One of the booths we visited at COMPUTEX 2023 last week is OWC. We initially thought it is just another player in the storage device market but after seeing the lineup, that first impression immediately changed.
One of the key selling points of OWC products revolves around the use of the Thunderbolt protocol, particularly the most mainstream versions of Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4.
They even have smaller categories such as USB 4 and 10GbE adapters but the idea is clear here – high-speed data transfer is the king.
Taking the example of the Thunderbolt 3 10GbE adapter, it is made with a full metal enclosure for great durability and is compatible with a silicone bumper case protecting against drops and damage too.
Aside from docks offering additional USB-C ports, there’s this small and compact model rocking an SD card reader, USB-A, and HDMI 2.0 port.
Finding permanent extensions for more I/O for your desktop? This Thunderbolt 3 Dock right here has a total of 13 docks and has enough bandwidth to handle up to 5 Thunderbolt devices in one go.
Something that can win against the last one is by far the Thunderbolt Go Dock which offers the same number of ports while having the ability to connect to a wall socket, functioning as a power passthrough so you can charge your laptop via the 90W USB-C port!
If you need something to help move files from your camera to your workstation at a moment’s notice, then there’s a dock with a CFexpress reader at the front to let you plug and play.
For the storage department, the multi-drive RAID bay Thunderbay 4 can take in 4 3.5/2.5-inch drives while the ThunderBay 8 does it at eight. All you need to do is to set them up in RAID, establish a Thunderbolt connection, then voila!
Moving the tier up once from the ThunderBay 8 is the ThunderBay Flex 8 which portrays itself almost like a PC but it’s not a super new idea in the market. The interesting part is it supports U.2 and M.2 drives and stripes them in RAID as well in addition to the PCIe expansion slot for all types of add-ons.
Video editors like you and me would hugely benefit from all of these things for current tasks and also archiving older content. There’s also an extra DisplayPort and Thunderbolt port allowing linking to other devices which is a cool bonus.
Need to pack a GPU on the go but don’t fancy the “gaming” offerings? Well, take a look at this AkiTio Node Titan enclosure featuring a handle that comes out with a single press and carries it around without being labeled as a “gamer”.
Of course, if you need some NAS to offload some media, there’s the Jupiter Mini running TrueNAS Core OS and openZFS with 2x 10GbE ports, with another being the Jellyfish Mobile for the easier plug-and-play experience as it can double as both an ingest station and transcoding machine through the Jellyfish Media Engine which is then managed through the Jellyfish Manager application.
Moving onto External SSDs, the Envoy Express is pretty straightforward in terms of function but it is designed to be able to attach to the back of a laptop so there’s no dangling happening.
The Envoy Pro FX, on the other hand, champions durability against dust, drop, and water (IP rating TBC) with the entire enclosure made out of aluminum. The side fins make sure the unit receives ample cooling too.
SD cards and CFexpress cards from the brand offering varying speeds can be paired with OWC’s own Innergize software for the best operating condition.
The card reader duo offers a wide variety of selections when it comes to ports but the idea is the same here – integrated cable under the unit with optional USB-C connection support. Additionally, the physical write protection lock can prevent some sneaky takeovers as well.
Lastly, the OWC Accelsior expansion cards. Created for Macs, the short boy can fit 4x M.2 SSDs while the long guy can take in 8 of them with no problem. Of course, RAID is an optional choice here for more speeds.
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