[Music] the xbox series x sneaks up on you it's a minimalist block with precisely one curve on the entire thing and when you turn it on the dashboard looks almost identical to the one that xbox one gamers have been using for years even the power button makes the same beeps and the packed in controller is barely changed it's not until you fire up a game and are launched into smooth native 4k amazingly quickly that the series x justifies spending 500 to upgrade this console makes few compromises and even though there's no killer app out of the box that immediately screams this is next gen after just a short while with it going back to even an xbox one x would be agonizing [Music] from the moment you open the xbox series x box it makes a great first impression with a presentation reminiscent of an apple product it's clear that every aspect of that process has been carefully considered including the console's central isolated placement in the box making it feel like you're opening a present it's befitting of a premium 500 device that customer first thinking continues with an easy initial setup when you plug the series x in and turn it on you can even use your smartphone to log into your account and toggle your settings and preferences while the box itself downloads and installs a firmware update once you're up and running you've got multiple options for bringing your existing library to the series x the best of which don't require you to re-download anything for instance if your current xbox is still hooked up to your network when you bring home the series x simply plug in the series x and transfer all of your games right over the network it's as painless as upgrading a smartphone let's talk about the console design itself it's minimalist yes but bold to my eye it's easily the best in xbox history when it's standing vertically at least on its side it looks like a giant misplaced lego piece and you can't remove the round vertical stand but when stood tall it's big enough to confidently tower in your entertainment center while compact and subtle enough that it doesn't dominate it the top of the series x is something of an industrial designer's magic trick the concave ventilation screen gives an appealing look of both depth and premium quality when viewed at eye level or higher and the green coloring on the inside half of those ventilation holes pops with a much needed accent that makes the inside of the series x appear to be illuminated even when it's turned off on the front you have the power button a single usb 3.2 port a 4k blu-ray drive with an eject button and a controller pairing button on the back there's an hdmi 2.1 out two more usb ports the power plug and ethernet port and the internal storage expansion slot rest in peace hdmi in and optical ports i know those weren't the xbox one's most popular features but i'll miss them i won't miss noise however because there really isn't any kudos to microsoft's engineers for making the series x almost inaudibly quiet even playing games in 4k at 60 frames per second this stoic ebony obelisk barely whispers we measure just 40 decibels while playing dirt 5 which sounds great next to 60 decibels for the same game on the xbox one x in the thermal department the series x also does very well it's a bit cooler than the xbox one x registering at 42.5 degrees celsius in dirt 5 versus 56 degrees in the same game on the one x if you've owned an xbox one navigating your new series x will be instantly familiar i do realize that's anti-climactic for a lot of folks until now when we've bought an expensive new generation console we've gotten a totally new experience microsoft has not done that here opting instead for continuity across generations and sticking with an interface that after nearly seven years of tweaking works pretty well it may not be shiny or new but it is time tested it has every feature and third-party media app we've come to expect from a current console with no obvious gaps or downgrades on the series x it's snappier and more responsive and a lot of functionality is easily accessed via a press of the guide button on the controller some occasionally needed settings are still cumbersome to find but at least there's a system level search functionality similar to windows and iphone that lets you search for things like hdr setting when it comes to power this generation is no repeat of the previous one which saw the xbox one outgunned by sony's playstation 4 on both power and price this time the xbox series x's main selling point is that it has 12.1 teraflops of computational power on tap for games to play with it's not a perfect measurement of speed but on paper that's twice as powerful as the xbox one x and about 20 percent better than the playstation 5 for the same 499 dollar price that sony's charging in practice that means 4k 60 frames per second experiences are positioned to be the new normal and that boost in frame rate is a very noticeable upgrade from the 4k 30 treatments common on the xbox one x and the upscaled or checkerboarded 30 we usually see on the ps4 pro we don't know for sure yet how the series x and ps5 will perform in the same third-party games head-to-head but remembering the difference between the xbox one and the ps4 at their launch betting on the more powerful box seems like a good move if you favor frame rate overall else some games on the series x offer a 120 frames per second option though doubling the frame rate usually comes at the cost of some amount of resolution it's also bound to cause some setup hassle because not every 4k tv or hdmi cable supports 120 hertz that said the difference between 60 hertz and 120 hertz was nice but it didn't jump out at me the way the upgrade from 30 to 60 