Review: Xbox Series X redefines the next-gen experience

Disclaimer: Microsoft sent us a free Xbox Series X for review. The review unit also came with many of 2020’s biggest games such as NBA 2K21, Dirt 5, and a dozen others. We also got a year’s worth of Xbox Game Pass to allow us the opportunity to test a plethora of games and the features of the console. Additionally, Activision and Capcom gave us review codes for Black Ops Cold War and Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition, respectively.

The next-generation of consoles is finally here. The PlayStation 5 has arrived with a fancy new controller, a handful of exclusives, and a brand-new UI. It’s what you’d expect from a new console. Xbox Series X, however, is going against tradition in many ways but it’s not slacking, by any means.

Microsoft has opted for a less significant leap to next-generation, it’s a transition. Think of it like going from middle school to high school rather than high school to college. It’s not a jarring change but it is a significant one.

The Design

When I saw this thing during last year’s reveal, I thought it was the most bizarre design they could’ve chosen. After taking it out of the box, I was surprised by how small and mobile the Xbox Series X actually is. It is taller and wider than your average console but it’s not the fridge that many made it out to be. It’s pretty easy to move around, especially for its size.

It’s definitely meant to stand up vertically but it doesn’t fit that way in my entertainment center. On it’s side, it looks a little awkward. The Xbox logo is sideways, unlike when you lay down a Xbox One. If it’s in some bright lighting on its side, its matte black paint and thickness might still look a bit ugly. It’s not awful, just something I wish I could stand up properly but alas… it’s a big boy. If I attempted to stand it up in my entertainment center, it would just suffocate itself and probably explode due to lack of ventilation.

Speaking of which, the Xbox Series X is probably the quietest appliance in my home besides my actual TV. It’s actually silent, no hyperbole. You have to get up to it and press your ear against it to actually hear it and even then, it’s whisper quiet. No jet engines, no grinding, nothing. Just silence, you can fall asleep with this thing on and not notice.

The ventilation of the console is a big part of this, the fan isn’t in overdrive constantly. Thanks to a split motherboard and a fan working in partnership, the console stays consistently cool. There were early reports of the console producing a lot of hot air out of its vents (like it should) but I’ve never experienced anything too toasty. The Series X uses its tower-like design to move air from the bottom to the top, out of its green holes at the top.

Instead of moving a minimal amount of air out of some small vent in the back or on the side, it pushes everything out by sucking it up with the fan attached to the vent. You can even look down through the vent and see the fan right there, spinning around. You can see all of the pieces of hardware inside working their magic as well, like some high-tech museum exhibit. It’s a real feat of console engineering.

This is a quiet, cool console. With Xbox One X or PS4, I could feel them getting warm by touching them. Leaving even a disc or a case on top of it would cause it to get heated as well. With Xbox Series X, it’s like it’s barely even there. It blends in when the lights are off, it’s quiet, and it’s not causing a fire in my house.

Another thing I love is the lack of an audio optical port. That may sound odd as it’s usually used for stereo headsets. Microsoft has simplified it, my Astro A40s with the Mixamp just plugs in via USB to the front of the console. No more USB + optical port, leaving cords hanging out of every orifice of the console for one device. Just one simple solution for convenience and cord management.

Headsets aren’t the only backward compatible devices, though. Every controller from Xbox One works as well, including peripherals. I put in my disc for Rock Band 4, downloaded all my song packs, and synced up my guitar with zero issue. It was seamless and effortless.

On the topic of controllers, there are changes to the standard Xbox controller but they’re expectedly small. It’s nothing crazy like the DualSense but it doesn’t need to be. Microsoft has always made slight innovations on their controllers, perfecting a near perfect controller. When you’re so close to greatness like this, you don’t throw the whole idea away and do something totally radical.

In terms of function, there isn’t much new to the Xbox Series X controller. There is a new share button in the center but it’s just a quality of life improvement. It doesn’t always seem to work right for me (we’ll come back to this) but it seems to be system side and not the hardware. With an OS update, it’ll surely work flawlessly.

According to Microsoft, the Xbox Series X controller includes “Dynamic Latency Input”. Essentially, this is supposed to reduce latency and make it more responsive. I couldn’t personally tell the difference but this may be something that can be improved with firmware updates if they so desire. If not, it feels incredibly responsive already.

The overall feel of the controller feels much better thanks to textured grips. It has this almost sandpaper-like feel to it but only if sandpaper didn’t feel like the worst thing in the world. These are things that someone who is only casually familiar with Xbox won’t notice at all. Die hard fans, however, will. Xbox has been my primary console since Xbox 360 and the second I grabbed it, I felt the difference.

The Need for Speed

Where gamers will notice the difference for Xbox Series X is performance. Literally the moment I turned it on, I was blown away by how fast this machine was. Powering on, downloading games, load times, everything. Xbox Series X is a next-gen leap thanks to the speed packed by its SSD and other tech.

