Photoshop User - USA (2021-02)

OWC Envoy Pro Elektron

 Tiny SSD Drive in Solid Aluminum Keeps Its Speed | Review by Erik Vlietinck

OWC’s newest portable SSD is a USB-C 3.2 10Gb/sec aluminum drive the size of

a cigarette lighter. That makes it almost ridiculous to call the Elektron portable; if

it’s anything, it’s a shirt-pocket drive that packs OWC Aura advanced NVMes in

240-GB ($99), 480-GB ($149), 1-TB ($199), and 2-TB ($369) formats.

The drive looks like an ingot but, instead of gold, OWC used aluminum for the

enclosure. I had the pleasure of receiving a 480-GB test unit, and when I connected

it to my iMac with the included USB-C cable, the performance was lackluster. But,

as I’m used to dealing with the perplexing reality of a mid-2017 iMac’s performance,

I exchanged the USB-C cable for a passive Thunderbolt 3 cable and connected

to the Thunderbolt port on the iMac. Lo-and-behold, performance jumped to an

impressive 940 MB/sec!

A test with Blackmagic Design Speed Test or AJA’s test app usually is very limited

in time if you let it run only once. It’s when you use AJA’s “run continuously” feature

that the drive really shows its pedigree. The OWC Envoy Pro Elektron did well but, after

2 minutes of warming up inside its aluminum casing, it did start to show some frame

drops and then some more. Within that time frame, though, the drive never throttled

down or lost so many frames it would become troublesome (though it would if you’re

relying on it to offload movies, for example).

When I stopped running the test, the drive was as warm as my hand. It fared much

better than any other tiny NVMe drive that I’ve reviewed, though. Others throttle down

fairly quickly to protect the components inside from overheating.

The OWC Envoy Pro Elektron is far better at heat dissipation and, as a result, is

much faster. Better yet, it’s much better at sustaining its highest throughput rate

under high stress. n

Company: OWC Digital

Price: From $99 (240GB)

to $369 (2TB)

Hot: Design; heat-dissipation

capabilities; size; sustained

speed; performance

Not:

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