Oyen Digital U34 Bolt SSD evaluation

Oyen Digital U34 Bolt evaluation

Oyen Digital isn’t a type of manufacturers on Amazon, with too many adjoining consonants making pronunciation unattainable. The corporate has been round, in all probability with out you realizing about them, for the reason that late FireWire days. They have been offering higher-end storage options since 2005 or so.

I’ve bought a couple of of their merchandise in what looks 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 tremendous.

I’ve nonetheless obtained an enclosure or two of theirs which are about 15 years outdated kicking about, albeit off service, apart from very specific wants that pop up once in a while.

They usually’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 facet. Most of this is because of heavy-duty development and the rubber sleeve designed to guard its contents.

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

On the surface 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 evaluation – 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-Commonplace 810 specs, so it will possibly deal with the occasional drop onto the ground. As with every shock-resistant piece of electronics, we do not suggest bouncing it off surfaces too typically, nevertheless it 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. Which means it will possibly 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 not any motive to not use USB4/Thunderbolt on a brand new Mac.

Oyen Digital U34 Bolt evaluation – 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 Stage 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 suggest APFS. Nevertheless, it may be reformatted to make use of exFAT if you wish to use it with each macOS and Home windows desktops.

In line with the corporate, the drive is able to knowledge switch speeds of as much as 2,800 megabits per second when beneath optimum circumstances. 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 offered AppleInsider with the 8TB mannequin for evaluation.

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

Some drives beat the quantity, however most fall quick.

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 seemingly 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 totally different. With write caching on or off USB4, we obtained about half the Thunderbolt speeds, although 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 obtained on our Macs.

We do not suppose this has something to do with Oyen Digital’s engineering selections or design. This looks like Home windows shenanigans greater than the rest — 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 transferring recordsdata and taking part in two 4K movies concurrently and continually, the exterior case was 25C in a 21C workplace house.

Unusually, after my previous couple of storage opinions, I obtained 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.

This can be a curious request, as I have been clear in regards to 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 atmosphere you would be working in with it. Why this must be stated, I am not completely positive, however right here we’re anyway.

In any case, 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, nevertheless it’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 price round $150 further, commensurate with “construct your personal” pricing.

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

OWC’s 8TB Specific 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 evident.

And, as you’d count on, it really works tremendous with a USB-C iPhone. Slap a type 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 client perspective. In the summertime of July 2024, we have heard rumblings of manufacturing adjustments, which can convey corresponding worth 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 in search of massive exterior SSDs, now’s the time, I feel. The Oyen Digital U34 Bolt is an effective selection and a very good worth.

• Glorious speeds, routinely greater than promised by the seller
• About the perfect worth doable for an exterior 8TB SSD

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

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

Oyen’s U34 Bolt Moveable SSD is offered 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 Picture, although the retailers are working a sale on the 4TB capability at press time, making it a extra inexpensive choice at $459.