OWC Envoy Pro EX Thunderbolt 3

£260/$300 (1TB) www.owcdigital.com

With its removable rubberised bumper and bombproof build quality, it’s no surprise that the rock-solid Envoy Pro EX boasts military-grade MIL-STD810G drop protection. However, all this ruggedness does have a downside: bulk. At 145 x 74 x 23mm and 300g with the bumper in place, this drive is gargantuan next to its fellow competitors on test.

CrystalDiskMark gets things off to a good start with stunning peak sequential read/write speeds of 1,440/726MBps respectively. Real-world file transfers will always be slower than a synthetic benchmark test, but we still recorded a hugely impressive 995MBps peak read speed when shifting one massive video file; this figure did drop as the transfer progressed, leaving the final averaged video read speed at a more modest – though still rapid – 645MBps.

An average 612MBps read speed moving multiple image files is also superb, though the write speeds in our tests take a significant performance hit, with an average 481MBps while writing video and just 278MBps while writing multiple images. PROS Stunning read speeds; military-grade shock proofing; class-leading build quality CONS Write speeds are disappointingly average; huge and heavy