Unrelated to the SSD, the Xbox Series X is a beast at downloading games on wireless internet. As a reviewer, I get review codes for games on a weekly basis at least. During this time of year, I’m downloading a ton of games and previously, this would take quite a while. When I reviewed Red Dead Redemption 2, it took almost a day to just download the game on my PS4. Obviously, a lot of this does depend on your personal internet speeds but Xbox Series X does help unlock some of the potential of your speeds.

On my One X, I’d download games at mid-double digit Mbps, about 50 or 60 on a good day. Sometimes it would be a bit more, it would also go much lower on worse days. On Series X, I’m consistently downloading games at triple digits. Games like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (nearly 50 GBs) download in half an hour. Grand Theft Auto V is 84.8 GBs, I downloaded it in about an hour and a half. It would’ve taken multiple hours on One X, which is why I never deleted it.

Now I feel like I have the freedom to delete games and redownload them when I need them because the Series X is so speedy. There is very little holding us back from enjoying games on Xbox Series X.

When it comes to actual load times, it’s near instant for many games. Grand Theft Auto V takes less than 10 seconds to load the single player. Star Wars: Republic Commando on original Xbox takes 18 seconds from cold boot to gameplay and supports Quick Resume. I was actually pleasantly surprised to boot up Republic Commando to run some last minute tests and see it had resumed where I left off over a week or two ago, no load screens or menus.

One of the most marketed features of Xbox Series X is “Quick Resume”. This allows you to basically leave a bunch of games and your Xbox will keep it safe. Think about how Netflix can mark the exact spot you left in a show or movie, you can come back to it and pick up right where you left off. Now apply to your games. A great feature that continues to help eliminate load times and also makes it so you lose no progress. You can do this for a handful of games at once but at a certain point, the console will stop keep tracking of certain games to make room for others.

While a great feature, there are some notable games that simply don’t use this feature. Out of the 16 games installed on my console, the following didn’t seem to support Quick Resume.

• Dirt 5
• Who Wants to be a Millionaire
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
• NBA 2K21

I tested a mix of titles from Xbox Series X to original Xbox. Many older titles utilized the feature so it seems the issue largely focuses on new games. There are exceptions like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which does utilize Quick Resume on Xbox Series X. GameSpot also reported titles like Borderlands 3, a 2019 game with a Series X patch, didn’t support the feature. The biggest problem with some games not supporting Quick Resume is that there isn’t a way to actually find out until you launch it again.

You may go to another game, assuming you won’t need to save or won’t lose progress because of Quick Resume. When you come back to it, it’ll reboot the whole game and that progress will be lost. There are badges in your game library that tell you what games make use of Series X upgrades, it would be nice if there was a Quick Resume badge as well on the tiles.

The Power of Next-gen

The first game I played on my Xbox Series X was Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. I had played a bit of it on my Xbox One before launch so I was interested to see the difference. Load times aside, the difference was immediate. Double the frame rate, a richer level of detail, the whole nine yards. Some games will benefit more than others but Valhalla really felt like a big jump visually.

Despite having a Xbox One and PS4 version, NBA 2K21 has an exclusive next-gen version. New modes, new features, and overhauled visuals dominate this new next-gen version. It’s clear to see why 2K Sports didn’t just do a patch. Some have mocked the series for just “adding more sweat” to new versions but it really is more than that. The animations feel more life-like, creating that more satisfying athletic performance that we expect without compromising control. It feels organic and it looks real.

The high volumes of sweat dripping off the sculpted bodies of apex players is just icing on the cake. There are a lot of factors that come together to help make this game feel alive and true to the NBA experience. All of the details of individual players from the level of fidelity on tattoos to player expressions can be found here in stunning 4K quality. It’s not just on the court either, if you look to the sidelines and the audience, you’ll feel like they’re not just in some static animations. They feel much more three dimensional. The power of Xbox Series X pushes us to a living, breathing game experience.

Performance wise, Valhalla also felt so unbelievably smooth on Xbox Series X. The camera glides and there’s a greater responsiveness compared to its last-gen counterpart. Games like Dirt 5, Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition, and Black Ops Cold War also really stood out. The buttery smoothness of 120 FPS is clear to see in these games and really just enhances these fast-paced games.

You can really feel, once again, the smoothness in all of these games. All of these games are very different from each other yet share this rich level of performance. While not all TVs are capable of 120hz, those that have that luxury are in for a treat. Running the Series X on an LG CX can only be described in ways that sound hyperbolic. The best visual representation I have is the episode of Drake and Josh when they get the Game Sphere console.

One game I was incredibly curious to try out was Grand Theft Auto V. This is a game notorious for long load times and some performance issues. Keep in mind, Rockstar Games has not released any sort of official patch for an Xbox Series X upgrades as they’re creating a whole new version in 2021. Most games naturally do perform somewhat better just because they’re running on a better system, though.

