OWC has been a key player in the storage industry over the last few decades, particularly for Apple users. Their lineup of portable flash-based direct-attached storage devices has a great reputation in the market, thanks to their focus on performance consistency for professional workloads. The company is also known for being upfront about their products' capabilities under worst-case conditions. Recently, the company resurrected their OWC Envoy Pro Mini lineup - back in 2016, they had a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A thumb drive with capacities of up to 240 GB under the tag. The new version is a complete redesign with USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) speeds and comes with both Type-A and Type-C interfaces in a sleek and compact thumb drive form factor.
Kingston's DataTraveler Max gathered significant market share in the high-performance thumb drive segment thanks to its first mover advantage. How does OWC's updated Envoy Pro Mini stack up against it? Can its internal architecture / firmware configuration challenge its dominance? Read on for detailed insights into the performance and value proposition of the 1TB version of the new OWC Envoy Pro Mini.