OWC Envoy Review: A Tiny, Rugged, and Fast Portable SSD that Screams

The OWC Envoy, first unveiled in April, is one of many USB portable SSDs on the market. However, it manages to be unique by coming in an ultra-compact and rugged design, among other things.

At the current street price, which starts at $129 for 1TB, the OWC Envy can be an excellent buy for those needing a fast, rugged, and easy mobile storage solution—the USB drive can work with any platform, but it's geared toward Mac users. Sounds familiar? Get one today!

Still, that doesn't mean the OWC Envoy is perfect. It's far from it! Featuring USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps), it's not meant to be among the fastest portable SSDs, and the unnecessarily bright status light can be a distracting nuisance.

OWC Envoy: A straightforward portable SSD

Out of the box, the OWC Envoy is much smaller than the photos on the retail box or retail websites might suggest. It's a tiny box that houses an M.2 2242 NVMe solid-state drive on the inside. The drive is not flimsy, however. It comes with a thick metal case that's rugged and works as a heatsink.

On one side, there's a USB-C port next to a status light. As mentioned, the drive uses USB 3.2 Gen 2, which has a cap speed of 10Gbps, which means its copy speeds will be around 1000MB/s. Faster is always better, but in reality, 10Gbps is enough in most use cases.

The table below shows the drive's hardware specs.

OWC Envoy: hardware specification

	OWC Envoy
Internal SSD	OWC Aura Pro IV PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 2242 SSD
Compatibility	USB and Thunderbolt 3 (and latter)
Port	1x USB-C
Capacities	USB and Thunderbolt 3 (and later)
Dimensions (HLW)	0.5 x 2.8 x 1.5 in (1.2 x 7.1 x 3.8 cm)
Weight	.1 lb (44.5 g)
Rated copy speed	Up to 1000MB/s
Encryption support	None
Ruggedness	Shock/Drop-proof
Security	None
Boot drive support	Yes
Warranty	3-Year
Cost (at review)	$129.99 (1TB) $249.99 (2TB) Buy now!

No USB-A adapter is included; preformatted for Mac users

The Envoy includes a USB-C cable to connect to any computer or device with a USB-C or Thunderbolt (3 and later) port. However, like the case of most OWC drives, it's geared toward Mac users.

Specifically, it's preformatted in the APS file system, which is compatible only with macOS macOS 10.13 and later. Additionally, you can use it with iOS devices; in this case, there's the Copy That Mobile app to facilitate backing up data from the device onto the portable SSD.

If you have another platform or a computer with a USB-A port, you'll have to reformat the drive into a different file system and get a USB-A to USB-C cable (or converter) of your own.

With a suitable cable and file system, the drive indeed works with all hosts with a USB-C port. Still, it could have been a much more convenient storage solution if it had been formatted in exFAT and included a USB-A adapter, like the case of most other portable SSDs.

That annoying status light

Another thing to note about the OWC Envoy is the status LED, which is exceptionally bright and shines a sharp hue of blue, and there's no way for the user to change its color or brightness.

Even during the day, this light can hurt your eyes if you look directly at it, and when it flashes, it's impossible not to notice it even when you point it away. OWC says that this light is an "informative" feature that offers users "at-glance confirmation of power and activity status". In reality, it's like a bad-timing alarm lock that can't be turned off or snoozed.

I find this type of light pollution unnecessary. While the case of the OWC Envoy is not as bad as the ORICO ‎R3700, it's enough for me to find it annoying after a couple of minutes. There's just no situation where this level of status light brightness on a portable drive would be helpful.

A straightforward, frill-free, rugged, portable SSD

Other than that, the OWC Envoy is a simple portable storage device. Plug it into a computer's USB port, and it'll work as intended as long as it's formatted in the platform-appropriate file system.

The drive has no built-in encryption, but it can be used with built-in protection features of macOS or Windows to keep your data safe. There's no backup software included, either, but again, it can work with Windows's File History or Mac's Time Machine.

Like most portable SSDs these days, you can use the Envoy as the boot device or external storage. OWC says the bootable feature is only available for Mac, but in my trial, it worked with Windows, too. Ideally, the Envoy should work as the boot drive only when connected to a Thunderbolt port, though it worked with USB, too, in my testing.

The drive feels rugged, and is indeed a tough cookie. I gave it to my folders to play for a couple of hours—they threw it around a lot—and it survived intact without losing any data on the inside. Note, though, that, unlike some other rugged drives, the Envoy is not designed to be water-resistant.

OWC Envoy: Excellent performance for the specs

I tested the 1TB version of the OWC Envoy for a couple of days using all available USB standards, and it worked consistently well.

As expected, it wasn't the fastest on the market, but compared to other USB 3.2 Gen 2 counterparts, it was impressive. In fact, I tested it also with USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20Gbps), and in this case, its sustained copy speed was quite close to those supporting the standard.

Overall, you can expect close to 900MB/s for writing and around over 1000MB/s for reading from it. Those are generally the ceiling real-world speeds of many NVMe SSDs.

The OWC Envoy became slightly warm to the touch after an extended operation but never hot enough to cause concern. Having no fan on the inside, it was utterly silent. Unfortunately, it can still be a nuisance, especially in a dark room, thanks to its bright status light mentioned above.

Conclusion

The Envoy could be a straightforward, compact, rugged, and speedy USB 3.2 Gen 2 portable SSD that you can plug into your computer and then kind of forget that it's there—after all, it's not a phone or a gadget that requires your attention by nature.

Unfortunately, OWC has tried a bit too hard to make the drive sassy by giving it an ultra-bright, flashy LED status light. Now, you can never get your mind off of it.

If you're OK with that, OWC Envoy is an excellent portable storage device to bring home today. If not, wait for a variant with a regular status light designed to do its job at the right level, or pick one of these excellent alternatives.