the-art storage, particularly when the rest of the machine (CPU, GPU, display) is less than top-of-the-line anyway.

    If the choice to use slower storage in the Air results in lower cost, I think it’s an excellent trade-off.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 26 of 37
    neilmneilm Posts: 985member
    lewchenko said:
    I almost bought a 2018 Air but 2 things put me off ... keyboard and the dimness of the screen (very noticeable next to the MacBook Pro ... I had them side by side in the store and decided to walk away)

    In the 2019 model .. 

    Is the true tone screen any brighter ? This article didn’t mention this aspect unless I missed it. 

    keyboard ... might or might not be much better. Hard to tell. My gut says still a risk until they get rid of the butterfly approach. 

    Disappointing about the SSD. Leaves a sour taste in the mouth that Apple screwed you a little to maintain margins. (Even if a small real world difference)

    Apple’s price for the 256GB vs 128GB is yet again , a slap in the face. 

    Probably seems relatively expensive compared to the base Mac book pro now considering the processor  hasn’t been upgraded from its low power 2 core model. 

    Remember these are are still over a grand , so hardly “budget” models. Just cheaper than the pro range. Still feels like they should be cheaper for the tech you are being given. 

    The rMBA screen is spec'd as dimmer than the rMBP, but it's easily bright enough for most uses.

    There are few uses for which having the fastest possible SSD matters, and none in the market the rMBA is intended for. Yes it's measurable (see my previous post), but for the user it's the difference between instantaneous and even more instantaneous. For comparison, my own 2016 rMBP 3.1 GHz/16GB/1TB tests at about 1850/2350 MBps.

    We buy new laptops when we need to have new laptops, so for me there's no point in spending time worrying about future keyboard revisions and the like. That said, I'll be happy when Apple's rumored totally redesigned keyboard sees the light of day.
    edited July 2019 watto_cobra
  • Reply 27 of 37
    lorin schultzlorin schultz Posts: 2,771member
    neilm said:
    […] I'll be happy when Apple's rumored totally redesigned keyboard sees the light of day.
    You may or may not be happy. Remember, in 2015 the butterfly keyboard was a total redesign and look how that worked out!

     :p 
    MplsP
  • Reply 28 of 37
    GeorgeBMacGeorgeBMac Posts: 11,421member
    "None of this changes the elephant in the room, that we just don't yet know if the improvements make any difference on reliability."

    The other elephant in the room is that nobody can provide any numbers on what standard keyboard "reliability" consists of within the laptop industry as a whole. Not only do people not know what the overall repair numbers are for Apple with the butterfly mechanism, but there aren't any numbers for their competitors that use scissor mechanisms either. 
    For me, standard is:   The keyboard on my 13 year old Lenovo Thinkpad is still excellent -- better than the newest keyboard on any MacBook.   But, if it does fail, I can replace it in about 10 minutes for about $40.

    That's my standard.
  • Reply 29 of 37
    ClarusClarus Posts: 48member
    I wonder if the addition of the T2 chip affects this. Encryption on the fly could be the reason for the reduced write speeds.
    What you're wondering about is actually the opposite of what has happened.

    On older Macs without the T2 chip, only one component can encrypt/decrypt: The CPU. If you need the CPU for something else, it can be tied up by encryption. I would encrypt hard drives and it would tell me how many hours it would take to finish. It was always quite a few hours.

    On newer Macs with the T2 chip, encryption/decryption can be handed off to the T2 chip. This has resulted in fast background encryption plus zero load on the CPU, which no longer has to be concerned with encryption. With the T2 chip, volume encryption is basically painless now.

    So the addition of the T2 chip did affect encryption. It made it much, much faster and easier!
    SoliGeorgeBMacwatto_cobra
  • Reply 30 of 37
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    Clarus said:
    I wonder if the addition of the T2 chip affects this. Encryption on the fly could be the reason for the reduced write speeds.
    What you're wondering about is actually the opposite of what has happened.

    On older Macs without the T2 chip, only one component can encrypt/decrypt: The CPU. If you need the CPU for something else, it can be tied up by encryption. I would encrypt hard drives and it would tell me how many hours it would take to finish. It was always quite a few hours.

    On newer Macs with the T2 chip, encryption/decryption can be handed off to the T2 chip. This has resulted in fast background encryption plus zero load on the CPU, which no longer has to be concerned with encryption. With the T2 chip, volume encryption is basically painless now.

    So the addition of the T2 chip did affect encryption. It made it much, much faster and easier!
    That is the best news I've heard and it's kind of pushing me toward updating my headless Mac mini that is connected to a large capacity RAID.
  • Reply 31 of 37
    ClarusClarus Posts: 48member
    Soli said:
    That is the best news I've heard and it's kind of pushing me toward updating my headless Mac mini that is connected to a large capacity RAID.
    I should clarify that I am not sure how much the T2 helps with external drives. It might help somewhat, but maybe not as much as with the superfast internal storage.

