The small OWC Envoy Pro Mini is a compact USB stick, for all intents and purposes. Plug it into a port on your computer or iPad, and the stick instantly provides additional storage for your computer. What makes the OWC Envoy Mini more external drive than a USB Key is the capacity and transfer speeds on offer.
The design is really the only thing that reflects a traditional USB stick; and to that end, like a USB stick it’s very handy and portable. The full metal design means it can easily slip into a pocket or, using the lanyard, be attached to a bag or jacket zipper. What’s nice is that the size and weight mean there’s never any reason not to have it with you.
The mechanics of the design are also simple, with a small cap at the top protecting the USB Type-C connector and a pull-back and rotate bottom section enabling you to gain access to the USB Type-A connector. On the base is the activity light which flashes blue to show it’s connected and ready to go.
OWC are well experienced with drives and ease of use. When you first plug the drive, the OWC Drive Guide walks you through the set-up process. This highlights if you want to use the drive on Mac or Mac and PC systems, it also offers you a one-year subscription to the Acronis backup solution that enables cloud and local backup for the contents of the drive.
The process is extremely easy to follow and takes less than a minute. You can use Disk Utility or right-click on a PC, to reformat the drive at any point.
The big selling point aside from the huge capacity options is the speed, and here the small drive performs with the all-metal casing helping to keep the drive cool even when editing video.
Testing the drive under load and gained the following results utilising AJA System Test light:
Read: 871MB/s
Write: 731MB/s
