Six months in with my Xbox Series X

Gaming
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It’s been six months since I switched over to the Series X so I thought it would be interesting to give my thoughts on it and compare it to others.

We have two Series X, with one being the kids.

We both had Xbox One X’s prior to the upgrades, and the One X’s were amazing consoles and hold a special place with me as it was the product of MS going all out to make up for the OG One. It was quality in every regard from build quality, quietness, design and performance. Microsoft skimped on nothing. It was even a HD Bluray player. They did this without worrying about the fact that the PS4 Pro was cheaper. I was kinda sad to say goodbye to it. But I did, and they were replaced by the two Series X’s. With regards to form, it follows on nicely from the One X, using similar materials and schemes. It’s obviously a fatter box, but it fits in fine with my cabinet. It’s a similar level of build quality as the One X, however my sons Series X is quite loud on the disc drive when loading up a game from the disc. Was wondering if I should try and get it replaced, but it still works and I doubt MS will replace it. It’s even quieter than the One X when playing games, which I never thought I would be saying as the One X was the quietest console I have had. So all in all it represents the same premium feel and experience as the One X. It’s build quality screams quality.

The controllers are similar to the One X, however the addition of the share button (which I have never used, and don’t think I will) is there. The d-pad seems an improvement over the previous gens. I will say however the plastic used does seem cheaper in feel in the new one. It doesn’t feel the same quality of build now. It performs the same, so its obviously the same quality of internals, it’s just the plastic.

While I have only really been playing last gen games, the fact that they are mostly enhanced it a bonus. The console gives the impression that it’s not even getting out of first gear. It’s not working hard at all. There’s alot of power left on tap to use down the track.

So all in all I’m loving it. I’m rapped that MS kept the same feel as the One X rather than going for a totally different type of console like Sony did. Less is more, and I think it shows MS’s direction of continuing evolution rather than revolution. Now let’s bring on Halo and FH5.

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Six months, I haven’t even seen one in the wild :joy:. Seriously this shortage and scalping would be the death of me, if I didn’t have a Switch and an old gaming PC.

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I am less then a week with my Series X

Quick Resume is just magic… It’s practical as well as a great show off to my friends

I am going from 1650 to this beast, so gaming for me is now on another level

I have never played my games with this much frame rate consistency

Quality settings are also high above what I used to play games on

And resolution is top notch 2-3 time more pixels… Clean image

Controller is good too

Playing shooters with controller is going to be difficult for me. Glad Microsoft supports Key board and mouse for there games.

Only issue is with downloading games. The speed will become half of my ISP max when a game is running or in quick resume

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Note that download speed is caped at ~20m/s if a game is running or in stand-by. Resources are allocated to running the game, and not downloading them.

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You can suspend games that are in quick resume or when you’re playing to make it go faster, like Charles said it caps your speeds when playing games to give the game full usuage of the SSD.

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Thanks

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This is just the best console I’ve owned since the Saturn. I love the quick load times, how quiet the system is, Quick resume and HDR for BC games are amazing and VRR is a true game changer

The whole system is so well thought out, from Smart delivery to how you can just easily update your pad and headset wirelessly in stark contrast to the PS5

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This summarizes my experience too pretty well. I also have two of them, one I’ve had since launch and the other one for about four months. They are both working great, and there is no difference between them. Whisper quiet!

I was also a bit hesitant to replace my One X’s, haha. They were such great machines and represented the shift for Xbox. In the end I only kept my Gears 5 Limited Edition for sentimental reasons and gave away the other, I couldn’t go back to the old load times so a second Series X was a must.

I also agree with the controller, feels a bit more plastic and flimsy but still great. I mostly use an Elite Series 2 though for obvious reasons hehe.

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The One X is such an underrated piece of engineering. Like seriously what Microsoft did with that console was magic.

Months people kept repeating “you cant offer 4K graphics on console for $500” and here we are in 2021 with consoles promoting up to 8K :joy:.

