OWC Express 1M2 review: SSDs don’t get much better than this

Best Prices Today: OWC Express 1M2 USB4 SSD

The OWC Express 1M2 makes a striking first impression with its cooling-fin design. The cooling fins alone account for around half of the overall height of this external SSD. Good cooling is extremely important, especially for fast NVMe SSD drives.

We found out how well the cooling works by running Blackmagicdesign Disk Speed Test over a long period of time. After 30 minutes, the cooling fins and the underside of the housing became noticeably warm. After an hour, the temperature increased significantly to around 40 degrees Celcius but was not hot enough to burn your fingers.

The aluminum housing is quite large at 5.2 by 2.8 by 0.9 inches (13.2 by 7.1 by 2.3 centimeters) but the Express 1M2 can be used both as a stay-on-your-desk drive and 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 supplied connection cable is quite short at about 9 inches (22 centimeters). The Express 1M2 is available both as an empty housing and fully configured from 1TB to 8TB. We tested the 8TB version which sells for a whopping $1,400. The 1TB model is far more reasonable at $250.

To test for speed, we used two benchmarks, Aja System Test Lite and Blackmagicdesign Disk Speed Test. The results are impressive: 2736MBps (write) and 2980MBps (read) in Aja System Test Lite. The values with Blackmagicdesign Disk Speed Test were around 100MBps higher–it cracked the 3000 MBps mark in the read test.

Another positive aspect of the endurance test was that the data transfer rate did not drop even after an hour. OWC states a speed of 3150MBps when reading with a 14-inch MacBook Pro. To verify this value, we simulated the OWC test in Aja System Test Lite on an M3 MacBook Air and a Mac Studio and achieved almost the same results, with read rates over 3100MBps.

Should you buy the OWC Express 1M2?

With the Express 1M2, OWC has created an SSD drive with a very good price-performance ratio. The data transfer rates are among the absolute best on the Mac and the housing is also thermally exemplary. The Express 1M2 is also future-proof; OWC specifies compatibility with 16 B NVMe SSD storage. So if you want to upgrade later, there are no problems to worry about. If you buy the Express 1M2 fully configured with storage, OWC offers a three-year warranty. It’s two years with the empty case.

This article originally appeared on Macwelt and was translated by Roman Loyola.