OWC unboxes, tears down the new MacBook Airs

When a new Mac or iOS device is released, one of the first things that tech bloggers wait for is the first teardown of that device. In this case, the devices were the new MacBook Airs announced yesterday and the company was OWC.  

So, what did the Other World Computing folks find in the new slender (but not as sleek as the new MacBook) laptops? With the 13-inch MacBook Air (AKA 13” 2015 MacBook Air7,2 SSD), the company not only did a teardown but also ran benchmarks on the solid-state drive (a four-lane PCIe SSD) to see just how fast it was. Running the QuickBench 4.0 suite — also Apple World Today’s favorite drive benchmarking tool — they found that the extended file tests came in at 1,388 MB/second read and 1,216 MB/second write. 

Now of course these are internal drives and don’t need to transfer data via Thunderbolt or USB, but as a comparison, let’s look at CalDigit’s T3 RAID. That’s a Thunderbolt 2 drive that topped tests at that defunct AOL Apple site and those extended file results came in at 552 MB/second read and 553 MB/second write. Yep, the internal SSD storage in the new 13-inch MBA is fast. 

If you’re into images of sleek new computers stripped of their dignity and laying open to inspection, you’ll love looking at the MacBook Air photos from OWC. One fascinating thing to remember is that just how small the system board for the new MacBook is compared to the one in the 11-inch MBA…

 Disclaimer: I also write for OWC’s blog on a number of topics.