Apple MacBook Pro (2022) M2 Chip is Slower Than M1 Processor: Report

Apple had unveiled the new 13-inch MacBook Pro (2022) with the M2 chip during the company’s WWDC 2022 keynote. The new M2 chip powering the Apple laptop was claimed by the company to be an upgrade over its previous generation M1 chip. Now, two YouTubers have posted videos claiming otherwise. The new chip paired with 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM can be seen in the videos to be reading and writing data significantly slower than its predecessor. The YouTubers also opened the back panel of the laptops to find out why.

YouTuber Max Tech shared a video claiming that the new 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro (2022) powered by the latest M2 chip has significantly lower read and write data speeds compared to the previous generation Apple MacBook Pro with the M1 chip. The YouTuber tested the 256GB SSDs on both the laptops with the Blackmagicdesign Disk Speed Test that showed the Write Speed of the M2 chip of 1,463MB/s compared to 2,215MB/s SSD Write Speed of M1 chip. The Read Speed, on the other hand, on the M2 chip laptop was merely 1,446MB/s, while on the M1 chip it was a whopping 2,900MB/s.

Another YouTuber Created Tech shared similar results from both the laptops. After testing the Apple MacBook laptops, both the YouTubers then proceeded to find out why is the M2 chip’s SSD reading and writing speed lower than its predecessor. Both of them opened the rear panel of the laptops to compare the insides of the two. Both of them found that the 13-inch MacBook Pro (2022) with the M2 chip only had a single NAND flash storage chip. On the other hand, the previous generation model featured two NAND flash storage chips inside.

Since, these NAND flash storage chips act like a highway or lane for a user’s data to travel, the read and write process becomes quicker with multiple lanes. Therefore, a big reason for the drop in speed could be attributed to the lack of dual-NAND flash storage chips on the 13-inch MacBook Pro (2022) with M2 chip from Apple. The YouTubers claimed that this could be a move from the tech giant to reduce their costs.

Apple had announced the 13-inch MacBook Pro (2022) during the WWDC 2022 keynote. The laptop comes with an 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD.