I’d have to fork over $400 for an 800MB/s CFExpress Type A card before my WiFi 5 connection became the problem.ĪirDrop is absolutely incredible. Even if I upgraded to a UHS-ii SD Card with a 300MB/s read speed, it’d STILL be my bottleneck. Holy crap, so it turns out the read speed of my SSD is my actual bottleneck when airdropping files from my iPad Pro to my M1 Mac. Since my 2018 iPad Pro is rocking Wi-Fi 5, I’m limited to 500 MB/s. Potential Bottleneck #3) Wi-Fi SpeedsĪccording to The Verge, the theoretical maximum of Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 are 500 MB/s and 1200 MB/s respectively. Absolutely incredible as the typical write speeds for an SSD are usually 500 MB/s at best (in 2020). AirDrop is another great way to transfer photos from your iPhone to Mac seamlessly. Or choose Go > AirDrop from the menu bar. Select AirDrop in the sidebar of a Finder window. Choose AirDrop from the sharing options listed. Or Control-click the file in the Finder, then choose Share from the shortcut menu. However, my M1 Mac has an incredibly fast SSD with write speeds of up to 2.5 GB/s. Open the file that you want to send, then click Share button in the app window. This is much more likely to be your bottleneck. Potential Bottleneck #2) Write Speed of the Receiving Device While a decent SSD will have a read speed of ~500+ MB/s, my SD Card only has a sustained read speed of 170 MB/S.įor me, the read speed of the card was definitely my bottleneck. However, I was reading from an SD Card plugged into my iPad Pro via a USB-C dongle. I initially thought read speeds were unlikely to be my bottleneck. Potential Bottleneck #1) Disk Read Speed of the Sending Device Im trying to set up AirDrop to send files between my macbook and my iPhone. This cuts your router out of the equation as a potential bottlenecks. IOS AirDrop for iPhone SE and MacBook Air.

Wait, what? How could it possibly transfer a 2 GB file so fast? What’s the Bottleneck with AirDrop?Īirdrop uses Bluetooth to establish a peer to peer Wi-Fi internet connection between your two Apple devices. The other day I needed to Airdrop a 2GB video clip from my 2018 iPad Pro to my 2020 M1 Macbook Air.

Airdrop macbook pro