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Yes, they changed the whole console hardware narrative right then and there. It just stopped, shifted the narrative to something else completely since it wasn’t even a fight, PS had nothing on the One X. Suddenly no one counted grass on twitter any more… funny that.

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I currently have more Series consoles than I care to admit, and honestly the OS/tech side of things, both in feature sets and in stability, has never been matched in any launch I can recall. If the promise of this new, massive XGS can be lived up to, I definitely foresee the Series being my favorite console right up there with SNES and 360 (my tied favorites thus far).

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I’m enjoying it a lot, and reigniting my interest in gaming which was fading near the end of last gen. I just wish I had more time to play games because working and going back to school has made it tough to get deep into games I want to play

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November 4th will be 10 months in which I have owned an Xbox Series X. It’s overall, an excellent gaming console, tech and piece of hardware. It’s extremely quiet. I’m installing GOTG right now off the disc and while I can hear it, it’s not loud or anything.

Dashboard is fine. Same as Xbox One when I had it. Hoping they add HDR next year because it’s annoying going from HDR to SDR content.

Controller wise, I traded in one of the two Series X controllers and bought two brand new sealed Xbox One controllers because Series X controller was literally designed for the hands of a 10 year old and im not 10 years old. Controller is small and my hands kept cramping. So im using Xbox One which is great. It’s bigger, thicker, build quality is better, I prefer the directional pad on Xbox One over Series and best of all, since switching in July, im no longer having hand cramps which is great since I tend to have long gaming sessions.

The features like Game Pass, Quick Resume, Backwards Compatibility and Smart Delivery are all excellent but outside of Smart Delivery, I rarely use Game Pass or BC and while QR is great, I only play one game at a time so this feature doesn’t apply to me. In general, excellent features but for me, outside of Smart Delivery and me using Game Pass for day one exclusive/multi-platform games, I simply don’t use it.

Microsoft concentrating and focusing on 60FPS as the standard for games is great and im very happy with their direction for this as I believe the standard for every game should be 60FPS on current generation consoles. I will always take lower resolution in favor of 60FPS. I’m also happy that Dolby Vision is supported as I will be using that over HDR 10 since it’s better quality and implementation. The ultra fast load times due to the SSD is right there with 60FPS. Love being able to load into a game in seconds instead of minutes.

Game wise, I have played every multi-platform game on Series X and no issues whatsoever. Console is very quiet and barely gets warm. Exclusives wise, for me personally, it was lacking for the first eight months by is finally getting going. Gears Tactics was great for what it was, loving The Ascent, hyped for Halo Infinite, looking forward to Stalker 2 and very hyped for Redfall and then Starfield to follow that barring any delays of course.

Overall, excellent 9.0/10 and I have been very pleased, satisfied and happy with the Xbox Series X. Way too early to rank the console all time but for me, it should hit the #2 ranking by the halfway point if not sooner surpassing Xbox 360 and if the exclusives im most interested in are great or better for me, Xbox Series X has an excellent chance at being my #1 all time gaming console.

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Oh, so you did get a hold of the Halo XSX? Nice!

@peter42O I agree with the size of the Series controllers, they are designed for… well not grown men at least :wink: The Xbox One controllers are great in size.

Once upon a time when me, a PCMR guy, was only console-curious and was looking to get my first it was the controllers (360 at the time, X1 didn’t come here until late 2014) that made the choice for me. I just can’t use the Dualshocks, horrible plasticy children toys feeling and it hurt my hands. I still swear every time I play shit on my PS4, unusable crap.

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Have had mine since launch and would echo the sentiment that if the first party output pans out the way it could/should that this could easily end up being my favorite console of all time. Incredibly polished first year, a constant stream of updates, new features, and a much better first year of software than I anticipated.

+1 to the controllers are too small camp, but I accept that I am an exception and not the rule.

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Love mine as well. It’s the console that made me stop worrying about image quality and framerates.

Everything loads fast, looks pretty and is super smooth thanks to vrr.

Nothing to complain about in the games department either. BC + Gamepass made me drown in a backlog of incredible games right away, and I think I never played as many games I loved in such a short amount of time.