Note: This article was first published on 22 August 2025.
OWC has unveiled a new portable drive to add to its lineup of storage solutions, called the Express 1M2 80G. This is the successor of the original Express 1M2, which also supported USB4, but doubles the speed of its predecessor with a maximum transfer rate of 80Gb/s.
In terms of real-world performance, that translates to a transfer speed of around 6000MB/s; OWC’s benchmarks suggest a maximum of 6362MB/s for reading and 5638MB/s for writing.
The Express 1M2 80G features a heat-dissipating aluminum heatsink, and a single Type-C port capable of USB4.
These speeds are for the SSDs that come pre-installed the Express 1M2 80G, which come in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB capacities. However you can also get the Express 1M2 80G as a standalone DIY enclosure, without an SSD included.
This is especially handy if you already have a faster M.2 SSD on hand, as the Express 1M2 80G supports 2280 and 2242 NVMe M.2 SSDs - the standard form factors for modern internal SSDs used on various modern systems these days. OWC says that, regardless of whether you opt for a model with an SSD pre-installed or just the DIY enclosure, the Express 1M2 80G remains easily upgradable.
Outside of USB4, the Express 1M2 80G supports Thunderbolt 5, which achieves the same 6000MB/s speeds. The drive also works with certain hosts that only support sub-USB4 speeds, including Thunderbolt 4 and Thunderbolt 3 (Mac only for the latter).
Speeds will be mostly halved for the older Thunderbolt standards, though, and unlike the original Express 1M2, there doesn’t appear to be backwards compatibility with USB 3.0 or 3.2 standards.
Finally, the Express 1M2 80G works as a plug-and-play drive, as it requires no drivers and is bus-powered.
Pricing and Availability
There’s no word yet on local availability, but we do have the US pricing for the Express 1M2 80G:
- Enclosure-only - US$219
- 1TB - US$349
- 2TB - US$499
- 4TB - US$699
- 8TB - US$1,299