The problem with the storage chip in the MacBook Air with the M2 chip turned out to be brought by Apple to the MacBook Pro 14 M2 Pro, which is a slower storage speed.
As is known, even though the M2 chip is faster than the M1, the read and write speeds of the storage used in the MacBook Air M2 are slower than the MacBook Air M1.
This happens because Apple uses more storage chips on the MacBook Air M1, namely two 128GB NAND chips from Kioxia on the MacBook Air M1 and only one 256GB chip on the MacBook Air M2. This results in slower read and write speeds by almost half.
This also happens in the latest MacBook Pro 14 which uses the M2 Pro chip. As quoted from 9to5Mac, the MacBook Pro M1 Pro with 512GB of storage has four NAND chips, while the MacBook Pro M2 Pro, when disassembled, only shows two NAND chips.
The use of more chips makes the NAND chip speed higher, just like how a RAID 0 system works on a PC, which combines two or more storages into one in parallel.
Fortunately this speed drop is not as big as the MacBook Air M2 and M1, at least in terms of writing speed. From testing using the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test software, it can be seen that the write speed has dropped from 3,950 MB/s to 3,154 MB/s, while the read speed has dropped from 4,900 MB/s to 2,973 MB/s.
Keep in mind, the read and write speed on the MacBook Pro M2 Pro is still very high, but it's still not fast compared to its predecessor.
As previously reported, Apple promised that the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips would not only be faster, but also have unparalleled power efficiency. These two new chips are promised to have very high power efficiency and performance, with CPUs of up to 12 cores and GPUs of up to 19 cores (M2 Pro) or up to 32 cores (M2 Max).
"Only Apple has built a SoC (system on a chip-ed) like the M2 Pro and M2 Max. Both deliver great pro performance and the highest power efficiency in the industry," said Johny Srouji, SVP Hardware Technologies at Apple.
"Even with more powerful CPUs and GPUs, greater unified memory system support, and advanced media engines, the M2 Pro and M2 Max represent an extraordinary improvement on Apple Silicon," added Srouji in his official statement.