Microsoft had launched the company's gaming console Xbox One X in India earlier in the year for Rs 44,990. It is available online — Amazon and Flipkart — and also in authorised brick-and-mortar stores in most of the cities in India.
The Xbox One X comes with a huge upgrade over its predecessor Xbox One S and is touted to be the world's most powerful console to date. Does the real-time performance match as the company claims? Here's my take.
Design and exterior look:
Xbox One X is surprisingly small for the powerful hardware it packs inside. It sports a simplistic design with a sleek metallic body having the matte finish on the top and the console feature mesh-like perforated mesh on sides, intentionally built to dissipate the excess heat when playing graphics-intense games.
The console's sleek and balanced box structure offers users the option to keep the Xbox One X either in standing or horizontal position. Another interesting aspect of the device is that it comes with inbuilt power adaptor, so he or she just can connect it to charging plug and get started.
As far as the connectivity option is concerned, Microsoft offers two USB 3.0 ports –two in the back and one in the front just below the power button. Two HDMI ports, one each IR blaster port, S/PDIF (optical audio) port, and an Ethernet port at the far right side.
Performance:
For those unaware, Xbox One X houses a powerful octa-core CPU, which can clock close to 2.3GHz speed and is backed by 6-teraflop Scorpio engine with 1172 MHz GPU, 40 Radeon compute cores.
It also boasts a massive 1 TB (1,024 GB) storage and 6.8GHz 12 GB GDDR5 RAM with 326 GB/s bandwidth, making it 40 percent more powerful than any other console in the market. The company has even incorporated vapour chamber for liquid cooling in Xbox One X, which is typically used in top-end PC graphics cards and server computers. Other stipulated features include 4K UHD Blu-ray player.
The Xbox One X is really the epitome of the gaming console. Playing Xbox One X games on full HD TV is great and if you happen own 4K TV, you are assured of ultimate gaming experience. During the review period, I played Forza Motorsport Horizon 3 and the clarity of animation graphics was awesome. Despite graphics-heavy content, there was no discernible sound coming out of the Xbox One X and was cool too. When I kept my ear to the console, I could hear the fans running, but it was all deafened by the awesome background music of the game and at no point during the game, it showed any sign of lag-ness.
As far as the console controller, the design is ergonomic as it gets and offers a good grip to the hands. And the controls are aptly placed for gaming requirements. The joystick and the buttons are very responsive and the strong under-vibration of the controller in the hand, it gives out during the play, makes gaming more enthralling. Have to say, the battery life of the controller is good. I never had to replace the battery during the review period of the three weeks, out of which I (& friends) played more than 20 hours.
Final thoughts
Currently, Microsoft Xbox One X is the best gaming console on the market. It sets a benchmark in so many aspects including the powerful processor, compact-and-sleek futuristic design, graphics processing, feature-rich controller and more. Even a newbie who has no experience of playing a gaming console will surely get hooked to the Xbox One X.
Pros:
- It's a mean machine. Xbox Box One X truly lives up to its tagline 'world's most powerful gaming console' in the market to date
- Native support for 4K HDR content at 60 fps (in most of the gaming titles)
- Sleek design with surprisingly compact for such a powerful console
- Top of the line controller
- 4K Bly-ray drive
- Most of the gaming titles of the previous edition Xbox One series are compatible in the X series
Cons:
- Expensive, but have to say it's worth every penny
- Though it comes with a huge 1TB storage, it gets fills up soon as the gaming titles size range more than 20GB (most of the time)
