Thunderbolt 5 coupled with an OWC Envoy Ultra SSD External Drive is the fasted external storage available for the M4 Pro Mac Mini. I am seeing sustained Write speeds of 5,500 MB/s and Read speeds of 5,000 MB/s, which is is the same ballpark as the internal SSD drive.
People usually use MacBooks for more than 5 years Go back 5 years ago and compare USB 3.0 to Thunderbolt 4 nowadays! And in 5 years from now you will come back to this video and laugh at this conclusion! Thunderbolt 5 is necessary for next years
This. Not much supporting T5 so overstated spec? Except in the not so distant future this will be the standard. Don’t really get it. *also fyi Apple actually first introduced thunderbolt in 2013 with T2.
Alway plug your main monitor directly to your Mac. Sometimes docks’ display connection couldn’t be recognised right away upon start up, or right after you wake up your Mac.
I use a M4 MacBook Pro and a CalDigit TS3 Plus and route the video through the dock. Haven’t seen any problem with display being recognized. Not that much of a power user.
I have 2 Studios displays attached to a CalDigit 4 - never had the slightest problem. I think the author meant you should not plug your monitor through a slow dock.
We’ve had endless issues with wake from sleep using Dell and Samsung (5k) monitors connected to various CalDigit, OWC and Belkin docks to Intel and Apple Silicon MacBook Airs / MacBook Pros going back many years. Where as connecting directly always wakes. YMMV.
I got a Kensington SD2600T Thunderbolt 4 Hub for $58 on Amazon this November. I use now just a cable to connect at my MacBook Pro M4Pro that goes to 2 - 4K LG Ultrafine monitors and one 4TB SSD. Everything goes smoothly. The best value that I found for my needs. I'm set for the next 2-3 years until Thunderbolt 5 hubs and accessories will go down in prices.
There is no difference :/ You barely would tell the difference between SATA and NVMe drive just using it causally. The difference is in marketing materials.
Two main takeaways. There’s lots of Thunderbolt 5 devices coming which is great, but don’t jump too early. A caldigit ts4 is still a great expansion option that may be found cheaper now. I’m a little surprised at the lack of speed in that Acasis doc. I guess some of the bandwidth has been set aside for the other ports?
The speed on the enclosure is fine, but the ports on both no matter which drive I try are so much slower than any of my thunderbolt 4 docks. I'm kind of wondering if that's why we've seen so many delays with some of these other TB5 hubs/docks that were announced at CES 2024 that haven't materialized yet - wondering if this is something they're trying to find a solution for, because as it stands right now, it really doesn't provide any benefit just strictly looking at port speed.
@@KyleErickson #1, are you plugging in quality TB3 enclosures like the ones from Sonnettech? #2, did you try the speed test WITHOUT a display plugged into the hub? In my experience, it's always the display that hogs bandwidth and slows down the SSDs to 1/3 speed.
Regarding speed. I suspect your issue with random slow speeds is a behaviour like Thunderbolt four displays. Because Thunderbolt four is designed at best to fully support usb4, as well as Thunderbolt4 protocols. Sometimes on connection the connected thunderbolt4 device defaults to behaving like a usb4 device. But then you can encounter the Mac issue of usb randomly defaulting to lower bandwidth versions of usb. Thus Thunderbolt 5 devices during the initial handshake phase may be defaulting to USB3.x, or even usb1.2 rather than Thunderbolt. So when I connect my Hyperdrive nvme thunderbolt4/usb4 caddy I always either check in About this System in the Apple menu, or run blackmagic’s disk speed test. Then eject/ reconnect the drive until it behaves correctly as a Thunderbolt4 device. After all it is extremely frustrating editing 6k BRaw video off of a media device that randomly behaves like a USBx device. 867MB/s video does not play well with usb2.0 or even usb3.1. Worse yet it seems to work on solid 10GB usb connections for general editing, but will randomly fail when you begin to grade.
What is the main reason for thunderbolt? I’ve been using an usb c cord to connect my studio to a display. Would getting a thunderbolt change things drastically?
