At a glance
Expert Rating
Benefits
- Very high data transfer rates
- Quality housing
- Good cooling without fan
Our verdict
Data transfer rates of around 3,000 MB/s, a high-quality housing with good thermal behavior and an attractive price. In short, the OWC Express 1M2 is an excellent all-round external SSD.
Best prices today: OWC Express 1M2 USB4 SSD
$249.99
The OWC Express 1M2 makes a striking first impression with its cooling fin design. The cooling fins alone make up about half of the total height of this external SSD. Good cooling is extremely important, especially for fast NVMe SSDs.
We were able to see how effective the cooling was by running the Blackmagicdesign Drive Speed Test over an extended period of time. After 30 minutes, the cooling fins and the bottom of the case became noticeably warm. After an hour, the temperature increased significantly to around 40 degrees Celsius, but it wasn’t hot enough to burn your fingers.
The aluminum housing is quite large (13.2 x 7.1 x 2.3 cm), but the Express 1M2 can be used both as a desktop hard drive and as a mobile storage device. The very high-quality metal housing also has sufficiently large rubber surfaces on the underside. These not only prevent scratches on the table, but also provide good anti-slip protection.
The included connection cable is quite short, about 22 centimeters. The Express 1M2 is available in empty and fully configured enclosures from 1TB to 8TB. We tested the 8TB version which sells for $1,400. The 1TB model is much more reasonable at $250.
To test the speed, we used two tests, Aja System Test Lite and Blackmagicdesign Disk Speed Test. The results are impressive: 2736 MB/s (write) and 2980 MB/s (read) with Aja System Test Lite. The values obtained with Blackmagicdesign Disk Speed Test were about 100 MB/s higher, exceeding the 3000 MB/s mark for reading.
Another positive aspect of the endurance test is that the data transfer rate did not drop even after an hour. OWC reports a speed of 3150 MB/s when reading with a 14-inch MacBook Pro. To verify this value, we simulated the OWC test in Aja System Test Lite on a MacBook Air M3 and a Mac Studio and got almost the same results, with read rates above 3100 MB/s.
Should you buy the OWC Express 1M2??
With the Express 1M2, OWC has created an SSD with a very good price-performance ratio. The data transfer rates are among the best in the Mac and the enclosure is also exemplary in terms of thermal performance. The Express 1M2 is also future-proof; OWC specifies compatibility with 16 B NVMe SSD storage. So if you want to upgrade later, you have nothing to worry about. If you buy the Express 1M2 fully configured with storage, OWC offers a three-year warranty. It is two years with the empty enclosure.
This article was originally published on Macwelt and was translated by Romain Loyola.
This article was originally published in our sister publication Macwelt and has been translated and localized from German.
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