The SSD Review The Worlds Dedicated SSD Education and Review Resource | 
REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
It’s no exaggeration when we describe receiving countless requests for assistance with respect to mid-2013 MacBook upgrades, all of which resulted in a great deal of frustration to Apple owners. There was no upgrade. This is the downfall of Apple where they want to hold their hardware within their grasps for the sake of revenue, even if it means loss of reputation, and even customers. We believe that Apple could build their systems with today’s standard NVMe protocol, allowing for the swapping of the SSD with that of many 3rd party manufacturers, and still see profits while increasing their reputation substantially. That wasn’t the case with the mid-2013 MBA and still isn’t the case today,
A great deal of credit has to be afforded OWC because the time and effort it takes to provide for a specific segment of Mac owners such as the owners of mid-2013 MacBooks and later, comes with a great deal of financial risk in the products development. They are the only to have this solution and we hope that it fares well for OWC.
Up until this report, the decision to upgrade or replace was a personal issue for me, my admiration for this particular build admittedly being the reason I haven’t bought another. That point of frustration, however, was there as I had to watch my storage capacity continually, constantly removing chunks of files while attending tech events where this MBA has always seen the most use. Having a 1TB SSD in it today, along with an external drive, is a very good feeling indeed.
Ultimately, OWC has opened the market to countless very frustrated Apple customers with a high performing SSD at a decent price and one that has a decent warranty. By also including the upgrade kit, they have enabled complete migration, data transfer and later storage through the original Apple SSD. Complete this with amazing customer support, along with very detailed instructions and videos that demonstrate that anyone can complete this task quickly and easily, and we have a very deserving recipient of our Editor’s Choice!
Check out Aura pricing at OWC or at Amazon
today!
Finally! But … its also worth noting that you can get affordable original Samsung, Toshiba and SanDisk MBA compliant SSD sticks on AliExpress these days. 256GB for less than $400 including free shipping worldwide. 1TB approx $800. Or buy them in bulk at Alibaba for even better prices (taxes and customs not included though).
Yes that is true but, even on Alibaba the price for same capacity is higher and without the comfort of that support and warranty. Thanks!
Still a bit wary of any drive that uses RAID0 internally.
Exactly. If one drive or the controller fails, all is lost. Not good.
We speak as if a RAID volume is something new…. lol. I wouldn’t hesitate to run any system with this, keeping in mind the same safeguarding of data as should be considered for any system.
In fact, it is the main drive of my MBA right now so I guess that speaks volumes in itself.
Whether it’s new or old technology is irrelevant.
The question, as the parent commenter put it, is whether this makes it doubly likely for the drive to go crap itself.
> In fact, it is the main drive of my MBA right now so I guess that speaks volumes in itself.
No, it doesn’t say anything to answer the question really.
A drive with twice the error rate or half the self life as another can very well be the main drive to a laptop.
That doesn’t change its shortcomings.
Not does the fact that we should backup our stuff anyway changes the fact that a drive that is more likely to fail than another is still problematic.
Transend makes an SSD for my MBP 10,1 early 2013. So OWC is not the only player in town. I’d like to see a review of that drive on here as well.
Yes this is a 6,2 replacement which I am not aware of Transcend having out just yet. I could be wrong but haven’t seen it….hence the mid-2013 and later notation. We are always here to review all that comes along though! Tx!
You mentioned 960GB formatted capacity but looking at the QuickBench images it says Volume Size 893GB which jives with OWC’s own stated spec of formatted capacity of 894GB. Which is it? And if it is the lower that’s a hefty hit of over 10%. 894GB of usable capacity for something marketed as a 1TB drive? That’s pushing it.
There was an err in the report which has been amended and you are correct; it is 893GB formatted. I also understand your thoughts on this available volume being a bit short to advertise as a 1TB drive, however this is the industry norm and has been since SSDs were first released. I don’t think you can find a single report that we have ever done where the advertised capacity matches that of the final formatted volume. For the most part, advertised volumes follow the volume before formatting, and even follow that of the total RAW memory volume in many cases.
You mentioned that Boot Camp is not supported for these drives yet OWC shows a Dual Boot Enabler for Apple Boot Camp on there site. Any explanation to this? I really need to have a dual boot system on my Mac.
This was released after our report.
This review should be updated to note that the OWC Aura SSD product line does not allow updating some Apple laptops to High Sierra without doing a one-time reinstallation of the original OEM Apple SSD. See the blog at OWC’s site for details. OWC has not as yet updated their Aura Pro product description, which still says “Supported on all macOS versions, including macOS 10.13 High Sierra.”.