Apple continues to use drives from different manufacturers in its 2014 models, including units from Samsung, Toshiba and SanDisk. This variability in brand performance was noticed years ago, when Apple started using both Toshiba and Samsung SSDs in its MacBook Air models. Macworld's testing of four machines (various combinations of 2013/2014 models at 11 and 13 inches) had included drives of two different capacities from three different manufacturers, making it difficult to determine the exact cause of the performance differences. In OWC's testing using Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, the new MacBook Air model with a 128 GB SanDisk SSD reported read/write speeds of 705/315 MBps, while the 2013 version also with a 128 GB SanDisk drive scored similarly with read/write speeds of 711/316 MBps.

Other World Computing (OWC) has now performed some apples-to-apples testing between 20 models with SanDisk SSDs, and has found that performance is nearly identical. A recent study by Macworld demonstrated rather dramatic differences in SSD read and write speeds between tested 20 models, but at the time it was unclear whether the poorer performance for the 2014 models was still simply due to drive brand variances or if there was something specific to the 2014 machines causing an overall degradation in performance. For many years, Apple has used different suppliers for the solid-state drives (SSDs) in its MacBook Air models, with drive performance varying among manufacturer brands.

Solid state drive for macbook air 2013