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OWC’s Envoy Pro EX has managed to carve a niche in the crowded portable SSD market.

Like Firewire and USB, it has been developed as an open standard driven by Intel.īecause of its physical compatibility with USB Type-C, Thunderbolt 3 is likely to avoid the fate of Firewire, another heavily promoted Apple interface that served a niche very well, but failed to appeal to a mass audience. TB3 doubles the bandwidth to 40Gbps, halves the power consumption, and can deliver up to 100W of power to other devices. Thunderbolt 2 and Thunderbolt 3 have physically different connectors with the former being physically compatible with the mini-DisplayPort format. The price premium for that, though, is significant at 80% and 40% for the 1TB and 2TB models respectively. OWC also sells a special edition of this drive called the VE (Video Edition) which is “performance tuned” for video production, and that translates into a 12% increase in the write speed. A more comprehensive list of Thunderbolt 3 storage devices can be found on the official Thunderbolt 3 website.

Other portable 1TB SSD products with a Thunderbolt 3 connector include Glyph Technologies' 1TB Atom Pro ($399), the Transcend StoreJet 500 ($269), the G-Technology G-Drive Mobile Pro SSD ($379) and the VisionTek Portable 1TB Thunderbolt 3 SSD ($599). Note that all prices are from Amazon (US) and exclude fees and shipping. The premium that the X5 attracts can be justified by its absolutely staggering performance – the best from a non-RAID external storage solution. We have reviewed two other passively-powered Thunderbolt 3 storage devices in the recent past: The Patriot Evlvr, a 1TB model that retails for $274 at the time of writing, while the Samsung X5 is priced at an eye-watering $399. However, the likes of the new MacBook Air ship with Type-C connectors that are Thunderbolt 3 compatible ports, thereby expanding the potential user base significantly.

Plugging one in to a non-TB3 equipped computer will yield absolutely nothing. Some drives, like the OWC Envoy Pro EX, are not compatible with the regular USB Type-C port, despite being physically compatible.