OWC Announces Industry’s First High-Performance SSD and Enclosure Bundle for MacBook Air

Scot Strong July 2, 2012 6 Comments

Other World Computing (OWC) has announced the release of the OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express / Mercury Aura Envoy as the industry’s first high-performance Solid State Drive upgrade and bus-powered enclosure bundle for 2010-2011 MacBook Air computers.  OWC is referring to this as a “Dream Team” of performance and convenience.  The Mercury Aura Bundle includes a Mercury Aura Pro Express SSD; offering nearly 8X the factory maximum storage capacity and data rate speeds up to and exceeding 500 MB/sec.  This represents up to 68% faster real-world speed than the factory Flash SSD.  After the Mercury Aura Pro Express is installed in the MacBook Air, that factory SSD easily converts into an external storage solution inside the Mercury Aura Envoy enclosure to complete the two-in-one storage upgrade.

By combining proven SandForce technology and Tier 1/Grade A NAND, Mercury Aura Pro Express SSDs exceed the factory SSDs in both speed and capacity.  These new SSDs are available in both 3GB/sec versions for the 2010 MacBook Air models, and in 6 GB/sec versions for the 2011 MacBook Air models. Each version is available in up to 480GB capacities for up to 8x the storage capacity of the original factory SSDs.

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What make this product really unique is re-tasking the original factory SSD as a new external drive!  After watching the free OWC video on how to install the Mercury Aura Pro Express in 15 minutes, MacBook Air owners are then instructed on how to re-task the factory SSD as a high-performance external drive using the Mercury Aura Envoy enclosure.   The Envoy is the industry’s only bus-powered (no AC adapter required)  external drive that is designed specifically for the MacBook Air.  The Envoy features a tapered, 1.5 ounce aluminum housing that nicely complements the MacBook Air’s unique shape.  The Envoy utilizes a USB 3.0 interface to achieve real-world data rates of over 200 MB/sec with the original MacBook Air SSD — great for high-speed, portable backup and file storage; not to mention on-the-go enjoyment of videos, movies, or music.

There are seven bundles available starting at $199.99 MSRP:

The Mercury Aura Envoy is also available to purchase separately for an MSRP of $47.99 as a 0GB enclosure only, for other external application requirements that would benefit from external accessibility to Apple’s 2010 and 2011 MBA SSD modules.  A version for the 2012 MacBook Air models is planned for future release.

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According to Larry O’Connor, Founder and CEO of Other World Computing, “The Mercury Aura Bundle continues our streak of first-to-market with performance upgrades for the MacBook Air. This potent, two-upgrades-in-one “dream team” solution truly takes 2010 and 2011 MacBook Air machines to new levels of performance, convenience, and flexibility.”

The complete press release is available here; while the product page can be viewed here.

6 comments

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    john
    July 7, 2012 at 1:01 pm

    is this the same as the macbook pro retina sdd?

    Reply
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      Les@TheSSDReview
      July 7, 2012 at 2:14 pm

      Although both may be SandForce, that is as far as it would go because the OWC form factor is good for 2010-11 Macs, whereas, the new 2012 Macs have a different interface that is completely proprietary to just this Mac Series. They cannot be interchanged from 2010 to 2012 Mac.

      Reply
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      renosablast
      July 8, 2012 at 5:45 am

      OWC indicated that a separate version for the 2012 models is under development.

      Reply
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    Adam
    July 8, 2012 at 1:08 am

    Is this compatible with a 2011 Macbook Pro?

    Reply

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