This guy just did a huge Apple comparison with the new Air notebook computer, both with and without the solid state add-on drive. The verdict? The Air in general is slower than both the Macbook Pro and the Macbook, and the battery life is only average.
Photo by John BiehlerThe writer was optimistic that the solid state drive would be a good investment. Unfortunately though, it provided rather lackluster performance, and hardly increased battery life at all. I’ve had my own Macbook Pro for a long time, and most of my friends have Macbook’s. I’m purposefully holding off the Air because it looks totally overpriced for what it is. Plus, Leopard has been a pretty big burden for me on my Macbook Pro and iMac since upgrading. I’m anxiously awaiting the 10.5.2 update that will hopefully fix a lot of my problems.
Photo by John BiehlerFor friend John just got his Air in the mail the other day, and has so far been happy with it. Will he upgrade to the solid state drive at some point? Based on some other data, I’d recommend no:
The $1,300 question is whether the SSD is worth the extra cash. The answer seems to be no. I experienced only moderate gains in battery life and not very noticeable speed differences. The one major benefit of the SSD model is that it doesn’t cause the same types of slowdowns as the HDD model during times of high disk activity, and that’s certainly a huge plus. Speedy read times are great, too, but they are balanced out by pokey write times.
The main selling point for these drives was supposed to be power consumption, but with only a marginal improvement, it doesn’t sound too convincing. In fact, hard drive makers aren’t very worried about the threat of solid state drives:
Even if prices for SSDs do come down and capacities go up (which they undoubtedly will), traditional spinning disc drives will likely follow the same trend lines, which means the price differential will remain.
That’s why it’s no surprise that hard drive manufacturers like Seagate are still skeptical about consumers’ willingness to shell out more money simply for the privilege of having a slightly faster, more reliable solid-state drive with considerably less capacity.
Indeed, research from Gartner suggests the fastest growing segment of the laptop market will continue to be midsize and larger desktop-replacement models, almost all of which use 2.5-inch HDDs.
And while solid-state drives do offer superior power savings — an important metric for laptops — the exorbitant prices for the drives mean that their popularity in notebooks will be muted. [from here]
So is it worth the $1000+ price tag to add the solid state drive? Doesn’t look like it
Assuming I still have my Air in a few years time (way too soon to say – only had it a few days), my plan would be to upgrade the hard drive inside to a presumably much lower priced SSD drive. The one inside my eeePC is only 4gb and is probably the most expensive component in the $399 laptop.
For ‘normal’ activities, the Air’s 80gb hard drive, despite running at 4400 rpm is fine. The main purpose of the Air is to do ‘web based’ things like blog, surf, upload photos to Flickr, etc. but in a super lightweight form factor. It does this very easily.
When I had my MacMini, everything worked fine with it and it had the same speed hard drive inside. I decided to experiment one day and install OSX onto the Mini via an external, full size (3.5″ 7200 rpm) hard drive and the performance was noticeably improved over the stock internal.
It’s worth noting that Apple isn’t the only company selling a SSD for their sub notebooks. Dell, Toshiba and Sony all sell similarly priced SSD options so at least in the price point area, Apple is on par with the competition but I agree with your assessment that they are too costly for the benefits gained.
They look cool though 🙂
I just picked up my Macbook air and had to decide the SSD/normal HD question. I made the decision in the store (uneducated) and opted for the SSD. I was disappointed to read the the power consumption and performance were not what I was hoping for, but ultimately one of the major factors in my “justification” of the additional cost was reliability.
I chose a Macbook Air over a normal Macbook because of the “cool” factor, but also largely because I take my laptop with me everywhere. Portability is my #1 priority. I have owned PCs for many years and have experienced enough hard drive failures over time to appreciate that the hard drive is the most mechanical and least reliable component of any computer system (IMHO). Combining the fact that my ‘air will be going everywhere with me and that also means that it will be subjected to its share of bumps and abuse, having a reliable long term storage mechanism as part of the package is worth the cost to me.
It is interesting to recall that not to long ago IBM/Lenovo created a whole new feature within laptops to park the hard drive instantly when a drop was detected. It was a premium feature only available on their business line of notebooks.
SSD addresses that feature completely by removing the very requirement for it, and will ultimately offer better power consumption and better performance.
As such I continue my flag waving for the concept of SSD and will eagerly look for the faster more efficient devices as they become available. I also would note that I participated in the OLPC give one get one program and it to contains a SSD to improve reliability. If the HD manufacturers aren’t worried, they are either delusional, or plan to offer SSD themselves, at a profit, once the tide completes it’s inevitable swing in the direction of SSD
For now, To the people who come to me for a recommendation, I ask if they ever accidentally dropped their laptop while it was on, or in the process of shutting down? And if so, how much are they willing to spend for the peace of mind knowing that with a SSD that simply isn’t even a consideration? If it is worth $1000 for the next 1.5 years, then I recommend it. If not, don’t bother.
Thanks for the write up Robert. I guess my question is is the SSD drive really more reliable, or is it just perceived that way? I mean, digital camera memory sticks fail like any other components. Granted they aren’t as susceptible to shock as say a hard drive, but they are by no means perfect. I’ve actually dropped my Macbook Pro a few times from a few feet, and it’s still going strong.
But I understand your motivation for getting one. I just think Apple is heading down this elitist path that doesn’t necessarily benefit the consumer.