USB is a standard with many could be supported, Thunderbolt requires that all capabilities are supported. You just know, a Thunderbolt cable supports high speed transfer, charging and DP-Alt mode for display connection. A random USB 4 cable could support that as well, but you have no easy way to see what is supported until you try it out.
what's the spec of your display? The thunderbolt cable also looks the same as a usbc cable. It just has a lightening (storm, lightening strike) symbol on it. The thunderbolt cable has a much greater bandwidth but it will only make a difference if the hardware you're using requires that bandwidth.
With respect, you could have added "in 2024" to a lot of this content. I have just bought a maxed out (apart from storage) Mac Pro Mini... and I am hoping to get many, many years of use out of it. During that envisaged lifetime, I suspect TB5 will be useful. I certainly feel that TB5 makes the case for not having to spend a lot of money on storage for M4 machines but using external storage. As you know, sometimes we buy models and configurations with "future proofing" in mind! ;)
Two things that this new thunderbolt 5 brings is 1 us music production can actual work off the external ssd and 2 this hopefully lowers the prices on thunderbolt 4 devices.
Not sure which MBP you are asking about, but I have two Studios displays attached to my MBP M2Pro through a CalDigit TS4, and it works fine open or closed.
To get better external SSD test results, you should use the same TB5 enclosure on a TB5 Mac and compare it to a TB4 Mac. An enclosures read/write speed is not necessarily indicative of the maximum speed of the TB cable and TB computer port.
Kyle, I have an M4 Pro MBP hooked up to a 5k studio display. I am about to decide on a TB4 dock, and Hyper has a great sale right now, and so I am about to get that one. My only concern is, after researching, the TB speed is shared throughout all devices hooked up to the dock. As an example, the HyperDrive dock has one upstream TB port (for the connection to the display) and two downstream TB ports. Does my upstream port affect the bandwidth of the downstream ports? Also, if not, I plan to hook up a SSD via TB4 and then two older SSDs via two 10gb/s ports. Will my speed be limited due to connecting all these devices? (Edit: BTW, I have the same Hyper TB4 enclosure in my cart; it is also on a great sale! That is what I'm going to use for my work projects since I bought the base model MacBook w/512gb of storage.)
Sorry for jumping in, but TB4 has an overall bandwidth of 40Gb/s meaning 20 per channel. The dock should be designed in a way that the TB’s work on their own and the other ports 10Gb/s are split over several segments, 2 or 3 depending on how many ports you have on the hub. You will never max out a properly designed hub. Look at CalDigit TS4, wonderful interior design. Connected SSD’s is not the same as how much data is being read/written at the same time.
An excellent video! I truly appreciate this report! The FOMO was strong when the M4 came out, but my M1 and Thunderbolt 3 setup is STILL more than fast enough for everything I can throw at it. Wanting...but not NEEDING...to upgrade one of my M1 Mac Minis to that delicious M4 Mac Mini (or M4 Pro Mini), I needed to know what you think of that Thunderbolt 5 port. Having moved my home folder, apps, and data to an external NVME drive in a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure on one of my M1 Macs...and not really perceiving much of a speed reduction...I'd say I don't even need a Thunderbolt 4, much less a Thunderbolt 5 device. Thank you for keeping me from buying unnecessary gear!
I'm happy with my thunderbolt 4 on my m3 MacBook Air. I think no drive can reach that speed anyway it will probably take for ever to reach even 40gb per section transfer speed.
Quite ironic that you have "Don't waste your money in the title yet your sponsor is charging $62Cdn A MONTH ?!?!?! That is just INSANE !!! There are about a million BETTER sites for less than one tenth of this !! Utterly ridiculous pricing structure honestly
I honestly found their platform quite fun. You're free to not buy it if you feel that way, it's not that serious - there are bigger problems in the world my man
T5 is great if you want to shift things like applications and run them from there instead of on-board hell you can even run your mac directly off of it with little to no penalty as long as you always have your Mac connect to it.
