OWC Express 1M2 80G SSD review: Cookin’ with 80Gbps USB4

At a glance

Expert note

Pros

• 80 Gbit / S USB4
• Fantastic performance
• Delying design with fins
• Back compatible with USB 2

Our verdict

We only had love for 40 Gbit / GB it is not cheap, but it is easily the fastest external SSD that we have seen.

Price during the examination

This value will show the geolocated pricing text for the undefined product

Best price today

Best prices today: 1m2 80g

$ 219

In my review of the first express 1m2 for PCworld, I was delighted that USB4 Ultraft storage was finally at hand. In Macworld’s examination, it was presented that the SSDs do not improve much. At the time, it was true. Now this is not the case, thanks to the 1m2 80g.

By the last three letters of the nickname, you could guess that the new model is 80 Gbit / s. It is. It is also USB4 80 Gbit / s, so unlike Thunderbolt 5, it can also work on any USB port. It’s fast. We love it.

OWC 1m2 80g: features

Although it seems almost identical to the old 1m2 (essentially a large thermal dissipator in silver with a NVME SSD inside), the 80G is slightly different. The silver color is a little brighter and the type C port at the commercial end is compensated on one side. The non -commercial end has the logo and the power / light of activity.

The 80 g is the same 5.25 inches long and 2.75 inches wide as the original, but is larger at around 0.9 inches, against 0.75 inches. It is also approximately 0.5 ounce heavier at 9.9 ounces. It’s very heavy in my book, but tastes vary.

OWC

The SSD inside our test unit was an Ultra IV OWC of 2 TO PCIe 4.0. Before moaning, “Why not PCIe 5.0?”, 80 Gbit / s or Thunderbolt is maximum at around 6 gbit / s transfers. The SSD PCIe 4.0 are capable of 7 Gbit / s, so they are not a bottleneck. PCIe 5.0 would also increase the cost, which is already a little up there.

The enormous advantage of the USB4 on Thunderbolt 5 is that you can connect it to any type of USB port to access your data, even if at the speed of said port.

OWC 1m2 80g: Price

Uh… about the price… if you want your 80 Gbit / s, you will pay it. Up to $ 349 for 1 TB, $ 499 for 2 TB, $ 699 for 4 TB and $ 1,299 for 8 to.

For comparison, the Lacie Rugged SSD Pro5 (80 GBPS Thunderbolt 5; it is also fast in the real world, but not also compatible) was $ 240 (1 TB), $ 336 (2 TB) and $ 636 at the level of writing. This last price is only slightly cheaper than the 1m2 80g at the same capacity, but the first two capacities offer major savings. Although with a little lower performance.

OWC 1m2 80g: Performance

What is the speed of the OWC 1m2 80g? Short answer: very. In synthetic landmarks, it was fundamentally twice as fast as the old 1m2. As part of the PCWORLD Sister Publication Test Protocol, the fastest external SSD was proven that we have tested overall. Faster than the LACIE RUGGED PRO5 SSD to various degrees.

No matter how you cut it, there are fairly exhilarating test numbers illustrated below, a reading of about 6 Gbit / s and 5.5 Gbit / s of overall writing. It’s a bit of a shame that MacOS cannot offer the same performance with Finder transfers. At least not from 15.6.1, which still seems to maximize about 3 Gbit / s. Come on, Apple, forget the AI ​​and repair your research copy routines!

Amorphousdiskmark 4.01 thought of the speed test 1m2 80g more strongly than the disc. Maybe he has a better transfer engine.

ATTO essentially agreed with the disc test of the disc and Amorphousdiskmark.

Here are the numbers that the Robust 1m2 80m2 and SSD Pro5 collected on the PCworld test bench. They strongly lean in favor of the 1m2 80g for the most part.

There was a huge difference in random performance with queues in the game, but not much software uses them. However, the 1m2 80g seems faster in this regard than the robust SSD Pro5.

The difference in real 48 GB transfers was not particularly in favor of the 1m2 80g. It was faster in certain tasks than the robust SSD Pro5, and slower in others. Note that the results of Windows Explorer are close to what you will see on the way around.

The 1m2 80g has cleaned the Robust SSD Pro5 clock in our 450 GB writing test.

Note that Fastcopy is a Windows file transfer utility that is much faster than Windows Explorer or MacOS Finder, although the difference is much more apparent with internal SSDs than external readers, which are limited to bus speed.

There is a wearing of a very old version of Fastcopy 2.1 called rapidcopy in the App Store, but we cannot guarantee that it is as fast as Fastcopy 5.1. It is also $ 20, where the Windows version is free for personal use.

With the appropriate software, that is to say all that with optimized nvme I / S, the 1m2 80g is a crier.

Should you buy the OWC 1m2 80g?

If you want the fastest external storage on the planet, buy it – if your finances allow. On the other hand, the SSDs or speakers of 40 Gbit / s are considerably cheaper and always offer most of the real world performance (at least in Finder) of 80 Gbit / s. Anyway, the 1m2 80g is a very pleasant technology upgrade – so dear to OWC.