There are plenty of people criticizing Apple’s newest MacBook Pro generation for a variety of reasons. But when it comes to performance, the laptop will blow past its predecessors and outperform most, if not all rivals. Sure, the 2016 MacBook Pro has some limitations when it comes to RAM and graphics. But on the other hand, it’s also got the fastest drives in the industry.
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Apple last year introduced a special SSD controller that helped it achieve faster data transfer speeds on the MacBook. The company does something similar with the iPhone as well.
SSD speed is something that can have a big impact on your computing experience, whether or not you realize it. Apple already bragged about significantly improved SSD performance during the unveiling event, and the first tests seem to confirm the company’s claims.
In its tests last year, ComputerWorld discovered that the “MacBook Pro with Retina display revealed it could pin the needle at more than 1.4Gbps for writes and more than 1.3Gbps for reads.” That’s 0.2Gbps slower than the theoretical maximums for both read and write speeds.
“The new MacBook Pro’s specs smoke its predecessor,” the site wrote. The 13-inch has read/write speeds of 3.1Gbps and 2.1Gbps, respectively. The 15-inch should offer even better write speeds, at 2.2Gbps. That’s something other laptops can’t achieve.
“With regard to PCIe, Apple has been a pioneer when it comes to PCIe/NVMe storage,” research vice president at IDC Jeff Janukowicz said, according to 9to5Mac. “They were the first PC company to broadly adopt it across its laptop portfolio while other companies today are still just using it in a very limited portion of their PC lineup.”
He further noted that Apple was first to use a PCIe/NVMe SSD in the 2015 12-inch MacBook, and competitors are likely to adopt similar solutions at some point in late 2017. Apple is, therefore, two years ahead of the curve in this regard.
An iFixit teardown already revealed that you can replace the SSD in the new MacBook Pro. But if you do, you’re likely going to miss out on Apple’s crazy-fast SSD speeds that are currently available only with the SSDs that ship inside its laptops.