It’s because you have the monitors connected and are sharing the bandwidth. Which means, those docks are not good. I had the same issue with an older dock. But, When I connected my external drive directly to the Mac mini I got great speeds (The ssd I just bought is the Samsung 990 EVO Plus).
the concern is over what? you have to buy the bigger better cpu/gpu combo, to get Thunderbolt 5, well it will be more useful, in the long run. i rather be future proof, and have a more powerful M4 wich does show night and day, improvement. Normies don't need thunderbolt at all, usb c drives gear, are just fine for them.
Thunderbolt 4 cannot be fast the same as internal storage.Do a basic math. 40gbps of a spec speed is 5GB/s, but actually for data transfers (like an external NVME)would be available 32.5,so it is 4 GB/s of a bandwidth. Real-world performance of TB4 enclosures would be at 3.5GB/s top, that is twice lower than internal MacBook Pro drive
Click this link sponsr.is/bootdev_KyleErickson and use my code KYLEERICKSON to get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev.
Thunderbolt 5 coupled with an OWC Envoy Ultra SSD External Drive is the fasted external storage available for the M4 Pro Mac Mini. I am seeing sustained Write speeds of 5,500 MB/s and Read speeds of 5,000 MB/s, which is is the same ballpark as the internal SSD drive.
It’s about headroom for chaining multiple (thunderbolt 3 or 4 or usb c ss20) devices
The m4 max 16" uses 120+W in gaming loads... so a 140W USB-c USB-PD power is definitely necessary if you plan on pushing the M4 Max!
Dude please do more FCP editing/color grading tutorials. Your stuff is so clean
People usually use MacBooks for more than 5 years
Go back 5 years ago and compare USB 3.0 to Thunderbolt 4 nowadays!
And in 5 years from now you will come back to this video and laugh at this conclusion!
Thunderbolt 5 is necessary for next years
This. Not much supporting T5 so overstated spec? Except in the not so distant future this will be the standard. Don’t really get it.
*also fyi Apple actually first introduced thunderbolt in 2013 with T2.
Alway plug your main monitor directly to your Mac. Sometimes docks’ display connection couldn’t be recognised right away upon start up, or right after you wake up your Mac.
Agreed - wake from sleep is a constant frustration when using a dock.
I use a M4 MacBook Pro and a CalDigit TS3 Plus and route the video through the dock. Haven’t seen any problem with display being recognized. Not that much of a power user.
I have 2 Studios displays attached to a CalDigit 4 - never had the slightest problem. I think the author meant you should not plug your monitor through a slow dock.
We’ve had endless issues with wake from sleep using Dell and Samsung (5k) monitors connected to various CalDigit, OWC and Belkin docks to Intel and Apple Silicon MacBook Airs / MacBook Pros going back many years. Where as connecting directly always wakes. YMMV.
@@cmscssmy specific setup that hasn’t given me a problem is: MacBook Pro M4, CalDigit TS3 Plus and Apple Studio Display.
I got a Kensington SD2600T Thunderbolt 4 Hub for $58 on Amazon this November.
I use now just a cable to connect at my MacBook Pro M4Pro that goes to 2 - 4K LG Ultrafine monitors and one 4TB SSD.
Everything goes smoothly.
The best value that I found for my needs.
I'm set for the next 2-3 years until Thunderbolt 5 hubs and accessories will go down in prices.
I am interested in comparisons of Thunderbolt 4 vs 5 performance of a Parallels virtual Windows 11 machine running from an external drive.
There is no difference :/ You barely would tell the difference between SATA and NVMe drive just using it causally. The difference is in marketing materials.
I’ve always followed your recommendations and I have never gone wrong.
Two main takeaways. There’s lots of Thunderbolt 5 devices coming which is great, but don’t jump too early.
A caldigit ts4 is still a great expansion option that may be found cheaper now.
I’m a little surprised at the lack of speed in that Acasis doc. I guess some of the bandwidth has been set aside for the other ports?
The speed on the enclosure is fine, but the ports on both no matter which drive I try are so much slower than any of my thunderbolt 4 docks. I'm kind of wondering if that's why we've seen so many delays with some of these other TB5 hubs/docks that were announced at CES 2024 that haven't materialized yet - wondering if this is something they're trying to find a solution for, because as it stands right now, it really doesn't provide any benefit just strictly looking at port speed.
