XBOX ONE

XBOX ONE – HARDWARE

Like most sensible people who aren’t rabid Xbox fanboys, we’ve often been unkind about Microsoft’s initial Xbox One design. At 333mm x 276mm x 78mm it’s not only larger than the PS4 but bigger than some gaming PCs, which only seems more amazing when you remember that there’s a huge external power supply to find a home for on top of that. Factor in that you can’t stand it upright, and you have one of the biggest, most obtrusive home entertainment products that’s not a home cinema amplifier or old-fashioned VCR.
This makes Microsoft’s achievement with the new, svelte Xbox One S seem even more significant. Much smaller, it’s still found space for an internal PSU and can stand fully vertical as well. Microsoft was also smart enough to jettison the dust-magnet glossy areas and over-sensitive power button, which came on at the slightest brush.
 Yet I’ve got a lot of affection for the old Xbox One. It feels solid and it’s proved reliable. I can’t tell you how many Xbox 360s died on me in the decade between 2005 and 2015, but between the production and the debug consoles it got close to double figures. The Xbox One is still going strong, feels robust and works fairly quietly. Where my PS4 sometimes makes a noise like a leafblower that’s been turned on accidentally in a garden shed, the Microsoft console sounds pretty much the same as on the day I took it home.
Of course, some things have changed since then. The Kinect that Microsoft pushed as a core part of the system now spends much of its time unplugged, making the dedicated power and USB connections on the rear of the Xbox One seem strangely obsolete. The console’s repositioning from home-entertainment hub to games machine has had a similar effect on the HDMI input, and I wonder how many users actually have one connected to a Sky or Freeview box. That still leaves two USB 3.0 ports on the rear and another one on the side, which have been handy for Guitar Hero and Rock Band wireless adaptors, not to mention external USB hard drives.
Supporting the latter has been one of Microsoft’s best decisions. Sure, you can replace the hard drive on a PS4, but doing so is a hassle, involving switching out the drive and transferring the data. With the Xbox One you can just plug in a USB 3.0 drive and it’s initialized and ready to fill within minutes. It’s a quick, cheap upgrade and one that can actually reduce your loading times.


XBOX ONE – SPECIFICATIONS

Looking at the Xbox One, knowing what we know now, it seems like the stage was always set for today’s more software-focused, device-agnostic Xbox world. What we have here is effectively a low-end gaming PC with a fixed specification, even running a heavily customised version of Windows 10. On paper, it doesn’t sound too promising. The AMD APU gives us eight Jaguar cores – already slower and less efficient than Intel’s Core technology – running at just 1.75GHz, along with a mere 12 GCN compute units running at 853MHz. GPU-wise, that makes it equivalent to a downgraded Radeon 7790, now considered a rather weedy low-end chip.
It’s no longer controversial to say that Microsoft got the core specification wrong, focusing on Kinect and all those home-entertainment hub features instead of hitting the perfect balance between performance and price. With an extra six GCN computer units and 5,500MHz GDDR5 RAM, Sony simply made smarter choices – the Xbox One’s embedded ESRAM can’t make up for the slower 2,133MHz DDR3.
While performance has differed from engine to engine and game to game, that's meant higher frame rates and/or resolutions on cross-platform games for PS4 than on Xbox One. That said, we’re now more often looking at 1080p on the PS4 and 900p on the Xbox One than 1080p and 720p, while clever adaptive resolution and scaling techniques are doing a great job of hiding the gaps.

XBOX ONE – CONTROLLER

The Xbox One S has refined the Xbox One controller, adding a grippy texture and tougher thumb sticks. Neither was a huge problem with the old controller, though, which for my money is the best standard controller of the current generation and one of the finest ever made. The analogue sticks are almost perfectly responsive, the buttons fast and sensibly-placed, and the ingenious, rumbling impulse triggers add a real tactile dimension to those games that use them best. Driving games and shooters tend to be particularly good. I just wish that Microsoft would integrate rechargeable batteries. AAs last a lot longer than the DualShock 4’s built-in battery, but recharging and searching for replacements is a lot more hassle than plugging in the cable.


 While the new controller has a slightly better feel and Bluetooth connectivity, your existing Xbox One controller will see you through many happy hours of gaming.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

BEKO WDA91440W

Image
WHAT IS THE BEKO WDA91440W? The WDA91440W is a feature packed washer dryer from Beko with an impressive 9kg load capacity for washing or a sizeable 6kg load for washing and drying all-in-one go. It offers 16 pre-set programmes to suit different clothing types and it has two fast wash modes for when you’re in a hurry. This A rated energy efficient washer dryer uses direct air cooling technology that draws outside air in during the drying process to cool the condenser. Against other washer-dryers that use cold water for cooling the condenser this can save you up to 95 bath tubs of water per year. This model also feature’s the company’s Aquafusion technology, which is claimed to reduce the amount of detergent wasted during a washing cycle by 10%. With a clear LCD display to keep you informed of your washing progress and a countdown timer, the Beko WDA91440W is a neat all round package. BEKO WDA91440W: WHAT IS IT LIKE TO USE? The main controls are fairly self-explanatory with...
Read more

NutriBullet Rx

Image
WHAT IS THE NUTRIBULLET RX? Not content with making it easier to get your five-a-day through smoothies, NutriBullet is now championing healthy soups with its Rx model. While it isn't the first blender to ramp up the power in order to cook the contents, the Rx is more compact than equivalent professional-style machines. A larger version of its smoothie-blitzing predecessor, it comes with similarly super-sized kit. This includes two cups for making cold drinks and nut butters, and a jug for whizzing together steaming soups at up to 70 o C. NUTRIBULLET RX – DESIGN AND FEATURES The Rx is a grown-up version of the familiar  NutriBullet  design. A power button resides on the side of the unit to switch the Rx on and off, and another button at the front switches it from a minute-long smoothie programme to a seven-minute soup-heating one. However, its mode of operation has changed, with blending activated by dropping the jug or cup with blades onto the base. To stop, you ca...
Read more

Panasonic DMP-UB700

Image
  It’s still a very shiny device, still more premium-looking than Samsung’s UBD-K8500, but the nice glossy finish is now only on the front and top surfaces. The sides have a standard dull metal finish. It’s also a little shorter, because the UB900’s damping feet have been chucked out. On the front, there is a tiny display peeking out from behind the two-way mirror finish. It’s great that this feature has been kept, because it’s very useful being able to tell what the player is up to. It also allows the player to say hello and goodbye. Manners are important.   Like the UB900, the UB700 has UHD Premium certification. It pumps out 4K and HDR at up to 60 frames per second, and boasts a brightness output up to 10,000 nits. There is also a 4K high-precision chroma processor, and you can expect the player cover the BT.2020 colour gamut. The connections have been stripped back. There are no longer any analogue audio outputs, and no digital coaxial output either. What you get...
Read more