- I'm Andru Edwards.
You're watching Gear Live
and in just a few days, the Xbox series X
and Xbox series S will be released.
The next generation of gaming is upon us.
And in this video,
I bring you my Xbox series X review, let's do it.
(upbeat music)
What's going on tech squad, Andrew Edwards here.
And as I mentioned today,
we are taking a look at the Xbox series X.
And I asked you guys what you wanted to know
about the Xbox series X
and a lot of the questions pertained
to the speed claims that Microsoft has made.
And I have several thoughts on that.
So let's start with the one that impressed me
right out of the gate, the Instant On functionality.
There's not much to this one.
When you pick up your controller
and pressed the button to turn on the Xbox series X,
within a couple of seconds,
you're sitting at the home screen, logged in.
This happens so fast that often
it's my TV catching up to get the HDMI feed onto the screen.
This is a huge difference from even the Xbox One X
which I felt like was starting to show its age
both with how long it took to boot up
even when I had Instant On enabled
and some of the sluggishness around moving
through the dashboard.
The Xbox series X is a night and day difference.
Now I have much more to say on the different ways
that the series X just makes everything so much faster
after using it for a couple of weeks
but let's quickly take a tour of the console.
On the front you've got the 4K Blu-ray disc drive
with the eject button.
You've got a USB-A port and the pairing button
and of course the power button.
Then around back, you've got two more USB-A ports,
a gigabit ethernet port, HDMI out,
a port for the power cord and the storage expansion
which allows you to use proprietary,
super fast storage cards that play series X optimized games,
if your internal storage isn't enough for you.
Now up next let's talk about the buzzwords,
4K, 60 frames per second, and 120 frames per second gaming.
And let's make this clear, there's a huge difference
between constantly hearing talk of 4K,
60 frames per second gaming,
and 120 frames per second gaming
and it's totally different to actually sit down
and experience it.
If you're playing your Xbox series X
on a TV that supports these modes,
the buzzwords fall away
and it becomes all about the experience.
Now, me personally,
I'm not the biggest Forza guy for example,
as I prefer Arcade style racing games
but I could not put Forza Horizon 4 down.
Another game that I held off on playing
until I got the series X in
was Ori and the Will of the Wisp,
which supports 120 frames per second.
Now this game was already gorgeous
but the insane fluidity of that high refresh rate brings it
to a completely different level.
Gears 5 runs at 120 frames per second,
two in multiplayer in that silky smooth experience
makes a world of difference.
So again, all these are things
that I honestly got tired of hearing about.
You can't really see the 4K HDR,
60 or 120 frames per second gameplay
when you're watching a teaser on YouTube.
But if you ordered a series X and have a compatible TV,
you will definitely be happy in under a week.
Oh, and if you're wondering which TVs I've used for testing,
I use the LG G10 gallery design OLED but then got,
back here, I also used a LG C10 OLED
and a Samsung Q900R 8K TV.
I have video reviews on each of these TVs
and I'll link down below if you're interested.
Okay, next let's talk about Quick Resume,
on the Xbox One, you could have a single game suspended
and that would allow you to do something else
like watch a streaming video on Netflix
and then go back into the game later where you left off.
But if you launched another game,
then that first game would no longer be suspended.
On the series X you can have multiple games suspended
and then you can jump into them with Quick Resume.
And the most I've seen
that I can suspend has been seven games
with the majority of those being previous generation titles
but Nixon current gen, and it drops to be closer
to about five games, which is still super cool.
It'll actually maintain the saved state,
even if you unplug and move the Xbox series X
to another room to play on another TV,
plug it back in, and you can still quick resume
into any of the games that were saved.
This is great if you're playing the same handful
of games for a bit, but if you're diving into game pass
and jumping in and out of like 20 different games,
you won't get a lot of use out of a quick resume
because it's gonna be emptying that quick resume cash
due to the amount of games that you're playing.
Also, it definitely doesn't work for online games, of course
where you're playing with other people in a lobby, but
for single player and local multiplayer games and campaigns,
it's just another thing that adds
to the speed of this console.
Now another feature that adds to the speed
of the console is the much faster loading times.
This pertains both to new series X games
that run on the velocity architecture
which takes advantage of the insanely fast internal storage
of the consoles, obliterating loading times.
However, with Microsoft pushing game pass ultimate so hard
and with several million gamers subscribed
to the service, you'll also likely end
up playing a bunch of backwards compatible titles as well.
The nice thing is that with all the power
in the series X, even games that don't use velocity
will still see a very significant boost
in loading time.
The Outer Worlds loaded three to four times faster
for me and even games like NBA 2K21 when playing
the previous gen version had much shorter load times
than what I was seeing
on the Xbox 1X just a few weeks ago.
