Does the SSD downgrade on the 2023 MBP matter in my case?

[Leyf]

Hello, I'm on a brand new 2023 MBP 14" with a 512GB SSD, and I've been seeing a lot of articles complaining about the SSD downgrade. But does it really matter if I'm not doing any video editing or editing high resolution photos? I use it to watch a lot of content, browse the web, productivity apps and PhotoShop, but nothing too heavy or complex. I also occasionally play some casual indie games, and I'm thinking about using this machine for web dev and learning Swift.

The downgrade is a bummer of course, but does it actually affect every single user?

 

[Tagbert]

If you are not doing a lot of sequential reads and writes of large data, then you probably won’t notice the difference. You’ve got the 512GB which uses two chips. the 256GB is only one chip and is slower. You might be a little more likely to notice that but maybe not that either. Most processes are not i/o bound. These are still very fast SSDs.

 

[mr_jomo]

ArtisRight has created a set of very comprehensive videos on this topic. A starting point perhaps.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Hello, I'm on a brand new 2023 MBP 14" with a 512GB SSD, and I've been seeing a lot of articles complaining about the SSD downgrade. But does it really matter if I'm not doing any video editing or editing high resolution photos? I use it to watch a lot of content, browse the web, productivity apps and PhotoShop, but nothing too heavy or complex. I also occasionally play some casual indie games, and I'm thinking about using this machine for web dev and learning Swift.

The downgrade is a bummer of course, but does it actually affect every single user?

Someone please correct me if wrong but I thought this whole issue only applied to M2 Macs with 256GB drives, which use one chip where M1 256GB Macs used two chips.

The 14" M2 MBP is not available with 256GB so not an issue on your machine. It does apply to the 13" M2 MBP which has base spec 256GB.

 

[Longplays]

Hello, I'm on a brand new 2023 MBP 14" with a 512GB SSD, and I've been seeing a lot of articles complaining about the SSD downgrade. But does it really matter if I'm not doing any video editing or editing high resolution photos? I use it to watch a lot of content, browse the web, productivity apps and PhotoShop, but nothing too heavy or complex. I also occasionally play some casual indie games, and I'm thinking about using this machine for web dev and learning Swift.

The downgrade is a bummer of course, but does it actually affect every single user?

Likely no... it's a "nice to have".

 

[mr_jomo]

Correct - the MBP M2 14" base is a dual nand SSD setup, so no issue!

 

[Leyf]

That's a relief. Thank you all! So this problem is only seen in 256GB MacBooks? I tested my SSD yesterday and I had approximately 3400/2800 which isn't bad at all.

 

[heraldo_jones]

Hello, I'm on a brand new 2023 MBP 14" with a 512GB SSD, and I've been seeing a lot of articles complaining about the SSD downgrade. But does it really matter if I'm not doing any video editing or editing high resolution photos? I use it to watch a lot of content, browse the web, productivity apps and PhotoShop, but nothing too heavy or complex. I also occasionally play some casual indie games, and I'm thinking about using this machine for web dev and learning Swift.

The downgrade is a bummer of course, but does it actually affect every single user?

I have been doing very heavy Java development using a 8th gen Intel and SATA ssd without any issues, so you are good to go.

 

[chrfr]

That's a relief. Thank you all! So this problem is only seen in 256GB MacBooks? I tested my SSD yesterday and I had approximately 3400/2800 which isn't bad at all.

The 14" and 16" M2 Pro/M2 Max models with storage larger than 512GB are faster, but even the 512GB is faster than Intel models were. The M1 Pro/Max 512GB models are faster than M2 Pro/Max storage, however.
To expand a bit further: the M1 Pro 512GB models have 4x128GB storage. The M2 Pro 512GB models are 2x256GB.