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Introducing the Fastest OWC External SSD Ever and Our First Thunderbolt 5 Drive: Envoy Ultra

OWC's very first Thunderbolt 5 product is Envoy Ultra. With speeds 2x that of Thunderbolt 4 and USB4, it's also our fastest external drive ever.

Wayne Grayson • Sep 12, 2024

At the IBC 2024 trade show in Amsterdam this week, the world will get its first look at something we’ve been working on for quite some time that we’re absolutely thrilled to be able to share: our fastest external SSD yet.

This is OWC Envoy Ultra, a bus-powered external SSD capable of speeds over 6,000 MB/s. Envoy Ultra will make its debut at IBC—a show aimed at giving content creators and media professionals a look at state of the art tools that will propel their workflows forward—in Hall 7, Stand 7A.60.

The Envoy Ultra is built upon the next generation Thunderbolt 5 standard and can reach data speeds of more than 6,000 MB/s—twice as fast as Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 drives. These speeds make Envoy Ultra capable of handling any professional grade project you can throw at it, whether its editing 8K or 12K high-resolution, lossless video, or transferring large amounts of data in a flash.

Plus, because its a Thunderbolt drive, the Envoy Ultra works with just about any device with a USB-C port: Macs, PCs, iPad Pros, Chromebooks, and Surface devices.

You might be wondering “Why do I need a Thunderbolt 5 drive if I don’t have a device that supports Thunderbolt 5 yet?” That’s where Envoy Ultra’s combination of extreme speed and backwards compatibility come in.

When you plug Envoy Ultra into a Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, or USB4 port, Envoy Ultra will send data between itself and the host device at the full speed that the host device is capable of. For that reason, Envoy Ultra is the easiest way to ensure that you’re getting the most speed possible form any computer or tablet that supports Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, or USB4.

Of course, because Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, and USB4 have half the speed of Envoy Ultra’s Thunderbolt 5-powered capability, you won’t be using this drive to its full potential when you plug into one of those ports. BUT you will be getting every last ounce of speed that your machine offers until you upgrade to a Thunderbolt 5 device. It’s the best of both worlds.

And because Envoy Ultra is an OWC product, you know that it’s not just fast. It’s rugged as heck, too. Envoy Ultra is water-resistant, dust-resistant, and crushproof with a silent, fanless, heat-dissipating aluminum design that can withstand the harshest of environments. As we mentioned above, because Envoy Ultra is bus-powered you don’t have to worry about bringing along a power brick.

The new OWC Envoy Ultra will be available in 2TB and 4TB capacities for $399.99 and $599.99 respectively. Pre-orders begin Thursday, September 12, 2024 and orders will start shipping in late October.

Also at IBC 2024…

Starring alongside Envoy Ultra at the OWC booth at IBC are several other powerful OWC products including:

Jellyfish Studio: The latest member of the Jellyfish family of networked media servers, Jellyfish Studio is built to allow media professionals to collaborate from anywhere while offering powerful media asset management tools and easy setup. Check out our full post for more details.

Express 1M2: Before Envoy Ultra, this was the fastest external drive from OWC. With speeds over 3,000 MB/s and the ability to bring/swap in your own M.2 blades, the Express 1M2 is designed for ultimate performance on the go. Read more here.

Thunderblade: This is the ultimate professional workhorse drive—the preferred external SSD of DIT carts on movie and TV sets around the world, offering unparalleled speed and reliability.

CF Express 4.0 Card Reader: Our Powerful Atlas CFexpress cards needed a new reader that could actually, you know, keep up with their insane speeds. So, we built this.

Innergize Software: Our CFexpress and SD cards along with our card readers form the Atlas ecosystem. But what ties these pieces together is Innergize, a comprehensive app designed to optimize and manage the health of Atlas memory cards.

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