Apple’s MacBook Air update brings a surprise upgrade over the M2

When Apple released the new MacBook Air last week, it called out three key upgrades: the M3 chip, Wi-Fi 6E, and support for dual external displays. But now that people have gotten to use the new machines, a fourth upgrade has been discovered.

As discovered by Max Tech on YouTube, Apple has changed the configuration of the base model’s storage array to include two 128GB NAND chips rather than a single 256GB chip. That means the two drives can process data simultaneously, making for much faster speeds than the M2 model. In Max Tech’s testing, write speeds were more than 30 percent faster and read speeds nearly doubled that of the M2 model.

Apple originally offered dual chips with all M1 MacBook Air models but switched to a single chip for the entry-level 256GB models, presumably to save costs. That meant SSD speeds were significantly slower than the M1 model unless you opted to upgrade the storage. The same was true of the entry-level M2 Mac mini and MacBook Pros.

While most people won’t notice the difference in speed during normal tasks, it’s a welcome change, especially without a price increase. It also gives some buyers a reason to upgrade from the $999 M2 model to the M3 for just $100 more.