The Xbox Series X: A Hands-On Review and First Impressions

As I sat down to review the Xbox Series X, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and anticipation. With its impressive specs and promises of improved performance, this next-gen console was sure to be a game-changer for gamers. But how did it really hold up in practice?

One of the first things that struck me about the Series X was its 120Hz mode. I had been told that this feature would provide a super smooth performance with no visible screen tearing, and I wanted to see if it lived up to the hype. To my surprise, yes it did. Playing games at 4K resolution and 120Hz, I found that the console's visuals were incredibly smooth, and I couldn't discern any noticeable screen tearing. In fact, going back and forth between playing games at 4K and 1440p at 120Hz made it really tough to notice the compromises in the latter configuration.

Of course, not everyone will be able to take advantage of this feature, as it's still a relatively rare sight on TVs currently available. But for those who can, the benefits are undeniable. And with most gaming monitors settling in at 1440p with refresh rates up to 144Hz and sometimes even higher, 120Hz is certainly an attractive option.

As I continued to explore the Series X, I couldn't help but think about its appeal as a day-one purchase. While it's definitely not the best reason to jump straight into purchasing the console, the fact that it can play existing games improved with faster load times and quick resume functionality does make it a compelling option for those who want to upgrade their gaming experience. And let's be real – some games are definitely worth playing on this console.

But what about exclusives? Sadly, there aren't any, at least not yet. That being said, the ability to play 360 and Xbox One legacy games with improved performance does make the Series X a great option for those looking to revisit old favorites. And with the promise of Smart Delivery, Microsoft is working hard to ensure that existing titles are optimized for the new console.

I also had the chance to try out some other features on the Series X, including the Xbox controller and Astro's A20 headset. The latter was a particular highlight – sound quality was surprisingly good, and it's my early go-to pick for anyone who wants to swap back and forth between consoles or PC without having to unplug a bunch of wires.

Of course, as with any console launch, there are bound to be some teething issues. Luckily, I had the chance to try out a few games that were affected by Smart Delivery, including Dirt 5 and Gears 5. While the latter was generally smooth, I did experience some quick resume wonkiness – sometimes it would work fine, but other times it would force either game to totally reboot or freeze.

Microsoft has acknowledged this issue with their list of current problems with the Series X build of Gears 5, so hopefully these will be ironed out in future updates. But overall, my experience was a positive one, and I'm eager to see how the console holds up over time.

In conclusion, while there are certainly no guarantees that the Xbox Series X will meet everyone's expectations, it's clear that Microsoft has put a lot of work into creating a console that is well-suited for both casual and hardcore gamers. With its impressive specs, improved performance, and innovative features like quick resume, it's definitely worth keeping an eye on as we get closer to launch.

