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Concept2

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 19, 2020
5
1
I have got a 2017 MBA with only 128GB of SSD-Capacity. The Plan is to upgrade the ssd.
what should I choose?
- OWC Aura Pro X2
-Transcend Jetdrive 850/855 or
-a adapter Solution m2-SSD

I did read some Reviews on all of them. I found some Problems as extremly high battery drain and high temperature (damage).

what are your experiences? Can you recommend a SSD?
 

Audit13

macrumors 604
Apr 19, 2017
6,816
1,810
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Every third-party drive is going to use more battery than the original Apple SSD because macOS does not support advanced power management with these drives.

Samsung drives tend to use more battery power and generate more heat than other drives.

Since the Air only has a PCIe 2.0 x 4 bus, getting a drive with really high read/write speeds is nice but the speeds will be limited by the bus limitations.

I have found that drives with lower read/write speeds do not always "feel" slower. I have used low-end NVMe drives (HP ex900, Intel 600p, Lexar nm600) in 2015 Airs and they feel no slower than the drives they replaced and battery life dropped by 10% to 15% which isn't bad.
 

Concept2

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 19, 2020
5
1
Thank you for your answer! I decided to buy a used but original SSD and do use a Jetdrive Lite 130 during the time I am waiting for an offer.
 

Audit13

macrumors 604
Apr 19, 2017
6,816
1,810
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
You are welcome.

The issue I have with buying a used Apple drive is deciding what to do with my existing drive. By using an adapter and a NVMe drive, the drive NVMe drive can be repurposed in another MacBook or Windows computer in the future and the 128 put back into the Air for resale, donation, etc.
 

mba2015

macrumors newbie
May 2, 2020
21
6
Thank you for your answer! I decided to buy a used but original SSD and do use a Jetdrive Lite 130 during the time I am waiting for an offer.

I have got a 2017 MBA with only 128GB of SSD-Capacity. The Plan is to upgrade the ssd.
what should I choose?
- OWC Aura Pro X2
-Transcend Jetdrive 850/855 or
-a adapter Solution m2-SSD

I did read some Reviews on all of them. I found some Problems as extremly high battery drain and high temperature (damage).

what are your experiences? Can you recommend a SSD?
Buying a used ssd drive is not in my opinion a good idea, because you do not know how it is (how much used). There is my thread in this forum about the power consumption of individual ssd disks.
For me, the main criterion for choosing an ssd drive is data security, energy consumption is also important; so you have to answer what is most important to you;)
 

Audit13

macrumors 604
Apr 19, 2017
6,816
1,810
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Buying a used ssd drive is not in my opinion a good idea, because you do not know how it is (how much used). There is my thread in this forum about the power consumption of individual ssd disks.
For me, the main criterion for choosing an ssd drive is data security, energy consumption is also important; so you have to answer what is most important to you;)

The Apple SSDs made by Samsung use MLC technology which is very durable in comparison to TLC and QLC.

There is no way to buy an Apple SSD other than used.

Any SSD (Apple or non-Apple) can fail at any time without warning. Anything important to me is backed up to Google Drive, One Drive, and my external hard drive.

Buying anything other than an Apple SSD is going to result in battery drain since macOS does not support advanced power management for a non-Apple drive.

The OWC and Transcend drives are NVMe drives with the proprietary Apple connector permanently attached. These drives do not behave any differently than using an adapter with a standard NVMe drive which can be re-used in another MacBook or Windows computers.
 
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