What About Apple’s 512GB Solid State Drive (SSD)?

Readers have inquired about Apple’s 512GB SSD (a $1300 upgrade), offered with several Mac models.

You will love the Apple SSD— for a while. It’s a great honeymoon. And for casual use, you might never see an issue (congratulations if you have an extra $1300 to spend for casual use).

But since Apple provides no TRIM support, the only convenient way to restore the drive to its original speed once it starts degrading in performance is to use the DiskTester recondition command, or to boot up Windows and tweak the drive.

To be clear, I have not run the Apple SSD through my severe duty test, but it’s apparently the Samsung SSD, and I’m dubious that it can hold up (I’m not going to spend $1300 just so I can “toast” one). Or even that it performs as fast when brand-new. Anyone who thinks it will hold up is welcome to send their unit to me, and I will test it.

Solid state drives are definitely not equivalent (though all of them are expensive), many of them start slower, degrade quickly and some just fail outright. The Apple drive is not based on the Sandforce controller, and I have yet to see any non-Sandforce SSD that can hold up over time. Read my report.

For these reasons, the only SSDs I can recommend at this time are ones based on the Sandforce controller. My drives of choice, which I use in two Mac Pros and MacBook Pro are the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro and Mercury Extreme Pro RE.

See my in-depth of the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro.