Oyen Digital U34 Bolt 2TB USB4 (40Gbps) NVMe Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) Portable SSD

I never write reviews but had such a pleasant experience with this. It feels super high quality, the capacity is *real*, it functions perfectly, and the value is really strong compared to what else is out there especially the big brands. I felt it was putting my M4’s ports to waste if I didn’t get something like this, and am so glad I did. I also thought it was thoughtful it came formatted HFS+ instead of APFS, for a reason they helpfully explain in an included leaflet: Apple has done a poor job with recovery mechanisms if something goes wrong. fsck commands are more capable in HFS+, and APFS rescue can be really tricky. Of course you’re able to instantly erase and reformat as APFS if you’d like (I have and it’s divine), but this was a kind precaution for the user who has no idea what any idea of this is. I had the LG Ultra 5K Unfines and those really slow down since they’re not true TB in the back ports; if you plug directly into your Mac’s IO ports the speed was rating at 35gbps. I also emailed support to see if they were real, and they passed the test. Go for it! My name is Sam, I am a real human that lives in NYC, I did not use AI to type this, I was not compensated for this review (there was a notecard that said they’d appreciate a review in the product, fine by me 👍🏼), and like any storage device always regret not buying a larger one 🙃

Here are performance tests of (a) this product, (b) mac mini m4 internal hard drive, (c) external 2.5" mechanical hard drive from a few years ago via USB-C. As you can see this external NVME drive is faster than even the internal drive, and 50x faster than a mechanical drive. I bought this specifically to use with the base Mac Mini m4 with its very small internal storage. Initially I tried a mechanical drive to see if I could manage. But it was absymally slow trying to manage my photo library on it. And I bought the Mac because I wanted to use its AI to catalog the people in my photos. I did not find a user friendly, accurate Windows software for this to use on my gaming PC. So decided to buy a mac.

Why did you pick this product vs others?: RIDICULOUSLY FAST! For windows users (like me) DONT freak out when it doesn't work out of the box. Look at the little card it comes with, format for your need as it describes, and you are good to go. I edit on windows and Mac, so needed something fast that would work with both machines.

I have the 2tb version and it's connected to the thunderbolt port of a mac mini M4 pro. Photo of the speed test attached, because I would not have believe it. Insane. This thing is ridiculously fast. Definitely pro level on a budget and most certainly worth the money. Yes, a T7 will give you amazing everyday speeds and yes, it's ALL dependent on the connection and the OS speed, but if you want blazing, future proof speed, this is it.

It’s speed and performance was a nice surprise. I would buy other products from this brand in the future.