Microsoft Xbox Series X (RRT-00010)

Slightly more powerful than PS5

We will not pay much attention to the filling. As in the PS5, there is also hardware from AMD, but a little more powerful, which in the future may play into the hands of Microsoft. Unlike its competitor, the company abandoned the dynamic frequency and uses fixed numbers for both the processor and the video core. In the long term, this is also a plus for performance, but as long as we don’t have normal next-gen games, we won’t be able to check it. But what caught my eye was how quickly the Xbox switched from game to menu, then back, and then to a new game. It looks like the idea to parallelize memory has worked, allocating fixed volumes for CPU and OS. However the promised Quick Resume function for instantly switching between running games is still working crookedly. But the "regular" NVMe SSD in the box turned out to be somewhere 20 – 25% faster than the vaunted handmade SSD from Sony. Right now, the Xbox Series X turns on faster, shuts down faster, and loads games faster. On average, it takes less than 15 seconds to start the game.

П is a rectangle

Series X is almost perfect in shape: clear edges, right angles, no bevels. In fact, the box body is a stylish black refrigerator. Unlike PS5, it flies into any interior, like Verka Serduchka at a neighbor's wedding. And this is great, there is a place for it on the table, and under the table, and on the shelf, since the case can be placed vertically and put on its side. Too bad the matte plastic leaves behind any corduroy pants, I swear by the Greek gods, it's worth wiping the prints off the sidewall and going to the bathroom to wet the rag to come back and find them again in the same place. Pure mysticism.

media player

In addition to its direct gaming tasks, Xbox can do much more. The local store has a variety of popular streaming apps, movie theaters, and music platforms. It is possible to play movies from Blu-Ray 4K, as well as open almost any video format from external media. Moreover, any resolutions are given to her, even 8K. For lovers of pirated content, a workaround was left in the form of a Kodi media centre, to which you can tie up torrents and playlists for IPTV. In general, it turned out to be a pretty good alternative to the smart functions of the TV. If you add here the Xbox Game Pass service, which has all the games for PC and past boxes, we have a strong feeling that this is not so much a nextgen, but a cool and stylish PC with its own operating system and powerful hardware, which, if you assemble a computer yourself, will cost you 2-3 times more expensive.