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 - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here. As with the ATSB Heavy test, this test is run with the drive both freshly erased and empty, and after filling the drive with sequential writes.
On the Light test, the OWC Aura Pro X2 again performs more like an entry-level NVMe SSD, but unlike the Heavy test there isn't a big gap between tiers of NVMe SSDs. The Aura Pro X2 clearly outperforms the older Apple SSD, even in the worst-case scenario of a full drive.
The average latency of the Aura Pro X2 during the Light test is a bit worse than most high-end NVMe SSDs, but isn't high enough to worry about. The 99th percentile latency is rather high for the worst-case test run on a full drive, but this 2ms is only marginally slower than the old Apple drive and is not even the worst we've seen from a SM2262EN drive.
The average read latencies for the Aura Pro X2 on the Light test are competitive with high-end M.2 NVMe drives, though the latency for the full-drive test run is a bit high. The average write latency is clearly higher than typical for high-end NVMe drives, whether the test is run on a full or empty drive.
The high-end NVMe drives almost all have extremely low 99th percentile write latencies on the Light test, and the Aura Pro X2 can't match that performance even when the test is run on an empty drive. For reads, the 99th percentile latency is competitive when the test is run on an empty drive, and is on par with the old Apple SSD when full.
The OWC Aura Pro X2 saves a lot of power relative to the old Apple SSD or the fastest current NVMe SSDs. It doesn't quite match the WD Black SN750's efficiency, but it's better than we expected from a drive with the SM2262EN controller.
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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.