Special thanks go out to Digital Foundry for their excellent analysis, and to Jeff Grubb over at GamesBeat for helping me figure out some of the weird 120Hz issues that popped up during my testing. Thanks for watching!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enit's now been three weeks since i first got my hands on an xbox series x and while yes it's technically a prototype system i do think i've got a really good idea of what it's like owning this next generation console so what do i think of the overall package and is it worth a day one purchase time to find out today i'm free to give impressions of the entire experience of xbox series x from top to bottom so let's start with the stuff i haven't been allowed to discuss until right now first up is the overall design of the series x it's undeniably sleek with a real subtle and unassuming industrial design standing up it's a foot tall with a 6x6 footprint i wound up keeping mine standing behind my tv if anything so i could keep the top heat exhaust fan as clear as possible you're going to need to give that area some open room regardless of how you position it the air coming out is warm but not any different than something like the exhaust fans on my gaming pc a lot of people have been teasing the series x for being bulky or yeah we've all seen that mini refrigerator meme but i've actually come to really like the way this thing looks it's understated it's neat and can pretty much blend in wherever it sits most impressive in the console's design has to be how quiet it actually runs i've never heard it rev up once during my entire time with it which is a star comparison to something like a ps4 pro which as you probably know can sound like a damn airbus when it's been on for a while so what about the ui well the series xui is nearly identical to the xbox one's interface but it's incredibly faster in every sense of the word zipping around through menus is obviously a much better experience compared to the xbox one and even the one x things barely skip a beat it's fast and it just feels great that said because it's not a departure from last gen's ui everything feels exactly the same so if you had any issues with things like layout organization or just the overall sort of you know design logic of the way xbox presents things none of that has changed for now personally i've spent three weeks navigating around this and my opinion on it hasn't really changed i still think it could use some refinement in the way it's all sort of organized but the fact that it's so lightning fast does ease some of that frustration okay let's talk about the controller a little more the introduction of that share button finally brings this console up to speed with quick access to snapping screenshots and recording gameplay hooking up older xbox controllers has been easy enough you just pair them like normal and you're ready to go using the new controller for three weeks did make me realize how much better i think it fits in my hands i really prefer the textured grips on the new one plus the feedback feels just a bit sharper microsoft supplied me with a one terabyte seagate expandable drive that slots easily into the back of the series x via a proprietary port it can hold any generation xbox game and it works as simply as you can imagine you pop it in and the games loaded on it will populate in your game tile screen it's worth noting that series x games can only load off of the internal drive or this special expandable one they can't load off a usb 3 drive that you bring yourself like the way it kind of worked in other xboxes however legacy games can run with that usb drive priced at 220 it's definitely an expensive add-on to your series x but even though you'll start out with roughly 800 gigabytes to work with you should still be able to hold roughly 15 to 25 games right off that internal drive of course depending on their individual sizes now it's worth noting that of the three games microsoft supplied that are series x optimized their sizes ranged from 35 72 and 99 gigabytes so file size might become an issue keep that in mind the overall feature set that series x brings to the table definitely reinforces the console's dependency on game pass and the focus of celebrating your back catalog because right now the new stuff really isn't here but if you're looking for the best way to play most of your legacy xbox games series x is going to be the way to do it microsoft opened up back and pat on a lot of legacy games during this sort of preview phase that i'm in here and it covered a good amount of titles games were constantly being added during my testing though a few games still never got support by the time i shot this video most surprisingly was forza horizon 4. loading times on a lot of legacy games are substantially improved in terms of loading from a save we're talking around 30 seconds for red dead 2 10 seconds for control and get this six seconds for doom eternal better yet series x automatically cloud syncs all your game saves so even if you're revisiting a game you haven't touched in years it's gonna boot up just like the way you left it like i said new series x games have been scarce during this preview period but i did finally get to test out one of the first games to be available for the console just in time to shoot this video dirt 5 on series x looks fantastic and it was the first game i could try with a mode that supports 120 hertz now keep in mind 120 hertz is just a refresh rate it doesn't necessarily mean you're guaranteed to get frames per second now you're also going to need a display that can handle the 120 hertz signal and for 4k 120 you'll need a display that supports the hdmi 2.1 standard not to mention an hdmi cable that can handle that kind of throughput not all of them can thankfully lg was kind enough to get me a absolutely beautiful cx or c10 depending on how you say it which is their brand new display that has four hdmi 2.1 ports that can each display 4k at 