Apple's 2019 256GB MacBook Air Includes Slower SSD Than 2018 Model

The 2019 MacBook Air, refreshed last week, appears to have a slower SSD than the 2018 ‌MacBook Air‌, according to testing by French site Consomac. Using testing with the Blackmagic Disk Speed benchmarking test, the site found that the read speeds of the new SSD are lower.

A test of the 2019 ‌MacBook Air‌ with 256GB of storage demonstrated write speeds of 1GB/s and read speeds of 1.3GB/s. An equivalent model released in 2018 featured write speeds of 920MB/s and read speeds of 2GB/s. While write speeds are on par with the older machine (and are even slightly better), read speeds have dropped 35 percent.

Consomac also saw write speeds of 500MB/s in the 128GB 2019 ‌MacBook Air‌ and read speeds of 1.3GB/s, but this is similar to the performance of the 128GB 2018 ‌MacBook Air‌ as that machine also featured large differences between read and write performance. Higher capacity SSDs were not tested, but may display the same slight decline in performance.

The 2019 ‌MacBook Air‌ features an updated True Tone display and a price drop, starting at $1,099 instead of $1,199. Students are able to get the new machine even cheaper, with the ‌MacBook Air‌ now priced at $999 with educational pricing.

It's possible Apple went with slower SSD performance in order to drop the ‌MacBook Air‌'s price to a more affordable level, and it's not a change that most ‌MacBook Air‌ users are likely to notice in day to day usage of the machine, especially those upgrading from a much older model.