OWC has announced the availability of the OWC Express 4M2 Thunderbolt 3. Designed with superior ease-of-use in mind, and inspired by the creatives who use these products to streamline their workflows, the Express 4M2 is smaller and easier to fit in studios, suites or on-stage.
Small in stature but big on capability, the Express 4M2 offers four easy-to-access M.2 NVMe SSD slots that are customizable to any workflow, allowing users to swap, upgrade or expand the unit to serve specific project needs. NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is a hyper-efficient communications interface protocol built from the ground up to take advantage of SSD technology and high-performance connection buses such as PCIe. The result is exponentially faster and efficient SSD storage.
Users can install up to 8TB capacity and experience up to 2800MB/s of extraordinary performance through Thunderbolt 3, ingesting and duplicating dailies at breakneck speeds, working with higher resolutions, plowing through thousands of photos, and scrubbing through demanding timelines.
A convenient DisplayPort is located on the rear of the unit so users can connect a display directly without worrying about adapters or extra-long cables. The Express 4M2 is also equipped with OWC SoftRAID to provide the capability to RAID across multiple drive enclosures. Storage can be configured and reconfigured by combining multiple drives together on Mac and Windows.
Key Features:
- Up to 8TB capacity
- Up to 2800MB/s Thunderbolt 3 performance
- Four M.2 NVMe SSD slots
- Vibration damping feet and compact design allow for vertical or horizontal orientation
- DisplayPort connection
- Advanced SoftRAID engine
- Thunderbolt Certified for Mac and Windows
Available now, the Express 4M2 can be found at MacSales.com and other online and storefront retailers.
Is this faster or slower than the Thunderblade?
When is OWC going to bring out drives with Thunderbolt 2 And 3, And USB3.1, now This would be the one I would buy
Like everyone else, I’m anxious to see some real-world results. Most specifically, I’m an owner of a 2017 27″ iMac. Since I use Lightroom, I un-fused my 2TB set-up to try and eek-out every bit of performance I could. Currently I have my library on a USB-C 1TB SSD (SATA). I’d be interested in seeing just how fast this new unit is. If T3 lives up to its billing, it may help offset some of the performance hits the iMac users are experiencing. Let’s get some current benchmarks with this unit.Feel free to send me a unit and I’ll put it to the test.
I tried one of these but found the fan overly loud. Essentially I guess I want a Thunderblade but 4 1TB M2 SSDs from OWC plus this enclosure comes out to about $1745 while a 4 TB Thunderblade is $2,800. That delta is large considering it is the exact same SSDs.
If the fan is noisy you just have to change it for a Noctua
I will need to change the fan – because the noise is way too loud. Anyone know what fan size I need to get?
PCIe 3.0×4? Why only 8TB capacity?
It could be because there is only 4 slots and the biggest drive you can put in each slot is a 2tb m.2 drive.
Full specifications? Benchmarks? Weight? Dimensions? Compatible with Samsung 970 Pro & 970 Evo? Can boot Mac and work from it all-day-long? Quality You Can Trust with just our one-year warranty? Industry standard now are five to 10 years warranty; at least three years.