On Xbox One, GTA Online really struggles. I would assume that it’s because the game just packs so much in and there’s virtually no load times once you’re in the game. You’ll see frame-rate dips, texture load-ins and pop-in, and a lot of other pretty unimpressive issues. On Xbox Series X, this is all *mostly* fixed. It still has some minor pop-in but outside of that, it’s a very stable game.

For the first time maybe ever, the game runs at a rock solid 30 FPS. That may sound odd to some, though. “30 FPS on a next-gen console? That’s awful!” Well, the game runs at about 20 and often dips below that on Xbox One so yes, it’s a massive step up. It’s much more pleasant to look at on Series X. Hopefully the new version of the game will be 60 FPS in 2021.

The Games

This is going to be the most controversial side to the review. The Xbox Series X has a notable games problem. For the first time since 2001, Microsoft was going to launch a brand new Xbox with a Halo game. This changed after Halo Infinite got delayed to 2021, pretty much killing the launch line-up. Any way to compete with Spider-Man and Demon’s Souls was gone. This was a big bummer, leaving the console with no real killer apps.

There are definitely things to play, though. The value of Xbox Series X is that you can go buy a console with Game Pass for about $10 and have well over a hundred games right there. There’s stuff you may have never heard of, incredible masterpieces like The Witcher 3, and 2020 titles like Doom Eternal. On top of that, you have a wide array of Xbox exclusive games including the entire Halo series at your disposal. You don’t have to buy any games with your Series X, which is understandable if you just spent $500.

To be able to have a handful of 10/10 games for a $10 subscription amongst many other classics is truly unbeatable. Thanks to backward compatibility, you can also play all of your old Xbox One games and a good chunk of Xbox 360/OG Xbox titles as well. If you do have a bit of extra cash, the third-party line-up is also pretty killer. Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, NBA 2K21, and many more help cement a fine launch line-up.

In 2013 when Xbox One launched, I played Battlefield 4 for a year straight. I played some other games in that time but none of them stuck. Ryse: Son of Rome was pretty short, Dead Rising 3 didn’t grab me, Titanfall was fun but fell off quickly, and so on. It doesn’t feel like that year of dead air is going to happen again because you’re not isolated to one console. You have almost 20 years worth of games to play and all your Xbox One friends can play with you.

In 2013, it was lonely on Xbox One because 99% of my friends were still on Xbox 360. Now, it’s one connected experience. Next-gen isn’t just pretty graphics and exclusive games this time around. It’s about an ecosystem that is inclusive and ensures no one is left out. As someone who spent many nights playing Battlefield 4 by himself in middle school, it’s nice to be able to play Call of Duty with my friends on Xbox One without skipping a beat.

The Bugs

The Xbox Series X seems to have come in pretty hot. There’s a lot of bugs with the console, though nothing that can’t be fixed. I have yet to encounter anything that isn’t just an inconvenience as opposed to breaking something. There’s your standard stuff like crashes, Quick Resume crashing games upon launch, and other basic stuff. Nothing too crazy.

Then there’s bugs like the console setting itself to 640p. Yes, the 4K powerhouse will lock itself to 640p and you can’t change it without restarting the console. This happened a few times and strangely enough, locked itself to a oddly pixilated 1080p as well once. It’s easily fixed but still odd and annoying.

The biggest headache is with game capture. If a game has HDR enabled, it will cause any clips or pictures captured to become incredibly dim. Games that don’t have HDR support are seemingly unaffected by this but supported titles suffer extremely. It makes these clips borderline unusable and the pictures are definitely useless. For a console that comes with a dedicated share button on its controller, it’s frustrating that the capture system doesn’t work properly.

Another video issue I had was a loss of signal when switching games too quickly. When I was testing Quick Resume, my TV stopped detecting a signal after switching between a bunch of games. Most people will probably never encounter this unless you just want to see how the feature works, though. I did lose video signal while watching Hellboy off a 4K UHD Blu-ray, though.

This only happened after starting the movie, sitting through a few disclaimers, and then pure black. I could hear the sound of the movie but had no video. A quick restart fixed the issue and I had no other problems with this on other movies. These issues would probably be far more annoying if it weren’t for the fact the Xbox Series X restarts rather quickly.

The Verdict

Even with no significant exclusive games and some notable but patchable flaws, Series X packs a great value. Thanks to Game Pass, backward compatibility, and a quiet, powerful machine, there’s a premium yet inclusive feel to Microsoft’s new console.

Microsoft isn’t trying to sell gamers on the “next big thing” with Xbox Series X. It’s trying to sell them on a machine that does all the things the last generation set the foundation for but better. That’s not a negative. This is a machine that brings a next-gen performance to 20 years worth of games with even greater power just waiting to be harnessed in the years to come. It looks forward at the future of games, social experiences, but also creates a hub for decades of gaming history as well.

Xbox Series X isn’t the next-generation of Xbox, it’s the next-generation of gaming.