OWC has announced that it will be debuting a range of new Thunderbolt 3 products at the 2017 NAB Show this weekend in Las Vegas.

Envoy Pro EX Thunderbolt 3

Envoy Pro EX with Thunderbolt 3

First up is the Envoy Pro EX, a pocket-sized, bus-powered SSD with Thunderbolt 3. Storage capacities will start at 240GB. As it remains a prototype, no release date was specified. OWC's existing Envoy Pro EX with USB 3.0 starts at $199.99.

Helios 3

Mercury Helios 3

OWC's new Mercury Helios 3 is a PCIe expansion chassis with a dedicated cooling fan and two Thunderbolt 3 ports. It can accommodate a half-length, full-height, double-width PCIe card. OWC said it will be available in the second quarter of 2017. Pricing was not disclosed.

Other products include the Helios FX external GPU powered by Thunderbolt 3, ThunderBay 6 six-bay RAID with Thunderbolt 3, and Mercury Viper portable Thunderbolt 3 SSD suitable for daisy chaining. OWC said the ThunderBay 6 is coming in late 2017, but no word on pricing or availability for the other products.

Helios FX
OWC's previously announced Thunderbolt 3 Dock and DEC for the 2016 MacBook Pro will also be on display at the show.

Tags: OWC, Thunderbolt 3

Top Rated Comments

H3LL5P4WN Avatar
H3LL5P4WN
113 months ago
"Other products include the Helios FX external GPU powered by Thunderbolt 3..."

Why is the most important announcement here barely a footnote?
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
OldSchoolMacGuy Avatar
OldSchoolMacGuy
113 months ago
Love OWC and have been a friend of Larry for more than 20 years, but I feel like they do more announcing of products than actual releasing of them.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
justperry Avatar
justperry
113 months ago
Wow, SSDs with speeds up to 40GB/s. Thats almost twice the speed of the RAM. Not bad!
Gb/s, not GB/s.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
justperry Avatar
justperry
113 months ago


First up is the Envoy Pro EX with Thunderbolt 3, a pocket-sized, bus-powered SSD with desktop-class performance and speeds up to 40 Gb/s. Storage capacities will start at 240GB. As it remains a prototype, no release date was specified. OWC's existing Envoy Pro EX with USB 3.0 ('https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/ENVPROU3S240/') starts at $199.99.
I can tell you this, it won't be 40Gb/s, there are no SSD's with that speed, the bus (Thunderbolt 3) has the bandwidth but that's just it.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MikhailT Avatar
MikhailT
113 months ago
One thing I don't like about OWC is that they list the throughput of the connection to tell you what speeds you can get... which is total BS. Sure TB 3 can do 40 Gb/s but an SSD can't. Not even freaking close. At best its shady marketing, at worst its an out right lie. Stupid things like this have kept my money in my pocket when it comes to OWC.
While I agree with you that it is marketing BS on OCW side for their own SSDs and their SSDs aren't going to be doing 40GBps, you are incorrect that an SSD can't do it. Sure, it can. Kingston has an upcoming data center SSD that can push nearly ~7GBps. ('http://www.thessdreview.com/featured/kingston-dcp1000-nvme-ssd-reaches-7gbs-worlds-fastest/')

40Gbps TB3 is around ~5GBps but less than that due to overhead.

Last year's Samsung 960 Pro PCIe SSD can do about 2GBps. Put 2 of them in Mercury Helios 3 with two PCIe slots and you can get it close enough to the max TB3 speed.

Intel's Optane SSD today ('http://www.anandtech.com/show/11209/intel-optane-ssd-dc-p4800x-review-a-deep-dive-into-3d-xpoint-enterprise-performance/2') is already doing 2GBps at low depth and that's just the first-gen.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
brentsg Avatar
brentsg
113 months ago
I can't believe we haven't seen any Thunderbolt 3 docks with Thunderbolt 2 ports on them. The new stuff is great, but many of us still have TB2 products in use.

