T3 - UK (2020-12)

DECEMBER 2020 T3 55

Xbox Series X

acking an enormous
amount of processing
power, yet looking as dull
as a NAS drive, the Xbox
Series X is the biggest (so far) of
Microsoft’s entries into the new
generation of games consoles. Its little
brother, the Series S, is thinner, less
powerful, and better looking.
The console itself is a black cuboid
more than twice as fat as the Xbox
One X console that proceeded it. The
Series X is clean and minimalist, and
will blend into a lot of setups quite
easily without offending the eye.
Getting the system set up is a
piece of cake. You plonk it down
horizontally or vertically, then plug
in the power cord and connect the
system to one of your TV’s HDMI
ports with the included cable.
When running at full tilt, the
Series X expels quite a lot of hot air,
and its cooling system is designed to
draw air in from one end of the
console (its base) and expel it through
the other (its top). You need to keep
the console well ventilated.
The front of the Series X is adorned
with just a single USB port, as well
as a small disc eject button and
controller syncing button. Round the
back things get more interesting,
with power and HDMI connections,
as well as an Ethernet port, a brace of

It might not have

the most dazzling

appearance, but

the X’s inners are

full of magic

USB ports, and the console’s custom

storage expansion slot.

Inside, it’s packing 12 teraflops of

processing power, delivered by AMD’s

latest CPU GPU architectures; paired

with a 1TB NVMe SSD, the Series X

absolutely smokes Xbox’s last

flagship, the Xbox One X.

POWER PLAY

Setting the console up is almost

entirely handled through the

companion Xbox app on a mobile

phone or tablet. There’s a lot to do,

from setting up an internet

connection to updating firmware on

the console and the controller,

dictating privacy and communication

settings, allowing or blocking

automatic game updates, establishing

an energy profile and much more.

The Series X target for gameplay is

60fps at 4K resolution, while also

offering a 120Hz refresh rate and

theoretical maximum framerate of

120fps, and there really is no going

back (even to the Xbox One X) once

you’ve sampled this smoothness and

fidelity. It feels like an upgrade,

especially in terms of the speed at

which everything loads.

Last-gen games, often tied to

spinning hard drives, had some

absolutely appalling load times.

Gamers often reported waiting up to

five minutes for a game to load

initially and that, quite frankly, was

not acceptable.

That improvement is thanks to the

Xbox Velocity Architecture and, even

more specifically, its NVMe SSD. The

improvement doesn’t just relate to

new games, either, with older titles

benefiting from the quicker read and

write times the SSD offers. The

excellent Quick Resume feature lets

you open and play multiple games,

then have their states saved by the

console so that you can quickly flip

between them as desired.

On previous-gen hardware only

one game could be cached like this,

meaning every time you loaded up a

different game the previous was

wiped and would then have to be

reloaded through loading bars,

credits and menu screen.

TAKING CONTROL

The Series X comes with the new

design wireless Xbox Controller,

which anyone who has spent any time

with an Xbox One console will be

very familiar with. The new

controller essentially shares the same

design as the older controller but has

a few more design elements from the

Xbox Elite Wireless Controller 2,

which grant it a slightly more

premium and mature aesthetic.

P

CPU Custom AMD Zen 2, eight cores

DWb*+]

GPU&XVWRP$0'b5'1$

Memory*%

Storage7%LQWHUQDO190H66'

H[SDQGDEOHZLWKFXVWRPFDUGVRU86%

Optical drive.%OXUD\

SizePP™PP™PP

WeightNJ