120. i have to note you might need to update your tv's firmware just to ensure total functionality but it does work and it is awesome dirt 5 has a separate mode for 120 hertz which is accessible in the game's video settings safe to assume that this might become the standard like it kind of did with xbox one x and ps4 pro where you're given the option to choose which category you want to prioritize dirt 5 gives you three options in this case when the xbox is set to output at 120 hertz you can choose image quality frame rate or 120 hertz mode comparing image quality and frame rate modes definitely showed a difference in that frame rate though there are some small graphical details that are sacrificed so that the game can run more smoothly though in frame rate mode there is a noticeable amount of screen tearing happening throughout a race let me just add a quick side note about all this real quick if you want a painstakingly thorough breakdown of the performances of all of these modes please check out digitalfoundry's excellent video on that subject nobody does it better than those guys so be sure to watch it so what i learned from digital foundry is that when you put the game into 120 hertz mode the output resolution drops down to 1440p and makes a few other detailed sacrifices to achieve that amount of frame output now of course capturing footage at 120 hertz won't do you any good but in this recording of my lg screen hopefully you can see that 120 hertz mode nets a super smooth performance with no visible screen tearing that i could discern and for what it's worth going back and forth between 4k and 1440p at 120hz made it really tough to notice the compromises in the latter configuration 120 hertz performance is going to vary by game and in reality it's not something a lot of tvs currently support anyway this is a much more prevalent metric in the pc gaming scene as most gaming monitors settle in at 1440p with refresh rates up to 144 hertz and sometimes even higher and yeah most people buying a series x won't have tvs that can do 4k 120 and that's okay it's awesome to know it's an option and it's definitely cool to see it in action but would i buy a brand new tv just for an xbox series x not right this second but this lg cx also supports nvidia g-sync so if you have a gpu that supports that yeah maybe that's more of a compelling argument i wish i could talk more about series x games but at the time of this recording i didn't have many to really dive into i played a lot of dirt 5 and it really is a gorgeous game that shows off an impressive amount of track effects sprawling race locations and dynamic lighting and weather conditions loading times feel good with most races taking roughly 13 seconds to get going an optimized version of gears 5 arrived just before i began recording this and while the game plays incredibly smooth and looks great i actually almost immediately started experiencing some quick resume wonkiness switching back and forth between that game and dirt 5. sometimes quick resume would work fine but other times it would force either game to totally reboot load back up without sound or just freeze and crash to be totally clear microsoft did send a list of current issues with this build of gears 5 and general quick resume wonkiness is definitely highlighted as a possible issue so they definitely know about this aside from that little blip it's no doubt that quick resume is still the star here it along with the impressive improvement to legacy games are probably the killer features for series x right now as far as i'm concerned quicker zoom only takes 12 to 16 seconds or so to swap between games and i've been able to reliably juggle between around four to six titles depending on what's running it even works if you physically unplug the console and boot it back up which is undeniably pretty cool series x updates to existing games can bring along a variety of improvements with gears 5 it brings 4k hdr variable refresh rates and up to 120 frames per second in the versus multiplayer mode of course these updates are going to vary by game and the idea is that smart delivery will prevent you from the need to guess whether or not you're playing the appropriately optimized version of a game so during this preview event the series x would let me pretty much download anything from my library and then i had to go and try and run it to see if it would work or i had to check it against microsoft spreadsheet of all their compatible titles with smart delivery this should not even be an issue with the final xbox software it should all just seamlessly work under the radar so what else is there to talk about well i've also been using astro's new second generation a20 headset that will work with both the series x and ps5 if you buy an extra usb dongle sound quality is actually pretty good and it's my early go-to pick for anyone who wants to swap back and forth between consoles or pc and not have to unplug a bunch of wires i've been using it with my ps4 and series x and it's pretty great and yes keyboards seem to work fine too don't worry about that so yeah is xbox series x a day one purchase well it's gonna depend on what you're looking for like i said earlier it really is the best place to play 360 and xbox one legacy games improved loading times quick resume and added features and some games are definitely welcome perks so you're not going to get actual series x exclusives out of the gate and a decent pc with a game pass subscription is almost the same thing here so there it is a full preview look at the xbox series x i'm gonna continue playing around with this console leading up to launch we'll let you know if anything substantial changes between now and when those final review units start shipping out be sure to watch for more videos as we get closer to the launch of both the series x and ps5 and let me know what's your next gen strategy as of right now hey special thanks to digital foundry for their excellent analysis