Xbox series X review: Is Microsoft’s console still worth your money in 2024?

Microsoft’s featureless black cuboid has an austere beauty about it – a sharp Kubrickian monolith that, when switched on, runs with an eerie soundlessness. The only clue it’s been activated is the gentle breeze of its unique upwards-pointing fan, which disturbs any nearby lace curtains like the console is grieving for a husband lost at sea.

This is in contrast to the previous Xbox, which roared like a failing jet engine each time you dared ask it to boot up Fifa. Aesthetically, and acoustically, the Xbox series X is a console that feels at home in a living room where grown-ups live. Compare that with the superb but ridiculous-looking PlayStation 5, which resembles an abstract sculpture of Harry Hill and requires removing an external wall to get it into your house.

Xbox series X performance

Inside the black box are some seriously powerful components, matching a high-end gaming PC in a chassis that’s about the size of a loaf of bread. Quite how Microsoft has managed to fit so much performance into a box this size without the entire thing melting after five minutes is something we can’t pretend to understand, but the results are remarkable, even before you launch a game.

Quick resume and smart delivery

The familiar user interface is snappier than ever, dropping you into games in fractions of a second. “Quick resume” freezes your game’s progress whenever you jump back to the dashboard, allowing you to resume playing when you’re ready, and without loading times. This works across multiple games, too, so you can snap between two almost instantly, as though you’re alt-tabbing between windows on your desktop.

The improved specs mean faster loading times in existing games. In Yakuza: Like A Dragon, where transitions between areas would take six to seven seconds on the older Xbox, they now flash past so quickly and rudely that you don’t have time to read the loading screen tips. At one point, I had to hit the share button to record a snippet of gameplay, then play back the recording and pause it, so I could read about how dodging works.

“Smart delivery” is less immediately interesting, but marks the opening move in the grand scheme to unify all Xboxes. With it, when you buy a game, you automatically receive the most optimised version of that game for your system, which ensures you’re playing it at its best and avoids any confusion over which type of Xbox you’ve got and what generation you’re on. Saved games carry from one console to the next, too, so you can seamlessly upgrade or move to another machine without losing progress,

The entertainment

The Xbox series X can replace your existing set-top box. It runs all of the major entertainment apps, including BBC iPlayer, Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ at 4K and in Dolby Vision – the HDR format for better picture quality and contrast. It’s also a Blu-ray player, if you’ve got a stack of those lying around.