New Macbook Air Sports Faster Samsung SSD As Compared To Older Shipments With Toshiba SSD

Ever since the new Macbook Air was launched back in October last year, it has undoubtedly been Apple's upcoming major revenue generator, at least in the notebook form factor. Originally, when the Macbook Air started shipping last year, it contained SSDs from Toshiba. However, it turns out that somewhere in between,
Apple has quietly made the shift to SSDs supplied by Samsung, which happens to be faster than the Toshiba SSDs.

Samsung SSDs found in newer shipments of the Macbook Air bear model number SM128C whereas the late 2010 Macbook Air shipments have the Toshiba solid state drives which bear model number TS128C. Now, an average joe may be least bothered about minimal changes of suppliers of merely part numbers, however, it turns out the shift from Toshiba to Samsung was made for a reason, which, the source explains:


"The interesting aspect is that the SM128C models provide quite a nice performance bump in at least one performance metric. Benchmarks posted by users show that the SM128C manages up to 260MB/s read and 210MB/s write speeds. In our tests (and corroborating what users have reported), the TS128C only offers speeds of up to 210MB/s read and 185MB/s write. The SM128C also supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ) while the TS128C does not. The performance figures match the figures of Samsung 470 Seriespretty well, which Samsung quotes as providing up to 250MB/s read and 220MB/s write. The Samsung 470 Series uses Samsung’s own controller with model number S3C29MAX01-Y340."

Do you think that Apple should have announced that it is making the shift from Toshiba to Samsung? Do those consumers, which bought the Macbook Air as soon as it came out, deserve some kind of compensation for the fact that albeit in a minor way, their Macbook Airs are already outdated? Share your thoughts with us, in the comments below