@@KyleEricksonwhat file system have you formatted the NVME’s to?
Acasis are also currently selling a TB5 enclosure without a doc.
@@KyleErickson #1, are you plugging in quality TB3 enclosures like the ones from Sonnettech? #2, did you try the speed test WITHOUT a display plugged into the hub? In my experience, it's always the display that hogs bandwidth and slows down the SSDs to 1/3 speed.
Except TB enclosures are more expensive than drives they hold.....
Regarding speed. I suspect your issue with random slow speeds is a behaviour like Thunderbolt four displays.
Because Thunderbolt four is designed at best to fully support usb4, as well as Thunderbolt4 protocols. Sometimes on connection the connected thunderbolt4 device defaults to behaving like a usb4 device. But then you can encounter the Mac issue of usb randomly defaulting to lower bandwidth versions of usb. Thus Thunderbolt 5 devices during the initial handshake phase may be defaulting to USB3.x, or even usb1.2 rather than Thunderbolt.
So when I connect my Hyperdrive nvme thunderbolt4/usb4 caddy I always either check in About this System in the Apple menu, or run blackmagic’s disk speed test. Then eject/ reconnect the drive until it behaves correctly as a Thunderbolt4 device. After all it is extremely frustrating editing 6k BRaw video off of a media device that randomly behaves like a USBx device. 867MB/s video does not play well with usb2.0 or even usb3.1. Worse yet it seems to work on solid 10GB usb connections for general editing, but will randomly fail when you begin to grade.
I'm not sure if that's the case here, but that's incredibly valuable info!
I wonder if a DIY NAS with a thunderbolt Network Bridge could be a good solution. I could combine nvnes with mechanical inside the NAS
What is the main reason for thunderbolt? I’ve been using an usb c cord to connect my studio to a display. Would getting a thunderbolt change things drastically?
USB is a standard with many could be supported, Thunderbolt requires that all capabilities are supported. You just know, a Thunderbolt cable supports high speed transfer, charging and DP-Alt mode for display connection. A random USB 4 cable could support that as well, but you have no easy way to see what is supported until you try it out.
what's the spec of your display? The thunderbolt cable also looks the same as a usbc cable. It just has a lightening (storm, lightening strike) symbol on it. The thunderbolt cable has a much greater bandwidth but it will only make a difference if the hardware you're using requires that bandwidth.
@ I’m using the LG 4k Ultra Fine 27 inch model number is 27UN850-W
With respect, you could have added "in 2024" to a lot of this content. I have just bought a maxed out (apart from storage) Mac Pro Mini... and I am hoping to get many, many years of use out of it. During that envisaged lifetime, I suspect TB5 will be useful. I certainly feel that TB5 makes the case for not having to spend a lot of money on storage for M4 machines but using external storage. As you know, sometimes we buy models and configurations with "future proofing" in mind! ;)
Two things that this new thunderbolt 5 brings is 1 us music production can actual work off the external ssd and 2 this hopefully lowers the prices on thunderbolt 4 devices.
Has someone already tested if MBP would support 3 external monitors like Mac Mini when lid closed?
Good question
Not sure which MBP you are asking about, but I have two Studios displays attached to my MBP M2Pro through a CalDigit TS4, and it works fine open or closed.
To get better external SSD test results, you should use the same TB5 enclosure on a TB5 Mac and compare it to a TB4 Mac. An enclosures read/write speed is not necessarily indicative of the maximum speed of the TB cable and TB computer port.
I did that in this video
Kyle, I have an M4 Pro MBP hooked up to a 5k studio display. I am about to decide on a TB4 dock, and Hyper has a great sale right now, and so I am about to get that one. My only concern is, after researching, the TB speed is shared throughout all devices hooked up to the dock. As an example, the HyperDrive dock has one upstream TB port (for the connection to the display) and two downstream TB ports. Does my upstream port affect the bandwidth of the downstream ports? Also, if not, I plan to hook up a SSD via TB4 and then two older SSDs via two 10gb/s ports. Will my speed be limited due to connecting all these devices? (Edit: BTW, I have the same Hyper TB4 enclosure in my cart; it is also on a great sale! That is what I'm going to use for my work projects since I bought the base model MacBook w/512gb of storage.)
