- Hey guys this is Austin.
And inside this mysterious brown box
is what I very much hope is the Xbox One X,
but the question is, is it worth it?
So first of all I have to give a big shout out to Microsoft
for actually sending us out the Xbox One X early.
The moment of truth.
Oh, yeah.
So first we get all of our paperwork
in this nice little folder.
So we get the Getting Started Guide.
Actually something cool about the One X
is that if you do have a One S right now,
literally all the cables are in the same spot,
and they use the same cables.
So you can just unplug the One S,
plug the One X in,
that works just fine.
You also get one month of Xbox Game Pass,
as well as what I assume is
14 days of Xbox Live Gold.
We also get what seems to be some cables.
Yeah so we have the tiny power cable.
One of the nice things about the One S and the One X
is that you don't need a power brick,
you just plug it right in.
Alright we also get an HTMI cable,
as well as the
oh controller.
I don't think the One X has a different
controller than the One S.
They already updated it last year
with Bluetooth and a couple things
but let's take a look.
Yeah that looks pretty much
like a normal Xbox One controller.
These have a little bit of a texture on the back,
but I think it's the same as the One S
just in different color,
but nice although what's not nice is that
the $500 console still comes with double AA batteries.
It's actually not that big of a deal
but having it charged an extra $20
for the battery is kind of annoying.
Now the Xbox One X.
So I've actually held one of these before.
It is so heavy.
So it is actually slightly smaller than the Xbox One S
but it weighs a lot more
and it's supposedly because they put some crazy cooling
to actually get this thing to work.
There it is.
Xbox One X.
So if you look here in the back,
it's literally just a giant heat sink.
So the idea here is that
because this is so much more powerful
than something like the Xbox One S,
they need to get a lot more cooling
to actually make sure this doesn't like, you know,
explode or catch on fire or Red Ring.
So just like on the One S,
we have the power port,
HTMI out, as well as HTMI in,
a pair of USB 3.0 ports, IR out,
speaker out, as well as ethernet.
My big takeaways from the One X,
as far as hardware goes,
it's just so heavy.
I'm just gonna keep saying that.
This is so heavy.
Ken, get up here.
- Wow, yeah. - Isn't that heavy?
- I mean it's 'cause it's smaller than One S too, right?
- It's basically the same size.
It's like a little smaller.
- But, like, I mean,
this seems like very dense.
- They got vapor chamber cooling inside
which is like what you'd find in like
a 1080 Ti or something.
- I mean also this thing, like,
probably draws more power too.
The power port is the same, yeah.
- I'm actually surprised
that they were able to do that
because the PS4 Pro uses a more PC style.
- [Ken] Yeah.
- Speaking of the PS4 Pro,
to me the One X is a much more
attractive console across the board.
Not only does it pack more power
and a smaller and better looking chassis,
but you're also getting extra features
such as Ultra HD Blu Ray
that you just can't get on the PS4 Pro.
Put the One X side by side with its little brother
and the family resemblance is clear.
It drops the bins on top in favor of
a matte-like finish all the way across.
While this is nice for usability and allowing you
to actually put things on top of the console,
to me I still feel like the One S
is the better-looking console.
Especially in white,
it is such a classy look,
but the One X is very similar.
Like the PS4 Pro,
the major advantage of the One X is that
it is a more powerful version of the Xbox One S.
Look at the specs and it's no competition.
While it has a similar 8 Core Processor on the One X,
it's clocked higher at 2.3 gigahertz compared to 1.7.
Memory sees a massive upgrade.
We're going from eight gigabytes of DDR3
to 12 gigabytes of GDDR5.
Now having that extra space means
that not only can you do things
like store higher resolution textures
but it is of the faster GDDR5 variant.
The original Xbox One relied on DDR3 memory
which is a lot slower
but it was backed up by some very small
and very fast ESRAM on the actual chip itself.
And this was expensive
and part of the reason why the original Xbox One
did not have as much power as the PS4
which decided to bail on all of that
and just go with the faster GDDR5 memory out of the box.
And the Xbox One X needs it.
So it has an AMD mega-based GPU
with a pretty impressive six teraflops of performance.
And to put that in perspective,
the original Xbox One had about 1.2 teraflops
while the PS4 and the PS4 Pro
have 1.8 and 4.2 teraflops respectively.
