OWC Envoy Pro mini review: Enough speed in a small package

Exterior storage for the Mac and iPad Professional can take a couple of varieties, together with the thumb drive and the full-blown exterior SSD in an enclosure. Whereas the previous is often smaller, the latter typically presents extra by way of capability and pace.

Launched in Could 2022, the OWC Envoy Professional mini is clearly a double-ended flash drive. However, due to design and engineering selections, it approaches the efficiency of a bigger exterior SSD.

OWC is understood for creating exterior storage gadgets, and this isn’t its first rodeo with thumb drives, not to mention the Envoy Professional mini itself. Fairly than being a model new product, it is really a refresh of a product that OWC has already bought for a couple of years.

The earlier iteration of the Envoy Professional mini was an easier affair — it was only a quick USB-A flash drive in an aluminum field. For the 2022 replace, OWC determined to make fairly a couple of modifications.

For a begin, it is a drive made with an aluminum housing, giving it a premium really feel, in addition to serving to with warmth dissipation. It is also compact at 3.1 inches lengthy, 0.7 inches extensive, and 0.4 inches tall, and fairly light-weight at 0.9 ounces.

The design has modified radically over its predecessor by providing two completely different connections in a single gadget. One finish has a tethered cap hiding a USB-C connection, whereas one other part can pull out and twist to indicate the native 10 gigabit per second USB 3.2 sort A connector, pivoting on a visual screw inside a slot.

This second part has a textured sample on the perimeters for grip, which is able to assist each with twisting and usually carrying across the drive itself. On one aspect, a lanyard might be linked — and one is included.

Using two USB connectors means it might probably provide loads of connectivity choices to customers. Whereas the USB 3.2 Gen 2 Sort-C could possibly be used with USB-C and Thunderbolt gadgets, the USB 3.2 Gen 2 Sort-A permits it to work with older {hardware} that hasn’t converted to the newer connections.

Plugged in, it seems to be like an everyday thumb drive.

On the standard spacing supplied on the MacBook Professional, you possibly can match it, and a standard-width Thunderbolt cable, adjoining. It is a tight match, nevertheless it works. For essentially the most half, we suggest not doing what you see above, in the event you can keep away from it, as removing can dislodge that different cable pretty simply.

In line with OWC, the drive protecting the whole lot from newer and older Macs, PCs, servers, notebooks, and different {hardware} launched over the past 15 years.

That assist contains Macs operating Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and later, in addition to Home windows PCs operating Home windows 7, and techniques operating Linux, Chrome OS, and iPadOS. On the latter, you possibly can join it to a USB-C iPad Professional operating iPadOS 13 or later.

It is also doable to set the drive to be bootable, making it a terrific carry-around possibility for booting into your personal non-public and moveable desktop.

The earlier mannequin prided itself on providing high-speed reads and writes for what regarded like a typical thumb drive. For the 2022 mannequin, OWC’s gone down the identical highway.

Contained in the Envoy Professional mini are the identical flash reminiscence and parts you’d count on in a standard bigger exterior SSD, which ought to make it lots higher for working from as a correct secondary drive as an alternative of a inexpensive thumb drive that makes use of slower media.

Evaluating the dimensions of the OWC Envoy Professional mini.

OWC presents the Envoy Professional mini in three capacities, beginning at 250GB and rising to 500GB, then 1TB. Our evaluation unit is the 1TB mannequin.

As for speeds of the drive itself, OWC proclaimed that it may handle as much as 946MBs of sequential read-write “real-world pace.” OWC discloses this was achieved with the 250GB drive linked utilizing Thunderbolt to a mid-2017 13-inch MacBook Professional.

OWC additionally provides its personal benchmark screenshots utilizing a 16-inch MacBook Professional from 2019, with Blackmagicdesign’s Disk Velocity Check used for USB 3.2 Gen 1 and USB 3.2 Gen 1 connections. OWC’s personal outcomes are lots beneath the claimed most pace, with it managing 421.5MB/s writes and 410.7MB/s reads below Gen 1, 587.5MB/s and 541.8MB/s below Gen 2.

Disk Velocity Check outcomes for the OWC Envoy Professional mini

AppleInsider’s personal testing concurs with OWC, seeing 597.0MB/s writes and 542.0MB/s reads with nearly any file measurement, sustained, over a five-minute run. The exams had been about the identical when carried out each plugged in on to a 2020 Intel NUC operating Home windows 10, a 2021 16-inch MacBook Professional, a 2016 15-inch MacBook Professional, or to a CalDigit TS4 Thunderbolt dock plugged into both Mac.

This is not near the phenomenally speedy NVMe-based exterior drives, nevertheless it’s nonetheless greater than adequate as a challenge drive for many video enhancing and different related inventive fields.

The OWC Envoy Professional mini was greater than only a thumb drive in its earlier incarnations. In its new type, the drive continues its legacy of offering excessive switch speeds, if not essentially reaching the stratospheric NVMe speeds — and that is fantastic.

It additionally brings in new methods, rising connectivity to cowl USB-C iPad Professional fashions whereas nonetheless sustaining assist for older techniques that use USB-A. It additionally does so in a premium package deal that gives a hanging look that may be a step above your typical tiny moveable drive.

The OWC Envoy Professional mini in use.

You might use it for file transfers between desktops, actually, however the OWC Envoy Professional mini can play in the identical discipline as correct exterior SSDs, too. We do not suppose that there is a good worth to efficiency radio on the smaller measurement, and, arguably, you possibly can construct your personal drive with NVMe storage and an enclosure — nevertheless it depends upon what you place a premium on.

OWC has the Envoy Categorical enclosure for $79. This, plus about $100 for a 1TB NVMe SSD will give Thunderbolt 3 speeds as much as the pace of the drive, or about 2.8 gigabytes per second, whichever is hit first for about the identical worth because the OWC Envoy Professional mini.

However, what you get with that may be a non-removable cable, and a notably bigger package deal. This mixture shouldn’t be one thing you’d wish to hook up with your keychain or toss in your pocket, casually.

Enclosures just like the Anker PowerExpand can be found for round $30, and you will get about the identical speeds because the Envoy Professional mini given the USB 3.1 era 2 enclosure with a removable cable. However once more, that is nonetheless bigger, and never what you’d name a keychain drive.

No product is ideal, there are all the time compromises. For drives, choose two: small measurement, excessive capability, or low worth. The 2 that OWC has picked listed below are measurement and capability. Should you desire that blend, you will just like the Envoy Professional mini — at the least on the 1TB worth level.

• Putting premium look
• Wonderful switch speeds for a thumb drive-size
• Excessive degree of connectivity with USB-A and USB-C

• Premium price
• Not fairly premium pace

The OWC Envoy Professional mini is out there from OWC or Amazon, beginning at $79 for 250GB, rising to $109 for 500GB, and $179 for 1TB.