and jeff grubb over at gamesbeat for helping me figure out some weird 120 hertz issues that's it for me be safe and thanks for watchingit's now been three weeks since i first got my hands on an xbox series x and while yes it's technically a prototype system i do think i've got a really good idea of what it's like owning this next generation console so what do i think of the overall package and is it worth a day one purchase time to find out today i'm free to give impressions of the entire experience of xbox series x from top to bottom so let's start with the stuff i haven't been allowed to discuss until right now first up is the overall design of the series x it's undeniably sleek with a real subtle and unassuming industrial design standing up it's a foot tall with a 6x6 footprint i wound up keeping mine standing behind my tv if anything so i could keep the top heat exhaust fan as clear as possible you're going to need to give that area some open room regardless of how you position it the air coming out is warm but not any different than something like the exhaust fans on my gaming pc a lot of people have been teasing the series x for being bulky or yeah we've all seen that mini refrigerator meme but i've actually come to really like the way this thing looks it's understated it's neat and can pretty much blend in wherever it sits most impressive in the console's design has to be how quiet it actually runs i've never heard it rev up once during my entire time with it which is a star comparison to something like a ps4 pro which as you probably know can sound like a damn airbus when it's been on for a while so what about the ui well the series xui is nearly identical to the xbox one's interface but it's incredibly faster in every sense of the word zipping around through menus is obviously a much better experience compared to the xbox one and even the one x things barely skip a beat it's fast and it just feels great that said because it's not a departure from last gen's ui everything feels exactly the same so if you had any issues with things like layout organization or just the overall sort of you know design logic of the way xbox presents things none of that has changed for now personally i've spent three weeks navigating around this and my opinion on it hasn't really changed i still think it could use some refinement in the way it's all sort of organized but the fact that it's so lightning fast does ease some of that frustration okay let's talk about the controller a little more the introduction of that share button finally brings this console up to speed with quick access to snapping screenshots and recording gameplay hooking up older xbox controllers has been easy enough you just pair them like normal and you're ready to go using the new controller for three weeks did make me realize how much better i think it fits in my hands i really prefer the textured grips on the new one plus the feedback feels just a bit sharper microsoft supplied me with a one terabyte seagate expandable drive that slots easily into the back of the series x via a proprietary port it can hold any generation xbox game and it works as simply as you can imagine you pop it in and the games loaded on it will populate in your game tile screen it's worth noting that series x games can only load off of the internal drive or this special expandable one they can't load off a usb 3 drive that you bring yourself like the way it kind of worked in other xboxes however legacy games can run with that usb drive priced at 220 it's definitely an expensive add-on to your series x but even though you'll start out with roughly 800 gigabytes to work with you should still be able to hold roughly 15 to 25 games right off that internal drive of course depending on their individual sizes now it's worth noting that of the three games microsoft supplied that are series x optimized their sizes ranged from 35 72 and 99 gigabytes so file size might become an issue keep that in mind the overall feature set that series x brings to the table definitely reinforces the console's dependency on game pass and the focus of celebrating your back catalog because right now the new stuff really isn't here but if you're looking for the best way to play most of your legacy xbox games series x is going to be the way to do it microsoft opened up back and pat on a lot of legacy games during this sort of preview phase that i'm in here and it covered a good amount of titles games were constantly being added during my testing though a few games still never got support by the time i shot this video most surprisingly was forza horizon 4. loading times on a lot of legacy games are substantially improved in terms of loading from a save we're talking around 30 seconds for red dead 2 10 seconds for control and get this six seconds for doom eternal better yet series x automatically cloud syncs all your game saves so even if you're revisiting a game you haven't touched in years it's gonna boot up just like the way you left it like i said new series x games have been scarce during this preview period but i did finally get to test out one of the first games to be available for the console just in time to shoot this video dirt 5 on series x looks fantastic and it was the first game i could try with a mode that supports 120 hertz now keep in mind 120 hertz is just a refresh rate it doesn't necessarily mean you're guaranteed to get frames per second now you're also going to need a display that can handle the 120 hertz signal and for 4k 120 you'll need a display that supports the hdmi 2.1 standard not to mention an hdmi cable that can handle that kind of throughput not all of them can thankfully lg was kind enough to get me a absolutely beautiful cx or c10 depending on how you say it which is their brand new display that has four hdmi 2.1 ports that can each display 4k at 120. i have to note you might need to update your tv's firmware just to ensure total functionality but it does work and it is awesome dirt 