So we've got Instant on, we've got 4K 60
and 120 frames per second.
We've got Quick Resume of games.
We've got faster loading times which all combined together
to make the Xbox series X instantly feel
like a much, much faster,
true next generation console.
But then there's also the fact
that Microsoft wants the new
Xbox hardware to run anything Xbox
which takes me to backwards compatibility.
I mentioned game pass ultimate a few minutes ago
and it bears repeating that there are a lot
of previous generation games that are amazing.
There are games that you may not have ever played
because you didn't own an Xbox
or just never got around to them if you did own one.
For me, the Outer Worlds and ori and the Will of the Wisps
are two of those games.
The thing is when you play them on the series X,
you get a much better experience,
more stable frame rates, higher resolution
on games that use variable resolution switching
and even auto HDR, which takes games that were not released
with high dynamic range data, and automatically adds it in
to give them an automatic graphical upgrade.
Now, other questions I got were about the new controller,
the Xbox series X controller feels very similar
to the Xbox One controller.
The differences are in the feeling of the plastic itself
which is a softer touch plastic with texturing
on the triggers and the back of the controller grips.
There's also a USB-C port instead of micro USB,
which is a nice addition
and the new D pad shape, which I like.
It just feels more clicky.
And then there's the share button
which lets you tap to take a screenshot
of what's on the screen right now, or tap
and hold to save a recording of a clip of what happened
in your game over the past 60 seconds.
Having that there should make it easier
to actually share your game content
on your favorite social networks.
I should also mention that the series X stays super quiet.
You can barely tell it's on, which is nice.
In fact, if it didn't have that glowing Xbox logo
on the front, I honestly wouldn't know
that it was on at all.
Now, as for the things that I wish were different.
First, the amount of storage.
I do wish there was more in there than the one terabyte
since games are gonna be so much larger.
The nine Xbox series X versions of games
that I have stored internally
on the console take up about 53% of the storage.
And that includes a few older titles that got
the next gen upgrades.
So on day one, half, my internal storage is used up.
Of course you could pick up the Seagate expansion card
to add an additional terabyte of storage.
And I do understand that wanting to have multiple skews
on store shelves but I would've liked the option to pay more
to get a two terabyte console rather
than just a one terabyte console.
I also wish there were faster USB ports.
The series X stays with USB-A ports that support USB 3.1.
There are no USB-C ports at all
which means none of the faster 3.1 gen two or 3.2 ports,
that supports much faster speeds.
We do see these ports on the PS five and I had hoped
to see similar here from Microsoft on a console
that you may be holding onto
for the next five years or more.
Now, one person asked me which games they should try
on day one when they unbox their console,
and I'd say, if you wanna see what the Xbox can do
with some of the new next gen features,
I would definitely try Forza Horizon 4,
Gears 5 Multiplayer, Ori, and the Will of the Wisp,
NBA 2K 21 Next Gen.
So not the previous gen version
but the next gen version,
Assassin's Creed Valhalla
and Mortal Kombat 11.
Halo Infinite was delayed,
so it won't be a part of the launch.
However, Halo Master Chief collection has been upgraded
for the series X, so you can definitely try
that out as well.
Now, most of these titles are available
on Game Pass Ultimate, so if you're a member,
you're good to go, and if you've never signed up
you can grab a free trial when you get your Xbox series X
or S in hand.
And by the way, I also have a video showing you
how to get three years of Game Pass Ultimate
by flipping your Xbox live gold for $1.
So the question after using the Xbox series X
for a couple of weeks is should you buy one?
And my answer to that is an emphatic Yes.
If you care about the specs and the speed
that I mentioned, you won't be disappointed
with what the series X has to offer.
If you want crazy speed and want to game
at high refresh rates at 4K resolution, whether that's now
or in the future.
Now, if you don't care about 4K in particular
and do all your gaming digitally
and have no use for the disk drive
then the series S might be more your thing.
But for me, Microsoft built something really, really special
with the series X and I'm super excited to see
where they take it going forward.
Now let me know, did you preorder an Xbox series X
or series S?
And if you did, what features are you looking forward
to most from the console?
What makes it feel NextGen
to you and what games do you plan on playing on day one?
Let me know in the comments below,
and I'll meet you there for further discussion.
Of course we'll have way more
on the Xbox series X coming up on Geared Up.
Geared Up is the show that I do each week
with John Rettinger.
We talk about the latest in tech, gadgets and games.
And the next episode actually
is going to be a very special one
because we will have someone
from Microsoft and someone from Samsung to talk
about the collaboration that they're doing
in cloud gaming.
Until next time, thank you so much for watching
as always guys.
I appreciate your support.
I manage Andru Edwards
and I will catch you in the next video.
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