Oyen Digital U34 Bolt SSD evaluate – Monumental drive velocity in a rugged bundle – Uplaza

Oyen Digital U34 Bolt evaluate

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Oyen Digital is just not a kind of manufacturers on Amazon, with too many adjoining consonants making pronunciation unattainable. The corporate has been round, most likely with out you understanding about them, because the late FireWire days. They have been offering higher-end storage options since 2005 or so.

I’ve bought a number of of their merchandise in what appears like a previous life, whereas doing a job earlier than I went loud writing about issues like this, on the Web, publicly versus very privately. The label plates are all gone or pale, however they nonetheless work advantageous.

I’ve nonetheless acquired an enclosure or two of theirs which might be about 15 years previous kicking about, albeit off service, apart from very explicit wants that pop up once in a while.

And so they’re nonetheless going sturdy when these wants come up. Oyen Digital’s quiet and cost-effective excellence continues within the U34 Bolt exterior SSD.

The Oyen Digital U34 Bolt measures 4.5 inches by 2.7 inches and 0.75 inches thick, a bit on the chunky aspect. Most of this is because of heavy-duty building and the rubber sleeve designed to guard its contents.

At 8 ounces, it is also not mild for a transportable drive — however that is advantageous.

On the skin is a silicone sleeve that protects an inside aluminum core. Inside the primary enclosure is a silicone inlay meant to forestall additional shocks from drops and knocks.

Oyen Digital U34 Bolt evaluate – drive with out the bumper

With out the exterior sleeve, the primary core measures 4.35 inches by 2.56 inches by 0.67 inches.

It is constructed to MIL-Normal 810 specs, so it could deal with the occasional drop onto the ground. As with every shock-resistant piece of electronics, we do not advocate bouncing it off surfaces too usually, but it surely nonetheless offers a little bit of peace of thoughts {that a} informal fall will not shatter the drive or in any other case kill your knowledge.

In the meantime, the aluminum core helps handle drive thermals, permitting storage to run as cool and quick as doable.

At one finish, subsequent to an indicator LED, is a USB-C connector for USB4 connectivity. Meaning it could additionally work with Thunderbolt 3 hosts at as much as 40Gbps, in addition to USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 20 gigabits per second speeds on PC and Gen 2×1 10 gigabits per second on Mac, respectively.

However there is no motive to not use USB4/Thunderbolt on a brand new Mac.

Oyen Digital U34 Bolt evaluate – Thunderbolt port

Contained in the U34 Bolt’s aluminum core is an ASMedia ASM2464PD USB chipset and a Phison PS5018-E18 SSD controller, managing Triple Degree Cell (TLC) NAND Flash. The flash is paired with 2GB of RAM cache.

Out of the field, the drive is initially formatted in HFS+ for macOS, which is helpful for Mac customers who wish to shortly use the drive — however we nonetheless advocate APFS. Nonetheless, it may be reformatted to make use of exFAT if you wish to use it with each macOS and Home windows desktops.

In keeping with the corporate, the drive is able to knowledge switch speeds of as much as 2,800 megabits per second when below optimum situations. This implies using a Thunderbolt or USB4 connection and guaranteeing that the Mac or PC used is quick sufficient.

Oyen sells the U34 Bolt in 4TB and 8TB capacities. They supplied AppleInsider with the 8TB mannequin for evaluate.

We’re accustomed to the two,800 megabytes per second claims for efficiency. It is a fairly commonplace quantity and has extra to do with PCI-E allocation in Thunderbolt than anything.

Some drives beat the quantity, however most fall brief.

The Oyen Digital U34 Bolt fortunately exceeds that quantity. We routinely hit peak switch speeds of greater than 3,000 megabytes per second learn and 2650 megabytes per second on my Mac Studio and M3 MacBook Air that I used for testing.

Half-hour knowledge transfers noticed no dramatic drops in velocity. That is possible due to the velocity of the media and the PCI-E 4 succesful NVMe media in an enclosure that simply cannot hit these speeds.

Unusually, although, USB4 speeds on Home windows are completely different. With write caching on or off USB4, we acquired about half the Thunderbolt speeds, though Home windows reported a full 40-gigabit USB4 connection.

On an precise Thunderbolt port on Home windows, although, we noticed about the identical outcomes as we acquired on our Macs.

We do not assume this has something to do with Oyen Digital’s engineering decisions or design. This appears like Home windows shenanigans greater than anything — however we’ll control it.

The enclosure itself is the warmth sink for the drive. After utilizing the drive as a boot quantity for an Apple Silicon M2 Mac mini for 4 consecutive days of runtime shifting recordsdata and enjoying two 4K movies concurrently and always, the exterior case was 25C in a 21C workplace house.

Unusually, after my previous few storage critiques, I acquired requested about case noise greater than as soon as. Not coil whine, which you shouldn’t get with a well-engineered enclosure and bridge board, however particularly mechanical noise.

It is a curious request, as I have been clear concerning the lack of followers, and there’s no drive chatter such as you get with spinning metallic drives.

So, the case is quieter than any surroundings you would be working in with it. Why this must be mentioned, I am not completely positive, however right here we’re anyway.

Anyhow, the drive runs cool and maintains velocity over time. What’s to not like?

The worth of the 8TB drive is $1,099 at full retail. That is expensive, but it surely’s nonetheless within the ballpark of the remainder of the market.

For instance, the Oyen Digital E18-8TBICS5 is a single-drive 8TB NVMe M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 drive, which prices about $850 by itself. This makes the drive enclosure and further safety value round $150 further, commensurate with “build your own” pricing.

Oyen Digital U34 Bolt evaluate – reviewer’s hand for scale

OWC’s 8TB Categorical 1M2 drive is a comparative product and retails for $1297. It, too, is a superb drive from a wonderful vendor — however the associated fee distinction is obvious.

And, as you’d count on, it really works advantageous with a USB-C iPhone. Slap a kind of MagSafe wall-mount stickers on the drive, get a brief cable, and also you’re good to go to shoot ProRes footage for a really very long time.

Flash media is a commodity, with all that entails, from a monetary and shopper perspective. In the summertime of July 2024, we have heard rumblings of manufacturing adjustments, which is able to convey corresponding value will increase on SSDs and so forth, as we do not count on producers to tolerate slicing close to non-existent revenue margins to maintain costs static.

So, for those who’re on the lookout for large exterior SSDs, now’s the time, I believe. The Oyen Digital U34 Bolt is an efficient alternative and a very good worth.

• Glorious speeds, routinely greater than promised by the seller
• About the very best value doable for an exterior 8TB SSD

• Irrespective of how you narrow it, 8TB of high-speed SSD storage is costly
• Unusual outcomes with USB4 on Home windows — however for those who’re studying this, it could not matter to you

Oyen U34 Bolt Thunderbolt 4 SSD evaluate — Rating 4.5 out of 5

Oyen’s U34 Bolt Moveable SSD is obtainable in two capacities — 4TB and 8TB — with retail costs ringing in at $529 and $1,099, respectively. You possibly can decide up both model at Amazon and B&H Photograph, although the retailers are working a sale on the 4TB capability at press time, making it a extra reasonably priced possibility at $459.