OWC has long been a staple for professional-grade storage solutions, and their latest announcement sees them jumping straight into the next generation of connectivity. The new OWC Express 4M2 Ultra is a compact DIY NVMe RAID enclosure designed specifically to utilise the massive bandwidth offered by Thunderbolt 5. By moving to this newer standard, the enclosure aims to eliminate the bottlenecks often found in high-end video editing and data-heavy workflows.
The unit is built for flexibility, allowing users to choose their own internal storage. It supports up to four M.2 NVMe SSDs, accommodating both 2280 and 2242 form factors. For those who need serious scale, the enclosure is designed to be daisy-chained, meaning you can link multiple units together to form a single, massive volume without a significant hit to transfer speeds.
Larry O’Connor, Founder and CEO of Other World Computing (OWC), commented on the launch:
“The OWC Express 4M2 Ultra is the fastest compact DIY NVMe RAID. Period. Thunderbolt 5 unlocks extraordinary bandwidth, and we designed this enclosure to let professionals harness every bit of it using the drives they trust and the RAID configuration their workflow demands. Thunderbolt 5. Your drives… your RAID… it’s about putting complete control, maximum performance, and future-ready scalability into a single compact solution.”
The OWC Express 4M2 Ultra offers a robust set of features for power users, including advanced thermal management and extensive RAID support:
- Real-World Performance: Achieves speeds up to 6622 MB/s via Thunderbolt 5 for 8K+ video workflows.
- Drive Compatibility: Supports four M.2 2280 or 2242 NVMe SSDs.
- RAID Support: Compatible with RAID 0/1/4/5/10/JBOD through SoftRAID or other RAID utilities.
- High Capacity: Supports up to 32 TB of internal storage in a compact desktop footprint.
- Expandability: Includes a second Thunderbolt port to daisy-chain up to five additional Thunderbolt devices.
- Thermal Design: Aircraft-grade aluminium housing with an adaptive fan for quiet cooling.
- Universal Compatibility: Works with Thunderbolt 5, 4, and USB4 on Macs and PCs, as well as Thunderbolt 3 Macs.
Where to Buy
The OWC Express 4M2 Ultra is available for pre-order now and is scheduled to begin shipping in Q3 of 2026. The enclosure is priced at $399.99 for the standard model, while the version including the SoftRAID software license is priced at $549.99.