    My doubts come from what Apple says:
    Data on the built-in, solid-state drive (SSD) is encrypted using a hardware-accelerated AES engine built into the T2 chip.
    Apple specifically says built-in, but the tech note is not specific about how much T2 helps with external drives. I'd like to think that it is still faster, but it sounds like it may not be integrated quite as much with external drives. Has anyone measured this?

    What I would like that to mean is that T2 hardware-accelerated encryption also benefits external drives (subject to their read/write speeds of course), but only the built-in storage is encrypted by default. Because FileVault on external drives still needs to be manually enabled.
    edited July 2019 Soliwatto_cobra
  • Reply 32 of 37
    MplsPMplsP Posts: 3,911member
    I don’t see a problem with this - the MBA is not a ‘pro’ machine. If people are going to be doing video editing and other data-intensive tasks that require reading/writing large amounts of data then a MBP is a better machine. As others have stated, faster SSDs require faster chips and are more expensive. It doesn't Make sense to pay for a faster SSD in a machine where virtually no one will notice or appreciate the difference.

    What I would really like to see is a 15” MBA. There’s a significant number of people who don’t need a ‘power’ machine but would like or need a 15” screen. the only way to get this with a MacBook currently is to pay $2400+. The 15” MBP is a good machine (except the keyboard) but much more powerful than most people need and much more expensive than most people can afford. It gets hard to justify spending $1000 more just to stay with Apple.
  • Reply 33 of 37
    bbhbbh Posts: 134member
    I have a mid 2012 Air that I use as a desktop backup. I upgraded the SSD to 480GB with a kit from OWC. It was unbelievably easy. Unscrew the back case and voila, everything is there. The RAM is a paltry 4GB (really.... the base config, apparently). If it could be upgraded (it can't...soldered in..), it would still be a competitive machine.

    One regular, consumer grade app at a time and it works just fine.

    I think a new Air, with 512SSD and 16GB Ram would be a decent machine.
    GeorgeBMac
  • Reply 34 of 37
    DuhSesameDuhSesame Posts: 1,278member
    chasm said:
    MisterKit said:
    It may very well be that the average MacBook Air owner would not notice the difference with this reduction in SSD read speed. There are some people who might notice a difference. Maybe a person takes a new Air on the road and wants to edit/mix some Logic Pro projects. That person should have bought a PRO if he wanted to work with PRO apps. That person is a bit stupid to expect PRO performance from an AIR. It would be interesting to hear an explanation from Apple as to why this decision was made.
    I would have thought it obvious: slower SSDs cost less to use. My understanding is that SSDs are like RAM when it comes to pricing: all RAM of a given class is the same -- the price varies by how far they got before failing the higher-speed quality tests. It would seem to me (though I could be wrong) that this same principle applies to SSD chips.
    Not all RAM and SSD’s are created equal, someone sold you some BS on that one... likely to give you a lesser product at the same price.

    Reliability/performance varies considerably between models and between manufacturers, that’s why everyone is addicted to speed tests.

    Apple made a decision with the Air, figuring SSD performance wasn’t as important.  They may also have put in a “less” reliable SSD figuring the Air would see a lower workload.  We obviously don’t have Apple's breakdown, but we can figure most SSD’s will fail outside of the warranty period/system life.  I’m going to assume the Air’s resell value will or should decline.  Having the SSD soldered on is...unfortunate.

    As for “slower SSD’s cost less to use” if it’s true, it’s not significant.  They’re not mechanical like in the old days, where they needed to spin up and down.  


    RAM chips are essential to the machine so they have to work reliably regardless soldered or slotted.  The reason people are interested in speed tests are simply asking... speeds, but not every RAM chips overclocked well.

    That said, your soldered NAND chips have to work reliably too.  Smaller NANDs can be slower, but Apple could also optimize them differently.  Configurations could be load on the T2 chips to set the “balance point” in each model, or cutting down PCIe lanes on the more “power-efficient” models.
  • Reply 35 of 37
    DuhSesameDuhSesame Posts: 1,278member
    I wonder if the addition of the T2 chip affects this. Encryption on the fly could be the reason for the reduced write speeds.
    The 2018 model also had the T2.
    I tried to search for 1TB performance on google but no luck, so I wonder if you guys at AI would test it out.

    thanks
  • Reply 36 of 37
    DuhSesameDuhSesame Posts: 1,278member
    Well there you go, I got mine and the speed are 1225/1520.  Not as fast as 2018, but still decent, probably equivalent to three SATA III in RAID.
    The highest average I ever hit was 1550/1225.


    edited August 2019
  • Reply 37 of 37
    DuhSesameDuhSesame Posts: 1,278member
    Well, it got me thinking whether Apple trades read speed for writes.  Usually, the reads are faster than writes and that also holds true for 2018 models.
    edited August 2019
Sign In or Register to comment.