Entry-level 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro has significantly slower SSD than M1 models

If you opt for the base model of Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro with the company’s new M2 chip, you might end up being disappointed by the performance.

Tests have revealed that the entry-level 256GB model, priced at $1,299, have significantly slower SSDs than their M1-based counterparts. And the difference really is significant; benchmarks shows that that SSD read speeds are 50 percent slower in the latest models. Write speeds are also slower, although not quite so dramatically. So, is the M2 MacBook Pro worse than the M1 version?

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Tests performed by Max Tech show that the older 13-inch M1-based MacBook Pro with a 256GB has a read speed of 2,900 MB/s and a write speed of 2,215 MB/s. The newer version, which you would understandably expect to offer better performance, is in fact noticeably slower, with a read speed of 1,446 MB/s and a write speed of 1,463 MB/s.

You can check out the channel's findings in the video below:

So, what's the reason for the difference in performance? It seems to be down to the fact that while the M1-based MacBook Pro features two 128GB NAND chips that could operate in parallel, the new M2-based model has a single 256MB NAD chip.

The reduced performance only appears to affect the base-model of the new M2 MacBook Pro, with the performance of the 512GB model offering much faster read and write speeds.