Sorry for jumping in, but TB4 has an overall bandwidth of 40Gb/s meaning 20 per channel. The dock should be designed in a way that the TB’s work on their own and the other ports 10Gb/s are split over several segments, 2 or 3 depending on how many ports you have on the hub. You will never max out a properly designed hub. Look at CalDigit TS4, wonderful interior design. Connected SSD’s is not the same as how much data is being read/written at the same time.
An excellent video! I truly appreciate this report! The FOMO was strong when the M4 came out, but my M1 and Thunderbolt 3 setup is STILL more than fast enough for everything I can throw at it.
Wanting...but not NEEDING...to upgrade one of my M1 Mac Minis to that delicious M4 Mac Mini (or M4 Pro Mini), I needed to know what you think of that Thunderbolt 5 port.
Having moved my home folder, apps, and data to an external NVME drive in a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure on one of my M1 Macs...and not really perceiving much of a speed reduction...I'd say I don't even need a Thunderbolt 4, much less a Thunderbolt 5 device.
Thank you for keeping me from buying unnecessary gear!
Your transition is crazy. Wow 👌
Congratulations on 100K!!!! I really appreciate all the effort and great information you guys provide!
Thanks so much!
I'm happy with my thunderbolt 4 on my m3 MacBook Air. I think no drive can reach that speed anyway it will probably take for ever to reach even 40gb per section transfer speed.
Quite ironic that you have "Don't waste your money in the title yet your sponsor is charging $62Cdn A MONTH ?!?!?! That is just INSANE !!! There are about a million BETTER sites for less than one tenth of this !! Utterly ridiculous pricing structure honestly
I honestly found their platform quite fun. You're free to not buy it if you feel that way, it's not that serious - there are bigger problems in the world my man
Really! I thought this was the future......
It is
@@xray2785 So I'll continue to use my TB4 enclosures and included SSDs until the end of their life. After that I'll look for TB5 peripherals.
well, unless someone release a 5k120hz display, no need for thunderbolt 5 imo
I guess that’s what Apple is going to release soon. New Studio Display with 5k120hz is what I’d like to buy
@@dmitrygavrikov7178 yes, and I expect a Thunderbolt 5 port on the next base Mac mini, for now it's exclusive to the pro chip.
T5 is great if you want to shift things like applications and run them from there instead of on-board hell you can even run your mac directly off of it with little to no penalty as long as you always have your Mac connect to it.
It’s because you have the monitors connected and are sharing the bandwidth. Which means, those docks are not good. I had the same issue with an older dock. But, When I connected my external drive directly to the Mac mini I got great speeds (The ssd I just bought is the Samsung 990 EVO Plus).
that's without any monitors connected
Nice job!
Buy (or not) the one that brings you joy. I like having some nice things.
Happy Holidays!
HDMI 2.2 is on its way too
The remake of the very popular video you made before. 🙌🏽
I ll be back to watch this later
Thanks for another honest and informative review, they help me make better decisions about my tech purchases.
the concern is over what? you have to buy the bigger better cpu/gpu combo, to get Thunderbolt 5, well it will be more useful, in the long run. i rather be future proof, and have a more powerful M4 wich does show night and day, improvement. Normies don't need thunderbolt at all, usb c drives gear, are just fine for them.
I like your accent. 😊
Thunderbolt 4 cannot be fast the same as internal storage.Do a basic math. 40gbps of a spec speed is 5GB/s, but actually for data transfers (like an external NVME)would be available 32.5,so it is 4 GB/s of a bandwidth. Real-world performance of TB4 enclosures would be at 3.5GB/s top, that is twice lower than internal MacBook Pro drive
Thunderbolt 4 is the submarine and Thunderbolt 5 is the space station.
no-one researching and buying TB5 storage will NOT notice the difference in speed
No one who hasn’t seen this comment will not understand what u aren’t trying to not say…