OWC starts shipping the Envoy Ultra Thunderbolt 5 SSD

OWC has released the Envoy Ultra Thunderbolt 5 SSD, an external drive that takes advantage of the M4 Pro and M4 Max Mac's connections.

As part of its M4 Mac upgrades, Apple upgraded some of the ports on its M4 Pro and M4 Max models to use Thunderbolt 5. Following a preorder period, OWC has now started to ship a drive that takes advantage of the increased amount of bandwidth.

The OWC Envoy Ultra is a Thunderbolt 5-based portable SSD, claimed to be the first in the world. Taking advantage of the massive bandwidth of Thunderbolt 5, it can transfer data to and from a Mac at speeds exceeding 6,000MB/s.

Bus-powered and having its own built-in Thunderbolt cable, the drive is also backwards-compatible with Thunderbolt 4 and Thunderbolt 3 connections.

Enclosed in a fanless aluminum enclosure, it has passive thermal management that doesn't require a fan, making it silent. The enclosure also helps protect it from drops, rain, and dust.

The OWC Envoy Ultra Thunderbolt 5 SSD is sold from OWC directly. It is priced at $399.99 for 2TB and $599.99 for 4TB.

10 Comments

NEO_STEPHENS 13 comments · 2 Years

About 6 days ago

Would have been the perfect solution, if not for the fixed USB-C cable.

kurai_kage 115 comments · 5 Years

My thoughts exactly. A captured cable is an instant disqualification when I'm considering products.

NEO_STEPHENS said:

Would have been the perfect solution, if not for the fixed USB-C cable.

cia 269 comments · 21 Years

NEO_STEPHENS said:

Would have been the perfect solution, if not for the fixed USB-C cable.

It’s a fixed thunderbolt 5 cable. Big difference.

cia said:

NEO_STEPHENS said:

Would have been the perfect solution, if not for the fixed USB-C cable.

It’s a fixed thunderbolt 5 cable. Big difference.

For me, it's not the type of cable, it's the fact that it's fixed to the SSD. I would prefer to just attach my own TB 5 cable, as needed.

joakimfl 1 comment · New User

NEO_STEPHENS said:

cia said:

NEO_STEPHENS said:

Would have been the perfect solution, if not for the fixed USB-C cable.

It’s a fixed thunderbolt 5 cable. Big difference.

For me, it's not the type of cable, it's the fact that it's fixed to the SSD. I would prefer to just attach my own TB 5 cable, as needed.

It suspect the reason that it's a fixed cable is to make sure you don't plug a sub-standard or too long cable in and cause data transfer issues, and making sure that only the built in cable is used reduces potential customer support overhead since TB 5 is such a new standard that pushes the envelope in data transfer speeds.