That is five times the graphics horsepower
of the original Xbox One
and it is right up there with a lot of high end gaming PCs.
Now it's actually kind of necessary in 2017.
The original Xbox One barely struggled to hit
1080p in a lot of games, much less 4K.
The idea is that all current Xbox One games
will run right out of the box,
no problem on the One X,
but some games and especially new ones going forward
should be One X Enhanced.
And this can mean different things depending on the game,
so a lot of the times this means
that you're going to get 4K and HDR support,
but at the very least you should see
some resolution and quality improvements.
As I'm doing this video before the release date,
not all of these game patches are live.
However a couple of them that I can test are,
Gears of War 4 and Titanfall 2.
Gears is right up there
with some of the best looking options on the Xbox One
and you get a ton of options on the One X.
Not only does it have a 4K rendering mode
with enhanced textures,
but you can also opt to play it
in 1080p at 60 frames which is awesome.
Not all games do this
but it brings the experience closer
to the flexibility you get on PC.
When you're playing on a nice 4K TV,
the difference is very noticeable.
Take a closer look and you'll see
that not only are textures
on his face and jacket much improved,
but the higher resolution helps
to clean up stuff like his hair.
In action, while the details aren't quite as obvious,
the extra resolution and textures make a big difference.
It's not a next generation leap or anything
but especially if you have an HDR display, it looks great.
Titanfall 2 also shows a substantial difference.
This is a game that struggles
to get close to HD on standard hardware,
but here it's running with a dynamic resolution
that aims for 4K while keeping locked
to 60 frames per second.
In most areas it's not quite at 4K
but the difference compared
to the standard Xbox isn't even close.
It goes from being a bit of a blurry mess
to looking crisp in detail.
This is all based on playing on a 4K TV
but you will see some of these improvements
if you're using a 1080p or even a 1440p monitor.
The One X will Super Sample down to HDE
to get you a sharper image
with the same improved textures, et cetera.
You won't be getting these full benefits
but as 4K and HDR-compatible TVs
become more and more common,
having more powerful console isn't a crazy idea.
Microsoft recently brought out backwards compatibility
for original Xbox games
which works well in the X as you'd expect,
but what's really impressive is the 360 emulation.
On the standard one,
it looks essentially identical to base 360 hardware,
but for some games including Halo 3 and Fallout 3,
there's a special One X rendering mode.
Not only does this massively improve the resolution,
but it can also add things like HDR support
without touching the base game code,
or at least, supposedly.
Take a look at Halo 3
and the difference is kind of incredible.
There's a massive leap in not only resolution
but just in sheer detail.
If you take a closer look at Arbiter here for example,
he goes from being a few blurry pixels on the 360
to being razor sharp on the One X.
It's clear that they're drawing
higher quality textures
farther away than was possible before
and the results are awesome.
Unfortunately this won't be the case
on every 360 game on the One X
but it is still incredibly impressive.
Get outside of gaming and you'll find a very familiar sight.
So the new Xbox One interface
is shared across all Xbox Ones,
and while it is a big improvement,
it still has a little bit of clutter
compared to what I'd like, PS4.
You do get some new options
including being able to record
gameplay at up to 4K60 in HDR.
Although if you want to record
for longer than 30 seconds,
you will need an external drive.
Also just a little tip,
if you want to know which games
take advantage of the One X,
there's a dropdown menu which will show you
which titles are One X Enhanced.
The vapor chamber cooling inside the One X
absolutely does its job.
So it does get a little bit warmer on the back.
Thankfully that doesn't mean that the fan speed
is going to be all that high.
It's only just a little bit louder
than something like the One S.
Given the power draw tops 165 watts,
I had to give Microsoft credit.
They did not cheap out when it comes to the cooling
which brings me to one of the biggest issues with the One X,
price.
At $500 it's not only a $100 more than the PS4 Pro,
but it's basically double the price
of the standard Xbox One.
The Xbox is fighting an uphill battle.
On one hand there's the more successful PS4,
and on the other is the surprisingly excellent
Nintendo Switch.
So is the Xbox One X worth it?
Well it depends.
If you're the person who wants
the most powerful console out there, then yes,
but for a lot of people,
the cheaper PS4 Pro
is going to deliver not only more games
but the performance is close enough
that it might just be enough.
So what do you guys think about the One X?
Let me know in the comments below
and I will catch you on the next one.