Teardown Reveals New 13-Inch MacBook Air SSD is Nearly Twice as Fast as SSD in New 11-Inch MacBook Air

Apple on Monday refreshed its MacBook Air lineup, adding Broadwell chips and Intel 6000 graphics. Both models received the same processor updates, but the 13-inch MacBook Air got an extra boost — new PCIe-based flash storage that Apple says is “up to two times faster” than the flash storage used in the previous generation MacBook Air. The 11-inch MacBook Air did not receive the same flash storage update.

iFixit decided to test Apple’s “two times faster” claim by comparing SSD speeds between a new 11-inch MacBook Air and a new 13-inch MacBook Air, with results that suggest the SSD in the 13-inch MacBook Air is indeed nearly twice as fast as the SSD in the MacBook Air.

Average write speeds for the 11-inch MacBook Air using Black Magic’s Disk Speed Test were 315MB/s, while average read speeds were 668MB/s. The 13-inch MacBook Air saw average write speeds of 629.9MB/s and average read speeds of 1285.4MB/s.

An iFixit teardown of the 13-inch MacBook Air conducted this morning suggests the notebook is using Samsung flash memory with a Samsung controller. A teardown of the 11-inch MacBook Air, which does not feature the faster flash storage, was equipped with SanDisk flash memory and a Marvell controller. In comparison to the Samsung flash storage used in the previous-generation 13-inch MacBook Air, iFixit said “it’s definitely an update.”

The new 13-inch MacBook Air is available from Apple’s online and retail stores with prices that start at $999. The higher-end $1,199 model can be configured with up to 512GB of flash storage.