Once popped inside the OWC Envoy Express and formatted to the Mac OS APFS file format, the drive was benchmarked and used in real-world tests.
Looking at the benchmark results, and even when taking into consideration the slowing of transfer speeds due to the OWC Envoy Express, the drive achieved the following results:
Read: 1229.3MB/s
Write: 1133.2MB/s
Not bad on both accounts, but these results are well below the stated transfer rates that Lexar has given, this is due in part to the enclosure, but still I’ve tested other M.2 drives in this enclosure that have done better offering similar transfer speeds.
During the test, it was also possible to see that while the read speeds remained consistent, the write speeds would fluctuate from the 600’s to 1200’s.
In the real-world test, however, the drive handled footage from the Sony FS7 well, delivering transfer speeds that enabled smooth editing, the application of filters and exporting from Final Cut Pro X as well as Premiere Pro.