Xbox Series X Review: Quiet, Fast-Loading Performance Still Leads Microsoft’s Console Lineup
Xbox Series X enters its fifth year as Microsoft’s most polished console platform—quiet, cool, and built for fast-loading gaming—while the bigger story for players is whether the ecosystem’s upcoming software push can offset lingering misses in media features and the console’s late arrival to “next-gen only” titles.
Hardware and design hold up: fast storage, strong thermals, and a quiet tower
Several years on, the Xbox Series X is described as Microsoft’s strongest console engineering effort, with a tower-style design that prioritizes airflow through the top exhaust. Testing with a FLIR heat imaging camera reportedly showed similar heat dissipation in both vertical and horizontal placement.
Performance stability is a recurring theme: the review notes minimal glitches and issues across multiple years, plus very low noise output. The system is characterized as virtually silent under normal operation, becoming more audible only under heavier load.
Key hardware specifications listed include an 8-core custom Zen 2 CPU (3.8GHz, 3.66GHz with SMT), a RDNA 2 GPU rated at 12.155 TFLOPS (52 compute units at 1.825GHz), and 16GB of GDDR6 memory with a 320-bit bus. Storage uses an internal NVMe SSD, paired with software features that aim to reduce load times dramatically compared to older HDD-based consoles.
- 4K output up to 60 FPS, with support for up to 4K at 120 FPS and 8K at 60 FPS
- 4K UHD Blu-ray drive on the standard model; no disc drive on the white Xbox Series X Digital Edition
- USB 3.2 support for external HDDs
- Internal storage uses an NVMe SSD; USB external HDDs are not positioned for streaming game data through the console
What’s changed in the Xbox experience: OS upgrades, but fewer “media center” features
The Series X operating system is framed as a refinement of the Xbox One era rather than a totally new direction. The review highlights the move away from the Xbox One’s “one-stop entertainment” approach, including the removal of IR blasters, HDMI pass-through, and SPDIF optical audio.
It also calls out missing legacy features: the OneGuide TV listings app is described as gone, Kinect support is treated as effectively discontinued, and picture-in-picture for media apps remains unavailable. The console’s media playback is said to support 4K UHD Blu-ray (standard model) and streaming apps, plus HDR10, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and DTS:X for supported content.
Where the console is praised most is in gameplay-focused OS features—especially Quick Resume. Quick Resume reportedly saves game states in memory and can resume titles quickly, even after the console is turned off, with the review noting that multiple games can be kept in the Quick Resume state at once. It also notes improvements to how those games are organized, including a Groups view under My Games & Apps.
However, Quick Resume isn’t presented as perfect: some games may lose audio before rebooting, and the feature can be unreliable if a title exits Quick Resume unexpectedly—leading the review to recommend saving manually rather than relying fully on the state system.
Games and ecosystem: backward compatibility upgrades, Xbox investment, and the “exclusive” question
The review argues that the Series X’s biggest advantage is the ability to make Xbox One-era games feel faster and more consistent through platform-level enhancements. It cites backward compatibility behavior that can boost performance and, in some cases, enable Auto HDR—supported by features like FPS Boost.
It also points to “native” Series X-era releases as still arriving in a steadier cadence later in the generation, with Alan Wake 2 offered as a standout example available only on newer Xbox systems. Other titles named as showing what the hardware can do include Plague Tale: Requiem and Cyberpunk 2077.
For players chasing smoother competitive play, the review highlights 120Hz modes on supported displays and notes the use of FreeSync VRR in that context.
Looking beyond current games, the review stresses Microsoft’s broader content investment. It references ownership of franchises associated with ZeniMax Media—DOOM, Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and Dishonored—along with Starfield as a major release that “reviewed well” while still drawing criticism. It also mentions upcoming Xbox titles such as Perfect Dark, Clockwork Revolution, Marvel’s Blade, and Fable.
Two platform-level shifts shape what to watch next. First, Microsoft completed the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, with income from established franchises expected to support more Xbox content. Second, Microsoft revealed it will stop supporting Xbox exclusive games moving forward—citing Forza Horizon 5 launching on PlayStation 5 and Halo expected to follow.
That exclusives change is treated as a defining risk for the platform’s future, leaving Xbox Game Pass as the main differentiator. The review also raises the question of momentum as console sales “have all but dried up,” while still noting ongoing Game Pass day-one additions and broader third-party support.
Finally, the review claims Microsoft is working on a successor to the Xbox Series X that is “more Windows-oriented,” potentially including Steam integration, alongside expectations for a Windows-based Xbox handheld and continued growth in Xbox Cloud Gaming’s ability to play games natively.