does and i don't generally think it's worth sacrificing the resolution for but your mileage may vary and if you're serious about competitive gaming you might be glad the option is there the series x's superstar feature is its one terabyte nvme ssd drive games played from there new and old alike show tremendously impressive loading time improvements the ssd affects absolutely everything on this console in an utterly life-changing way when you consider all the hours we've wasted staring at loading screens this past generation this is arguably a bigger leap forward for console gaming than 4k what stings a little bit is thinking about how quickly that 802 gigabytes of usable space will fill up when we start installing 136 gigs of call of duty black ops cold war 120 gigabytes of halo the master chief collection 72 gigabytes of gears 5 probably a decent chunk for cyberpunk 2077 and so on especially when you're looking at 220 dollars for a one terabyte expansion card that matches the ssd's performance those numbers are very scary but again xbox one generation games will run in their unenhanced form from a regular usb 3.0 drive so you can reserve all of the internal space for the games that need it speaking of speed quick resume is the series x's other omnipresent feature that i now wonder how i ever lived without being able to instantly pick up where you left off in any of your several most recently played games is an absolutely fantastic quality of life feature it only takes about 5 to 10 seconds to go from selecting a game off of your list to actually playing exactly where you left off there's no need to go back through the splash screens the main menu or even load to a recent checkpoint much more than any previous console the series x makes me feel like it's ready to be picked up and played at a moment's notice and that makes me want to use it more often a hidden cost savings of the series x is that you can expect just about any xbox one peripherals that you own that aren't named connect to seamlessly pair with the series x the new controllers are only slightly revised and older xbox one controllers as well as the pricey elites are still rock solid so if you like your existing controller you can bring it with you so far the almost complete lack of any power-hungry next-gen exclusive games to put those teraflops to a true test is the millstone around the series x's neck not that that's the console's fault but the delay of halo infinite means there are hardly any exclusive games designed to take advantage of all this power until next year and even then microsoft's decision to support consoles all the way back to the launch xbox one for the next one to two years means exclusives probably won't do anything we haven't seen before from a technological standpoint they'll just look prettier and or run smoother on the series x happily there's no shortage of things to play thanks to full backward compatibility out of the box just about everything from the xbox one will work and the substantial catalog of 360 games and handful from the original xbox that were brought forward to the xbox one carry over to the series x2 they also run better than they did on previous xbox systems such as hdr being added to halo 5 or a frame rate approaching 60 on grand theft auto 4. it's not unlike upgrading your pc in some cases the games benefit from smart delivery microsoft's platform level system that encourages developers to push you the best version of their game based on which xbox it's being played on so if you buy assassin's creed valhalla for xbox one now but then get a series x as a gift in december your progress will carry over seamlessly and your console will download any new tech or textures it needs in order to give you the optimize for series x edition of ubisoft's new rpg speaking of new games a console is only as good as the games you can play on it and the series x is lacking in that department in its early days which is also not unusual in a console's early launch window 30 launch games might seem like a lot but almost nothing requires a series x to play in fact a number of those games are upgraded xbox one games from as far back as 2018 such as forza horizon 4 and gears 5. of course just because the launch lineup is almost entirely cross-gen doesn't mean it's bad there's a healthy variety of genres represented here and all 30 have been officially optimized for the new console but very little of what's available in the launch window screens you've got to see this on series x right now even the much maligned xbox one launch had technologically impressive next generation exclusives like forza motorsport 5 dead rising 3 and ryze son of rome we can only assume that the xbox series x will wow us with new and spectacular next-gen games eventually because there isn't much to judge it on right now but in the meantime no matter what current games you throw at it your loading times will be drastically cut your frame rates will be smoother and your resolutions will be higher this bold and minimalistically designed box is quiet compact for both the power it packs and especially how it compares to the ps5 capable and loaded with convenience features like instantly resuming and cycling between any of your recently played games compared directly to the playstation 5 specs it flat out gives you more power for the same price it's going to be a joy to see what developers actually do with it in the coming years [Music] for more on the xbox series x check out our in-depth review of the new xbox controller our full unboxing video of the console and our review of the series x's cheaper little brother the xbox series s and for everything else on the new generation of gaming stick with ign [Music] you