OWC has announced it will introduce and demonstrate an entire new family of ground-breaking Thunderbolt™ 3-integrated products at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. OWC’s management team and Founder/CEO Larry O’Connor will attend CES Unveiled on Jan. 7, and the products will be displayed in OWC’s hospitality suite located in the Palazzo Hotel throughout the show.
The new products will be announced officially on Jan. 8, and represent more than 30 years of experience developing innovative technology solutions for creative professionals. This new family of Thunderbolt 3 products provides some of the most extreme examples of Thunderbolt 3 technology ever produced. Products to be announced at CES include:
- ThunderBlade – Ultra resilient and completely silent, the ThunderBlade (see image above) is the fastest external drive on the market today. Capable of speeds up to 2800MB/s Read and 2450MB/s Write, it is the perfect solution for digital ingest and other high-tech applications. With the included ruggedized hard shell carrying case and capacities from 1TB up to 8TB, this highly-portable drive is ready to take on location. MSRP from $1,199.99 to $4,999.00.
- Envoy Pro EX Thunderbolt 3 – The bus-powered Envoy Pro EX Thunderbolt 3 mobile drive offers high speeds, ruggedness and the ultra-portability of easily being able to carry it in a backpack or coat pocket. Speeds of up to 2600MB/s Read and 1600MB/s Write make it a must-have solution for professionals on the move. At about half the size of most drives in this class, the Envoy Pro EX Thunderbolt 3 is the perfect solution for high-speed applications on the go. Available in capacities of 1TB at MSRP $979.99 and 2TB at MSRP $1,699.99.
- ThunderBay 4 Thunderbolt 3 (also available in RAID 5 edition) – Thunderbolt 3 speeds up this award-winning, highly-acclaimed product line. With speeds up to twice as fast as the original and capacities up to 48TB, this new version will continue to provide to performance the pros rely on to create workflows without limitations and meet the demands of the most complex projects. Starting at $699 for 4TB.
- Thunderbolt 3 Dual Display Adapters – Use the displays that best work for you. Connect two DisplayPort 4K displays @60Hz, or one 5K display @60Hz via the DisplayPort model or two HDMI 4K displays @60Hz via the HDMI model. The Dual DisplayPort Adapter has an MSRP of $79.99, while the Dual HDMI Adapter has an MSRP of $99.99.
- Thunderbolt 3 Dock (Windows™ and Mac) – With the newest version of the award-winning OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock, OWC brings its powerful dock to the Windows world, delivering more connectivity, power and charging capability at the fastest speed available. This sleek dock offers 12 ports including dual Thunderbolt 3, five USB 3.1, Gigabit Ethernet, S/PDIF, combo audio, Mini DisplayPort, SD Card Slot, and supports laptop charging. MSRP is $299.95.
OWC will celebrate its 30-year anniversary in 2018, a milestone that is almost unheard of for a privately-held technology company. Founder Larry O’Connor started the company while still in school, only four years after the launch of the original Macintosh. He honed his focus when he realized he could help other Mac users make their machines better and faster and last longer by offering processor, storage and memory products so they could do their own upgrades. OWC now employs more than 200 people at locations across North America and continues to develop and manufacture the innovative and transformative products OWC customers have come to expect.
Wondering what ever happened to the DEC Dock for Touchbar Macbook Pro shown last year at CES.
Hi, Jerry. We can’t discuss future product releases on the blog at this time. But keep checking back for updates.
It would be really nice if you guys could give some updated information on this. I’ve been waiting to see it come out ever since the first prototypes were announced.
IMO the DEC is the only thing that could make Apple’s new laptops worth buying.
Good news about this big investment by OWC in so many new Thunderbolt 3 products. Some of the posters on this news page obviously have no idea how much time is needed to develop, test and fully prove multiple new products before launch…
How about a TB3 retrofit for our existing TB2 Thunderbay 4 enclosures? I mean, Apple abandoned pro users with its clueless form-over-function Black Trashcan Mac “Pro” 6.1, forcing us to shell out hundreds on external enclosures. I would appreciate OWC not playing the same forced obsolescence game.
The hardware shell of the Thunderbay 4 is perfectly functional, making it easy to swap drives, and (unlike so many of the heat-trapping enclosures that choke the market) it provides a cooling fan, a power switch, and internal power supply. It’s a brilliant design. Why not offer a TB2 to TB3 upgrade kit?
I would like to know under what circumstances 2800 MB/s is possible or where that number even comes from. What OS and hardware and firmware and benchmark and setup?
Is 2800 MB/s just 2750 MB/s rounded up? I’ve seen that number around. Where does 2750 MB/s come from? The only Intel documentation I’ve seen mentions only 22 Gbps as a PCIe traffic limit over Thunderbolt 3 (Thunderbolt3_TechBrief_FINAL.pdf)
Expanding from 4 bays to 6 or 8 would be great.
I’ll pile on in saying that I delayed by RAID enclosure purchase until OWC released the ThunderBay 6 that was announced back in April. To not have one is disappointing, but I suspect because these are controlled by SoftRAID and not hardware controllers, the lack of 6-bays has to do with no SoftRAID version 6 yet that would support a RAID 6 configuration.
I would think we would all benefit with a response to our concerns.
Some progress but quite disappointing. I have been waiting for a Thunderbolt 3 Thunderbay enclosure holding 4-6 drives and have delayed going with other vendors. Don’t think I can hold out much longer unless I am sure there will be such a product quite soon.
You’ve probably already heard this, but why not make a TB3 to TB2 cable. Not an adapter, a cable, similar to FW400 to FW800 cables. Lots of us have legacy TB2 products which don’t benefit from buying TB3 versions.
How does a cable differ from the Apple Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter?
The Apple Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter would be better if the Thunderbolt 3 side was also female, so you could connect Thunderbolt 3 devices that have a non-detachable Thunderbolt 3 cable such as the Thunderbolt 3 to Dual DisplayPort or HDMI adapters.
Looking for a thunderbolt 37 TB external hard drive for my Mac pro
I too wonder why it has taken OWC so long to come out with TB3. I had to go to another vender for my Mobile TB3. I also had to settle for a USB-3.1 enclosure from OWC. Not as fast as I had hoped.
It is great to see OWC bringing Thunderbolt 3 products to market. It would be fantastic if they could make external booting SSD better than these ones (faster and with larger capacities of 4, 8 & 16 TB without RAID 0 inside):
– Samsung Portable SSD T5
– Sonnet Fusion Thunderbolt 3 PCIe Flash Drive
I do not know if that is technically possible, but a macOS booting external SSD based on Intel Optane to boot Mac and work from it all day long would be awesome.
ThunderBlade V4 and Envoy Pro EX Thunderbolt 3 look nice. Are they RAID 0 inside?
RAID 0 may be great for some applications, but not for others. For instance, it increases more than twice the failure rate if one of the disks inside or the controller fails.
Last year at this time and during the middle of this year you talked two products that you were planning for 2017. One was a Thunderbolt 3 Thunderbay enclosure holding six drives. The other was a box for an external graphics card. What ever became of these two products ?
I heard about the 6bay TB3 enclosure too from OWC tech/sales. I would definitely picked one up but I needed it a few months ago. I’m wondering why its taking OWC so long this time with TB3 compared to TB2.
I will be impressed if these new enclosure’s have a battery to protect against power cuts and other power spikes.
I had to get a new iMac this past September and I needed a 4xSSD Thunderbolt3 enclosure but OWC didn’t have anything available. Thunderbolt 3 wasn’t all that new at the time (at least a year) so I had to go with another vendor.