{"id":206802,"date":"2017-11-03T10:45:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-03T14:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jbsgame.com\/review-xbox-one-x\/"},"modified":"2017-11-03T10:45:00","modified_gmt":"2017-11-03T14:45:00","slug":"review-xbox-one-x","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jbsgame.com\/review-xbox-one-x\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Xbox One X"},"content":{"rendered":"
I have the good fortune of being able to cover console launches before, during, and after their release, which gives me plenty of time to study trends. Seeing Microsoft riding high off of the Xbox 360, clawing at Sony after their big Xbox versus PS2 battle, was something else — as was the blowback from the Xbox One’s draconian DRM stance.<\/p>
They’re still licking their wounds over that, but they’ve bounced back when it comes to console features. As a result of being in second (and possibly third if the Switch keeps it up), they’ve given us backward compatibility for both Xbox and Xbox 360 titles and PC\/Xbox One cross-buy, among a number of other small adjustments that beat Sony to the punch (like external hard-drive support, which Sony eventually acquiesced).<\/p>
It’s been a rough generation for Microsoft, but the Xbox One X delivers. As long as you have a 4K TV.<\/p>
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Design:<\/strong><\/p> Amazingly, Microsoft has been shrinking the size of each Xbox, although I think they’ve hit their limit with the X. As you can see it’s roughly the same size as the S (the X is little smaller in reality at 11.8 x 9.4 x 2.4 inches, though it weighs roughly two more pounds), which is impressive. It’s not the sexiest-looking box but it gets the job done and doesn’t take up a whole lot of space doing it.<\/p> As far as the upgrade process goes, Microsoft has bent over backwards to make it as painless as possible. I opted for the external HDD option, and literally just transferred everything to it, from the actual games to my system settings. When I plugged in my Xbox One X I just attached the HDD, signed in, and everything, including my save files by way of the cloud, were there. That’s around 15 seconds of setup time for a new console — not bad! If you want you can also go for a network transfer that will take a little more time and doesn’t require the use of an external device. Or, you could manually re-download your stuff, set the X as your new home console, and re-configure your settings.<\/p> After I booted everything up, I quickly found my favorite new “X-centric” UI option — the “enhanced” tab. When looking at both currently installed software and currently owned products, I could easily see which games had Xbox One X updates with a quick filter. It makes everything so much more painless than say the PS4 Pro, where you aren’t quite sure if there’s a point in owning a shinier piece of hardware unless you look up a developer blog for more information.<\/p> There are a few things I think could be tweaked in future packages though. For one, the controller is just a run-of-the-mill remote, which doesn’t feel nearly as special as the white, slightly enhanced one you get with the S. My other annoyance is the included HDD — it’s 1TB on the X, and I miss the 2TB on the S already. As I stated plugging in a 2TB HDD is simple enough and I’m not exactly hurting<\/em> for space, but with tons of 50GB+ downloads to my name it does get a little dicey if I have a lot of shooters installed. It’s going going to get dicier as more size-intensive Xbox One X updates arrive.<\/p> <\/p> Is it worth the 4K push?<\/strong><\/p> Let’s take a look at the specs before we get to the hands-on part. Microsoft is boasting that the X has “40% more power than any console,” with six teraflops of graphical processing power, 12GB of GDDR5 memory, and a custom 8-core CPU clocked at 2.3GHz. The idea is that it’s powerful enough to actually support 4K gaming, rather than 4K upscaling — at 60FPS in some cases, no less, which is available for game recording. It also sports a 245W power supply, IEEE 802.11ac dual band wireless support, 802.3 Ethernet with support for up to 1000 gigabits per second, and three USB ports.<\/p> As a 4K\/HDR TV owner I could test out UHD playback in addition to 4K rendering for games, and they’re both impressive. Microsoft provided a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray of Planet Earth 2<\/em>, which looks just as good as it does on the Xbox One S, which also has UHD support. I’m still dumbfounded that a Sony system can’t play UHD discs and a Microsoft device can, given that they beat the latter out in the great HD-DVD and Blu-ray war.<\/p>