Is the SSD in Apple M2 MacBook Pro (2022) slower than M1 MacBook Pro?

Apple recently launched the 13-inch MacBook Pro with its latest M2 chip. The notebook is already available to purchase across the globe and some early customers have got their hands on it as well. However, a video on YouTube suggests that the SSD on the M2 MacBook Pro is slower than that on its predecessor. What is this all about? Let's find out. 

Apple M2 MacBook Pro scores less in the Blackmagicdesign disk speed test

According to new technology YouTuber Max Tech, the write speed of the SSD on the M2 MacBook Pro (2022) comes out to be 1,463 MB/s, against 2,215 MB/s on the SSD in M1 MacBook Pro. The difference is even higher when comparing the read speed of both notebooks. The channel reports that the M2 MacBook Pro (2022) has a read speed of 1,446 MB/s, which is almost half the read speed of the M1 MacBook Pro at 2,900MB/s.

Later in the video, Max Tech opens the M2 MacBook Pro by removing the bottom panel, only to find out the reason behind a slower SSD performance. Turns out, Apple provided two storage chips on the M1 MacBook Pro, which act together to provide almost double the read and write speed. However, on the newer version, the company has cut corners as it provided a single storage chip, causing the read and write speed to fall. 

Naturally, when a company launches a new product, customers expect it to be better than its predecessor. Here, Apple seems to have downgraded the SSD performance on its latest M2 MacBook Pro. To provide a better idea, while the writing speed of the SSD on the M2 MacBook Pro (2022) is about 35% less than that on the M1 MacBook Pro, the reading speed is 50% less. Fortunately, this does not have a significant impact on the overall performance of the M2 MacBook Pro (2022).

Max Tech also runs Geekbench on both laptops and finds out that M2 MacBook Pro (2022) is better. In the single-core CPU test, the M1 MacBook Pro scores 1,727 points while the newer M2 MacBook Pro scores 1,937 points, which is a 12% improvement. On the multi-core CPU test, the M1 MacBook Pro scores 7,649 points while the M2 MacBook Pro scores 8,967 points, which is a 17% improvement.