The OWC Aura Pro X2 SSD Review: An NVMe Upgrade For Older Macs
by Billy Tallis on June 5, 2019 10:15 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test. These AnandTech Storage Bench (ATSB) tests do not involve running the actual applications that generated the workloads, so the scores are relatively insensitive to changes in CPU performance and RAM from our new testbed, but the jump to a newer version of Windows and the newer storage drivers can have an impact.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, the average latency of the I/O operations, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
The OWC Aura Pro X2 performs about the same on The Destroyer as the other SM2262EN-based drive, the HP EX950. These are both fairly slow compared to other current high-end NVMe SSDs, but almost twice as fast as the early Apple PCIe SSD.
The average latency for the Aura Pro X2 on The Destroyer is in line with expectations, but the 99th percentile latency is far higher than the HP EX950 and the older Apple SSD.
The OWC Aura Pro X2 shows more differences from the other SM2262EN drive when the average latency is broken down by reads and writes. For reads, the OWC drive is significantly faster than the HP EX950 and is comparable to the Phison E12-based Silicon Power drive. For writes, the OWC is slower than the EX950 but still well ahead of the Apple SSD and the current entry-level NVMe drives.
The 99th percentile read latency of the Aura Pro X2 on The Destroyer is competitive with other current high-end NVMe drives, but the 99th percentile write latency is a problem: it's a bit worse than the MLC-based Apple SSD, and several times higher than the best current TLC drives.
The OWC Aura Pro X2 is more power efficient than expected, using less energy to complete The Destroyer than most other drives in this batch, while the Apple SSD and the HP EX950 are some of the most power-hungry under load.
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Samus - Thursday, June 6, 2019 - link
I installed an Aura N 1TB SSD in a 2014 Macbook Pro just a few days ago for a customer. Went off without a hitch, booted from a Time Machine backup and did a restore without an issue. Now what to do with the old 128GB SSD that's basically useless...MamiyaOtaru - Thursday, June 6, 2019 - link
that's what the case they also sell is for. Turn it into a turbocharged thumb drive.tipoo - Friday, June 7, 2019 - link
I'd still be really curious to see a T2 mac put through these tests. Prior to it at least, Apple SSDs were good at sequential reads and writes but fell lower than the competition on 4K random and mixed loads, I'd be curious how one given such a powerful controller would do.nfriedly - Saturday, June 8, 2019 - link
I tried twice to upgrade my wife's 2014 MacBook SSD. First with an OWC drive, and second with a Samsung 970 and an adapter. The OWC one would often crash the MacBook when waking from sleep. The Samsung one would crash it while she was using it. E.g. launching a program would cause it to freeze and then reboot. I gave up and put her apple SSD back in.Oxford Guy - Friday, June 14, 2019 - link
Was it an OWC made specifically for this purpose? If so, then it should have worked.As for the Samsung, there are drives that have better reputations for Mac compatibility. Look at the link in the comments here and read that carefully.
leexgx - Monday, June 17, 2019 - link
OWC does not support the sleep states correctly they have never corrected thiswitch is stupid as the point of OWC ssds is for mac compatibility and faking official apple SSD to automatically enable trim support out of the box
Rene23 - Wednesday, June 19, 2019 - link
I would not buy such special / proprietary SSDs, and instead just go the dapper dongle route, more choice, more flexibility, ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QGO9XJY60sSandris - Saturday, June 22, 2019 - link
Just bought and install OWC Auro Pro X2 SSD for my MacBook Air 6.2 as I really trusted OWC, but find out that there are issues with sleep mode and this issue could not be solved. As per OWC technical support, the solution is to ship back OWC Aura Pro X2 SSD to OWC and cover all costs, if I do not like loose Sleep functionality of my MacBook. No disclaimers on OWC web on technical incompatibility with MacBook Air 6.2.ttot - Saturday, August 10, 2019 - link
Really wishing for a Transcend Jetdrive 850 comparison as this seems to be the only (adapter-less) competitor. Additionally, what about plate-less adapters? Are those too bulky too?jimmarz - Friday, March 27, 2020 - link
There are a lot of problems with the Aura Pro X2. I bought a computer from OWC with their drive installed. I have had nothing but problems with it and keep getting EFI Check dumps. OWC refused to acknowledge there was even a hardware issue. Even after I shipped it back to them! I wasted tens of hours troubleshooting, formatting and re-installing the OS etc. at OWC urging. Finally I sent the machine to Apple and sure enough they flagged the SSD as the problem. Spend your money on something else. There are literally hundreds of complaints on Yelp about OWC and these drives.