OWC Envoy Pro USB 3.0 External Enclosure for Solid State Drive

Product Information

These official results also show Gen 2 USB port speeds and the negative impact using a Gen 1 port has on that performance. Let’s cut directly to the chase, and say that we love the styling, the very high quality of the engineering and finish, its robustness, portability and solid performance. All those things are admirable, and we salute OWC for such single-minded design endeavours. When flash drive designers make something as small as the OWC Envoy Pro Mini, they either go with a switchblade concept where the blade retracts into the drive. Or, as in this case, a hinge is made to allow the drive to rotate and be inserted into the rest of the assembly. Lightning Fast: Advanced OWC Aura Pro SSD storage technology with TRIM support works with Thunderbolt to deliver the fastest and most reliable performance available in a portable drive For USB 3.2 Gen 2 connecting users, OWC makes a few less expensive options that are equally robust, and these deliver similar performance levels to the Envoy Pro FX on that interface.

But this isn’t the only caveat, as external speeds are dependent on the internal drive performance of the computer it is connected. As external SSDs go, the OWC Envoy Pro Mini isn’t anything spectacular in the performance stakes. If you want the best external drive performance, then either USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 or Thunderbolt technology is required. Here, the drive was about a second slower than others we've tested, but let's be real: Are you really going to notice? PCMark 8 The aluminum casing of the Envoy Pro SX has fins to help it shed the heat that large data transfers can generate. It’s a design that works — I transferred about 300GB of data onto the drive as rapidly as possible and it never got above slightly warm. Wide compatibility: The drive can be connected to a wide range of devices with Thunderbolt 3/4 or USB-C ports, such as the latest Mac, iPad Pro, and iPad Air models, as well as PCs and Microsoft Surface devices. There is also a USB-A adapter attached to the Thunderbolt cable included in the box.

In 4-thread performance, the Envoy Pro FX recorded 1.03GB/s read and 1.04GB/s write in 2MB sequential. In 2MB random, the OWC portable drive hit 975.4MB/s read and 1.04GB/s write, while 4K random performance showed 36,127 IOPS read and 72,037 IOPS write.

For those with the right ports, the Envoy Pro Elektron is fast by USB standards, but faster external drives exist for those that use Thunderbolt 3. But how did the drive handle our performance-testing regimen? Let's move onto the benchmarks... The Fastest Available? If you have Thunderbolt 3 ports or intend to add this functionality soon, then the Envoy Pro FX might well be worth your time and money. But in our testing, we never got above 1,000MB/s, either reading or writing. By selecting 0Fill mode of CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4 and using the highly optimistic Default mode, we only saw 928MB/s reading and 861MB/s writes.Where on each capacity, the read speed holds up well, on the 240GB model, the write performance is reduced to around just 1,145MB/s. If you work with big files, waiting for them to copy from your Mac to an SSD gets old. And it’s a waste of your valuable time.