Hot on the heals of my USB 4 overview video we take a look at an Orico USB 4 drive that supports the new Thunderbolt derived 40 gbps mode. You can watch the video here.
If the artwork looks familiar it’s because it’s based on the artist Piet Mondrian‘s work which has found its way into a variety of products from handbags to furniture.
The drive incorporates an NVME SSD that can take full advantage of the Thunderbolt data bandwidth, delivering north of two gigabytes per second of read and write performance. There doesn’t seem to be any noticeable thermal throttling either even when under load for an extended period of time.
On a Thunderbolt equipped PC or Mac it will appear as a Thunderbolt drive. On Windows you will also need to enable write caching to get its full performance potential. When activating that option be sure to eject the drive properly through the Windows interface before physically removing it to prevent data loss and corruption.
Unfortunately all of this performance comes at a high cost: $349 for the 1TB version and $599 for the 2TB. You can actually build your own version of this using an Orico USB 4 enclosure for less money.
While the drive is backwards compatible with USB 3.x equipped computers the performance will be no different versus other lower cost USB portable SSDs. Also of note is that the USB 4 standard does not require manufacturers offer the 40 gigabit speed option – only the 20 gigabit speed is required to meet the standard. We talk more about the confusing mess that is modern USB in this video.