While the MacBook Neo achieves a breakthrough $599 starting price, that of course comes with some compromises, and one of them is slower SSD speeds.
The Verge today showed the MacBook Neo had up to 8× slower sustained SSD read and write speeds in a benchmark test compared to the new MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. The site did not mention which tool it used to measure SSD speeds, but it was likely Blackmagic's Disk Speed Test or AmorphousDiskMark.
Here is a comparison of sustained SSD speeds, according to The Verge.
| Mac (Chip/Capacity) | Read Speeds | Write Speeds |
|---|---|---|
| MacBook Neo (A18 Pro/256GB) | 1,735 MB/s | 1,684 MB/s |
| MacBook Air (M1/512GB) | 3,422 MB/s | 3,274 MB/s |
| MacBook Air (M5/1TB) | 7,049 MB/s | 7,480 MB/s |
| MacBook Pro (M5 Max/4TB) | 13.6 GB/s | 17.8 GB/s |
The speeds for the M5 Max model came from The Verge's separate MacBook Pro review, and unfortunately storage capacities are not equal across the board.
With slower SSD speeds, transferring files to and from the MacBook Neo will take longer, but this is a non-issue for many customers. Even with a large 100 GB file, a transfer may take up to a minute with a MacBook Neo, rather than around 30 seconds with the latest MacBook Air, or 7-8 seconds with the latest MacBook Pro.
A slower SSD can also impact overall performance, since apps boot from the SSD, and because the MacBook Neo will temporarily use SSD space as virtual memory when the laptop's actual 8GB of RAM is fully used. But, the first MacBook Neo reviews have largely indicated that the laptop's performance is quite good nonetheless.
The average customer purchasing a MacBook Neo is probably not thinking about SSD speeds to begin with, and they will likely never notice any impact, but we have highlighted this information for customers who do care about this sort of thing.
MacBook Neo launches this Wednesday.