Yeah I know Apple made adapters, but I'm having to move away from OSX sadly.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Read All Comments

Popular Stories

Apple Logo Top Half

Early iOS 26 Software Leak Uncovers Dozens of Upcoming Apple Features

Monday December 15, 2025 3:05 pm PST by
Software from an iPhone prototype running an early build of iOS 26 leaked last week, giving us a glimpse at future Apple devices and iOS features. We recapped device codenames in our prior article, and now we have a list of some of the most notable feature flags that were found in the software code. In some cases, it's obvious what the feature flags are referring to, while some are more...
Read Full Article • 36 comments
apple beta 26 lineup

Apple Leak Confirms Work on Foldable iPhone, AirTag 2, and Dozens More Devices

Monday December 15, 2025 2:05 pm PST by
Last week, details about unreleased Apple devices and future iOS features were shared by Macworld. This week, we learned where the information came from, plus we have more findings from the leak. As it turns out, an Apple prototype device running an early build of iOS 26 was sold, and the person who bought it shared the software. The OS has a version number of 23A5234w, and the first...
Read Full Article • 79 comments
iPhone Top Left Hole Punch Face ID Feature Purple

iPhone 18 Pro Features Leaked in New Report, Including Under-Screen Face ID

Tuesday December 16, 2025 8:44 am PST by
Next year's iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max will be equipped with under-screen Face ID, and the front camera will be moved to the top-left corner of the screen, according to a new report from The Information's Wayne Ma and Qianer Liu. As a result of these changes, the report said the iPhone 18 Pro models will not have a pill-shaped Dynamic Island cutout at the top of the screen....
Read Full Article • 60 comments
iOS 26

iOS 26.3 Beta 1 Features: What's New So Far

Monday December 15, 2025 4:23 pm PST by
Apple is testing iOS 26.3, the next version of iOS 26 that will launch around January. Since iOS 26.3's testing is happening over the holidays, it is a smaller update with fewer features than we've seen in prior betas. We've rounded up what's new so far, and we'll add to our list with subsequent betas if we come across any other features. Transfer to Android Apple is making it simpler...
Read Full Article • 45 comments
Apple Foldable Thumb

Leak Reveals Foldable iPhone Details

Monday December 15, 2025 9:09 am PST by
The first foldable iPhone will feature a series of design and hardware firsts for Apple, according to details shared by the Weibo leaker known as Digital Chat Station. According to a new post, via machine translation, Apple is developing what the leaker describes as a "wide foldable" device, a term used to refer to a horizontally oriented, book-style foldable with a large internal display....
Read Full Article • 158 comments
iOS 26

iOS 26.4 and iOS 27 Features Revealed in New Leak

Friday December 12, 2025 10:56 am PST by
Macworld's Filipe Espósito today revealed a handful of features that Apple is allegedly planning for iOS 26.4, iOS 27, and even iOS 28. The report said the features are referenced within the code for a leaked internal build of iOS 26 that is not meant to be seen by the public. However, it appears that Espósito and/or his sources managed to gain access to it, providing us with a sneak peek...
Read Full Article • 90 comments
apple iphone air battery pack

Apple Aims to Boost Popularity of iPhone Air 2 in Two Ways

Tuesday December 16, 2025 11:06 am PST by
We have been covering iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 17e, and iPhone Fold details from The Information's report about future iPhone models, and next up is the iPhone Air 2. The report says that Apple aims to make the iPhone Air 2 more attractive in two ways. First, Apple is apparently considering adding a second rear camera to the device, which would resolve a key limitation. The current iPhone...
Read Full Article • 108 comments
airpods max 2024 colors

AirPods Max 2 Likely to Offer These 10 New Features

Monday December 15, 2025 7:41 am PST by
Apple released the AirPods Max on December 15, 2020, meaning the over-ear headphones launched five years ago today. While the AirPods Max were updated with a USB-C port and new color options last year, followed by support for lossless audio and ultra-low latency audio this year, the headphones lack some of the features that have been introduced for newer generations of the regular AirPods and the ...
Read Full Article • 36 comments
maxresdefault

Apple Developing iMac Pro With M5 Max Chip

Tuesday December 16, 2025 7:30 am PST by
Apple is developing a high-end iMac featuring the M5 Max chip, according to information from leaked internal software. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. The finding comes from leaked kernel debug kit files used by Apple engineers. These kernel debug kit files enumerate unreleased Apple hardware by internal identifiers, such as codenames and platform names, and they...
Read Full Article • 167 comments