Give your old MacBook a serious boost the cheap and easy way

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The Aura Pro X2 offers an easy and affordable way to upgrade your 2013 or older Mac to the latest SSD specs.
The Aura Pro X2 offers an easy and affordable way to upgrade your 2013 or older Mac to the latest SSD specs.
Photo: OWC

This post is presented by OWC.

New Macs are reliably cutting-edge when they first hit shelves. But as time goes by, Cupertino’s products, like any other, move toward obsolescence. Luckily, boosting your Mac’s performance — and extending its useful life — can be a cinch.

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The new Aura Pro X2 solid state drive from Other World Computing is a solid choice if you want to breath new life into your old Apple laptop. And this easy DIY upgrade costs far less than buying a whole new machine.

Enhance Mac performance and lifespan

By upgrading your Mac with this SSD, you can boost its capacity and speed in one fell swoop. OWC’s third aftermarket storage upgrade for Apple’s custom SSD format, the Aura Pro X2 is compatible with 2013-2015 MacBook Pros and 2013-2017 MacBook Airs.

The technical details look pretty impressive. OWC’s drives come in capacities up to 2TB, with crazy-fast read speeds of 3,200MB/s and write speeds up to 2,400MB/s. That’s up to 16x more storage, and up to double the speed of the stock SSD.

The Aura Pro X2 includes a Silicon Motion controller that enables performance and power efficiency competitive with the latest aftermarket SSDs. It’s also the first 2TB SSD that comes in Apple’s proprietary form factor.

Aura Pro X2: Easy Mac SSD upgrade

Aura Pro X2 SSD brings 2013-2015 MacBook Pros or 2013-2017 MacBook Airs to modern specs in about 15 minutes.
An Aura Pro X2 boosts 2013-2015 MacBook Pros or 2013-2017 MacBook Airs to modern specs in about 15 minutes.
Photo: OWC

Even for the less-than-handy among us, installation is easy. It takes about 15 minutes, assuming you own the right tools. (If you don’t, you can get an installation kit that includes a heat sink, the Envoy Pro USB enclosure that the Aura Pro X2 replaces, plus the pentalobe and Torx screwdrivers you’ll need to perform the upgrade. It only costs about $20.)

To further ease installation, you can get guidance from OWC’s step-by-step video tutorials. If you hit a snag, there’s 24/7 support. The Aura Pro X2 also comes with a five-year limited warranty.

Refresh your Mac

In other words, this a low-risk proposition for giving your older Mac laptop — the one with the ports you know, love and depend upon — a welcome injection of speed and storage space.

Considering how critical the drive is to lifespan and performance, this is basically an opportunity to give your Mac a new lease on life.

Buy from: Other World Computing

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