5 has a separate mode for 120 hertz which is accessible in the game's video settings safe to assume that this might become the standard like it kind of did with xbox one x and ps4 pro where you're given the option to choose which category you want to prioritize dirt 5 gives you three options in this case when the xbox is set to output at 120 hertz you can choose image quality frame rate or 120 hertz mode comparing image quality and frame rate modes definitely showed a difference in that frame rate though there are some small graphical details that are sacrificed so that the game can run more smoothly though in frame rate mode there is a noticeable amount of screen tearing happening throughout a race let me just add a quick side note about all this real quick if you want a painstakingly thorough breakdown of the performances of all of these modes please check out digitalfoundry's excellent video on that subject nobody does it better than those guys so be sure to watch it so what i learned from digital foundry is that when you put the game into 120 hertz mode the output resolution drops down to 1440p and makes a few other detailed sacrifices to achieve that amount of frame output now of course capturing footage at 120 hertz won't do you any good but in this recording of my lg screen hopefully you can see that 120 hertz mode nets a super smooth performance with no visible screen tearing that i could discern and for what it's worth going back and forth between 4k and 1440p at 120hz made it really tough to notice the compromises in the latter configuration 120 hertz performance is going to vary by game and in reality it's not something a lot of tvs currently support anyway this is a much more prevalent metric in the pc gaming scene as most gaming monitors settle in at 1440p with refresh rates up to 144 hertz and sometimes even higher and yeah most people buying a series x won't have tvs that can do 4k 120 and that's okay it's awesome to know it's an option and it's definitely cool to see it in action but would i buy a brand new tv just for an xbox series x not right this second but this lg cx also supports nvidia g-sync so if you have a gpu that supports that yeah maybe that's more of a compelling argument i wish i could talk more about series x games but at the time of this recording i didn't have many to really dive into i played a lot of dirt 5 and it really is a gorgeous game that shows off an impressive amount of track effects sprawling race locations and dynamic lighting and weather conditions loading times feel good with most races taking roughly 13 seconds to get going an optimized version of gears 5 arrived just before i began recording this and while the game plays incredibly smooth and looks great i actually almost immediately started experiencing some quick resume wonkiness switching back and forth between that game and dirt 5. sometimes quick resume would work fine but other times it would force either game to totally reboot load back up without sound or just freeze and crash to be totally clear microsoft did send a list of current issues with this build of gears 5 and general quick resume wonkiness is definitely highlighted as a possible issue so they definitely know about this aside from that little blip it's no doubt that quick resume is still the star here it along with the impressive improvement to legacy games are probably the killer features for series x right now as far as i'm concerned quicker zoom only takes 12 to 16 seconds or so to swap between games and i've been able to reliably juggle between around four to six titles depending on what's running it even works if you physically unplug the console and boot it back up which is undeniably pretty cool series x updates to existing games can bring along a variety of improvements with gears 5 it brings 4k hdr variable refresh rates and up to 120 frames per second in the versus multiplayer mode of course these updates are going to vary by game and the idea is that smart delivery will prevent you from the need to guess whether or not you're playing the appropriately optimized version of a game so during this preview event the series x would let me pretty much download anything from my library and then i had to go and try and run it to see if it would work or i had to check it against microsoft spreadsheet of all their compatible titles with smart delivery this should not even be an issue with the final xbox software it should all just seamlessly work under the radar so what else is there to talk about well i've also been using astro's new second generation a20 headset that will work with both the series x and ps5 if you buy an extra usb dongle sound quality is actually pretty good and it's my early go-to pick for anyone who wants to swap back and forth between consoles or pc and not have to unplug a bunch of wires i've been using it with my ps4 and series x and it's pretty great and yes keyboards seem to work fine too don't worry about that so yeah is xbox series x a day one purchase well it's gonna depend on what you're looking for like i said earlier it really is the best place to play 360 and xbox one legacy games improved loading times quick resume and added features and some games are definitely welcome perks so you're not going to get actual series x exclusives out of the gate and a decent pc with a game pass subscription is almost the same thing here so there it is a full preview look at the xbox series x i'm gonna continue playing around with this console leading up to launch we'll let you know if anything substantial changes between now and when those final review units start shipping out be sure to watch for more videos as we get closer to the launch of both the series x and ps5 and let me know what's your next gen strategy as of right now hey special thanks to digital foundry for their excellent analysis and jeff grubb over at gamesbeat for helping me figure out some weird 120 hertz issues that's it for me be safe and thanks for watching\n"