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Picked up an Xbox One X (a little review)


Steve

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I pre-ordered back when they first became available so I got one of the "Project Scorpio Edition" consoles which has a slightly different look to the regular one.

 

When I first turned it on, I was surprised at how quiet it is. Given that it's considerably smaller than the original Xbox One while being 4-5 times as powerful and having an internal PSU (no more big power brick) I expected a reasonable amount of fan noise, but I could barely tell that it was on just by noise alone.

 

Quite a lot of devs have patched their games to be Xbox One X enhanced, which means you get some mix of higher res, higher frame rates and HDR. That includes some backwards compatible Xbox and Xbox 360 games. The first enhanced game I tried was Assassin's Creed: Origins, the latest game in the AC series, which uses a dynamic resolution that scales based on the available power. When playing it on my original Xbox One you could tell that it's sub-1080p almost all of the time, plus there are times where the frame rate dips during busy scenes. With the One X the resolution can be anywhere from around 1,500p up to 4K and the frame rate is rock solid. Even without a 4K TV, it was immediately noticeable - kinda like switching from a console over to a high end PC. Games also load noticeably faster too.

 

In the box you get codes for subscriptions to Xbox Live (2 weeks) and Game Pass (1 month), a 4K-capable HDMI cable, as well as the latest revision of the controller, although not the Elite controller, sadly. No headset is included and while pack-in headsets usually suck, I still think it would have been nice to include one.

 

The only real downside for me, as someone who owns a Kinect, is that there is no longer a dedicated Kinect port on either the Xbox One S or X. To use Kinect, you have to buy an adapter that's a bit of an abomination. It comes with 2 little boxes, 3 pieces of cable, and has to be plugged into the mains, plus it costs £30. MS have discontinued Kinect so I can see why they no longer have a port on the newer consoles, but it feels like a bit of a slap in the face to early adopters of the original Xbox One where they had no choice but to buy a Kinect as it was packed in with every machine. Aside from that, any existing Xbox One peripherals you have will work directly with the One X and if your games are on an external hard drive, you can just plug that in and you're away.

 

Here's an example of a One X enhanced version of a game - Star Wars Battlefront II: -

 

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Dooope. Wish I could justify switching but got my S only a year ago.

 

Side note, I didnt know Kinect still worked. What u using it for, Steve. ?

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Hi Steve!

Oh, hi, Sy!

 

@Dirk - It's really just a glorified mic in my case. I mainly use it for capturing game clips and screenshots. You can do it with the controller, but it briefly takes you out of the game as you have to press the Xbox button to open the guide, then press X or Y. Sometimes I use it to turn the console on or off or to launch a game.

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is there any point buying the X if you don't have a 4k / HDR tv?

I think so. If you look at a game like Assassin's Creed: Origins, it looks WAY better on the One X than a regular One, even on a 1080p TV.

 

If a game is either patched/released with the One X in mind, or it uses an engine that can adapt based on the available power, then you will definitely notice the difference. Also, some games that had performance issues on the regular console now run smoothly on the One X. Trials Fusion, for example, had screen tearing and frame rate issues on the regular console, but it's butter smooth on the One X.

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