It’s not top tech anyway. You can get PCIE 5 SSDs with over twice the speed OWC is claiming. They need to be attached directly to the motherboard, however. Even they are cheaper than the SSD upgrade prices Apple offers.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
OWC's Thunderbolt 5 External SSD for Latest Macs is Impressively Fast
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
In recent times I've seen Samsung brand name 4-terabyte externals (e.g.: T7 Shield and a T9 SSD of some sort) for around $300, a substantial sale price (if we don't talk about me picking up a T7 Shield on sale nearly a year ago for around $200!).
That $600 is not a sale price, and it's a very hot new product. So thankfully we have options in the product space where people looking for external SSD's can decide whether the premium for great speed is worth it to them. My T7 Shield is currently on a USB-C connection, it's not a Thunderbolt drive, and while it's fine for what I do, it's nowhere near as fast as the OWC offering.
If fact, if you compare this to non-sale priced 4-terabyte brand name SSDs on the market, I suspect it and drives like it (if around $600) will create price pressure to drive the old Thunderbolt 3 drive prices down.
Sadly with Apple we can't have that. I'm thankful we got the TB5 this soon!
6 GB/sec is roughly equivalent to Mac's internal SSD (512GB or greater), which also happens to be above the limit of Thunderbolt 4's 5 GB/sec.
While we can complain about how expensive OWC's TB5 drive is, it is undeniably cheaper than Apple's insane markup ($600 for upgrading from 512GB to 2TB and $1200 for 4TB).
While we can complain about how expensive OWC's TB5 drive is, it is undeniably cheaper than Apple's insane markup ($600 for upgrading from 512GB to 2TB and $1200 for 4TB).
I said just above that, the multi-drive vanilla storage NVMe options. That's a single drive off-the-shelf drive.
Unfortunately 99% of SSDs are still on USB 3.1 spec. The graduation to any Thunderbolt speeds remains a luxury.
Will it do 6000 Read/5000+ Write on a Mac?
Thunderbolt 5 can finally present a solution to Apple's exorbitant charges for storage bumps. The company that provides a 0TB solution where customers can add their own NVMe drives for $300 or less should do well with Mac customers.
I wonder if it's more captive cable rather than built-in; so you can just unscrew the unit, and replace the thing.
I find external T4 2500MB/s fast enough for video editing 4-5 tracks 4k proress, larger projects require extra 8Tb SSD drives so original footage and demanding speed is divided by no options…
In my case, decoders/GPU are the bottle neck
I’m pretty sure there are task out there demanding the faster the best.
In my case, decoders/GPU are the bottle neck
I’m pretty sure there are task out there demanding the faster the best.
There are many TB4 external drives (or enclosures) on the market. But for many vendors, Mac compatibility is, unfortunately, an afterthought. I think that's the reason why OWC can charge such high premiums on their external SSDs. I would be content with having a TB4 SSD drive. But I'm sure there are some use cases where TB5 speeds make sense.
Obviously not a product intended for you.
This is a great deal for people who will need very fast drives on their new ThunderBolt 5 enabled computers and don't want to pay for the very fast internal storage that Apple offers.
This first ThunderBolt 5 drive has just been announced. Enclosures will come later, and will require drives fast enough to take advantage of ThunderBolt 5 and the computers with interfaces to take advantage of a fast drive.
Great. You know this is an external drive, right? And will be used for high end production on computers that aren't even available yet? How is your comment relevant to this article?
There are plenty of enclosures for ThunderBolt 4 for NVME drives. I have several WD Black drives in currently available enclosures.
ThunderBolt 5 enclosures will become available not long after there are actually computers that could use it. At some point there will be enclosures that have not even been announced yet, perfect for those fast drives and faster than the enclosures I have now.
Obviously not a product intended for you. It's great that the Amazon drive works for you, i have some of those too. But I need very fast drives on my video editing computers and the $89 drive is not in the same market as the ThunderBolt 5 drive.
Seriously, some people need to work on their reading comprehension and context. These new drives are announced before the computers that can use their optimal speed are even available. This is great news for those of us who are more productive when using very fast drives and didn't spend the extra thousand dollars on internal storage.
I'm never going to buy a Ferrari, but I don't tell everyone that they should buy a Nissan Versa instead because it's cheaper.
While I'm aware of speed tiers of speed (e.g.: 800-900, 1600, 2800 and now apparently 5,000+?) with various external SSDs, I often wonder how perceptible these differences are in actual use?
When my old 2017 iMac's Fusion Drive was going out, I replaced it with an Samsung T7 Shield USB-C drive as my boot drive, hoping it'd let me limp along till the next round of Macs came out. I was shocked to find my iMac 'felt' snappier with the T7!
So those of us who predominantly operate as general users (e.g.: Safari, Mail, MS Word, Photos, etc...) rather than editing 4K video or processing huge graphics files...if we copied our Mac's internal drive over to an external SSD and made that the boot up drive for a couple of weeks, I wonder at what point in rising speed we'd no longer notice a difference?
Put another way, if any of you bought a Mac with 256 or 512-Gig internal storage and switched to an external Thunderbolt 3 SSD as your boot up, did you notice a substantial difference in anything you did?
When my old 2017 iMac's Fusion Drive was going out, I replaced it with an Samsung T7 Shield USB-C drive as my boot drive, hoping it'd let me limp along till the next round of Macs came out. I was shocked to find my iMac 'felt' snappier with the T7!
So those of us who predominantly operate as general users (e.g.: Safari, Mail, MS Word, Photos, etc...) rather than editing 4K video or processing huge graphics files...if we copied our Mac's internal drive over to an external SSD and made that the boot up drive for a couple of weeks, I wonder at what point in rising speed we'd no longer notice a difference?
Put another way, if any of you bought a Mac with 256 or 512-Gig internal storage and switched to an external Thunderbolt 3 SSD as your boot up, did you notice a substantial difference in anything you did?
I recall optioning to 7200rpm on a BTO MBP back in 2009 and swapped it out after 2 years for a 1st gen SSD (long dead now). Still got the original spinner around and it still spins.
OWC is maximizing its cash here, being first-to-market with a new line of demand
I understand that Sabrent and Acasis are testing similar TB5 enclosures now, but they haven't dropped yet.
Really...the only users who need these speeds are content creators that want to work off the external SSD or need to transfer large files (like video) while mobile. I noticed in my video work that thunderbolt 4 speeds and transfer rates are probably enough for my workflow (but of course desire for more is what Apple is best at..)
I believe this is targeted to professionals that can afford this as it is calculated into project costs.
Real life benchmark and tests would be great to see before making the dive to buy.
For video work, faster drives is always better, so I will be saving my pennies until eventual saturation of the market with thunderbolt 5.
But getting a M4 Mac mini base and adding this 4TB unit would cost around totals: USD $1,298 plus tax over the Apple tax for SSD upgrades...so it is tempting. But we have not seen the actual speeds vs. Apple's internal drive speeds so it is difficult to really know if it is worth to buy yet..
I believe this is targeted to professionals that can afford this as it is calculated into project costs.
Real life benchmark and tests would be great to see before making the dive to buy.
For video work, faster drives is always better, so I will be saving my pennies until eventual saturation of the market with thunderbolt 5.
But getting a M4 Mac mini base and adding this 4TB unit would cost around totals: USD $1,298 plus tax over the Apple tax for SSD upgrades...so it is tempting. But we have not seen the actual speeds vs. Apple's internal drive speeds so it is difficult to really know if it is worth to buy yet..
Aren't Apple products the ones being currently discussed?
I mean, my son's PC with a PCI 5 lane could take advantage of that, but no current Mac can. Maybe next year's Mac Pro?
That’s what I do. 990 Pros, 1x4TB and 2x2TB in different TB4 enclosures for different DAS use currently.
At this moment, the OWC drive is the fastest drive that you can buy for these new M4/TB5 Macs.
I'll wait until Cyber Monday to see if OWC gets some competition.
That's correct. Any of those SSDs run at the "super slow" 1000 MB/sec instead of the advertised 2000. There are almost no PCs that support 2x2 either, so it's always confused me as to why anyone would pay that premium. I learned it the hard way with a Sandisk Extreme Pro drive that I thought would scream on my 14" MBP. Oops!
I agree. Compare like with like. There no TB 5 enclosures yet except for this. There will be more. OWC stuff is really pricey when it first comes out. I use T7's on all my machines for image backup and cache. Works fine and mostly cheap, I use large spinners for long term data backup
I'd rather have a BMW M4 or 5. More reliable and lot less expensive and more dealers.
Last edited:
If I were in the market for a TB5 drive, this'd be high on my list just from the great experience I had with the older version. I bought OWC's TB3 Envoy drive to use as the boot drive for an old iMac as an alternative to pulling the machine apart and replacing the Fusion Drive with SSD. It was an incredibly fast and reliable drive and served my needs well until I could upgrade to a newer computer. I never got the full 2800MB/s it was rated at, of course, but I never expected that. I did get blackmagic speed tests to come in north of 2200MB/s.
Pays to wait for a fast Thunderbolt 5 enclosure, no need to be on the bleeding edge.
I have a Zike drive with Lexar 4TB, bought at the time it was leading edge. Runs hot. 56ºC essentially idling despite me buying extra thermal pads. But reliable and decently fast on benchtests. But Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 enclosures now are significantly cheaper. And perhaps can run cooler than the Zike.
In sum, I think Thunderbolt 5 will be good future-proofing, but wait for prices to settle and it to become mainstream.
I have a Zike drive with Lexar 4TB, bought at the time it was leading edge. Runs hot. 56ºC essentially idling despite me buying extra thermal pads. But reliable and decently fast on benchtests. But Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 enclosures now are significantly cheaper. And perhaps can run cooler than the Zike.
In sum, I think Thunderbolt 5 will be good future-proofing, but wait for prices to settle and it to become mainstream.
Imagine if they somehow invented a Mac mini with a bigger case than the current one that just happens to have some empty space in it so that you could add a few nvme drives internally.
Last edited: