Xbox Series X Review: Still a Powerhouse, Now a Pricier Bet
8/10 — Xbox Series X
Pros
- Near-silent, cool-running hardware
- Reliable 4K at 60fps in most games
- Fast SSD and excellent Quick Resume
- Huge backwards-compatible library
- Game Pass is unmatched value
Cons
- Now very expensive after the August 2026 price rise
- Few must-play exclusives
- Bulky; awkward to fit in many TV units
- Only around 800GB of usable storage, and expansion is costly
- Controller still runs on AA batteries
Six years after launch, the Xbox Series X is still the most capable console Microsoft has ever built. It’s fast, quiet and backed by the best-value subscription in gaming. The problem in 2026 isn’t the hardware. It’s the price tag. Following Microsoft’s August price rise, the disc model now has an RRP of £669.99 (US$799.99), and the Digital Edition £619.99 (US$749.99). That’s a lot of money for a console that’s past the midpoint of its life.
Design
The Series X is a 30cm-tall matte-black tower weighing around 4.5kg, with a single large fan venting out of the top. It looks smart standing upright, like a tidy little monolith next to the TV. Lay it on its side, though, and it becomes a wide, chunky box that won’t slide into many AV cabinets. It also needs room to breathe, so measure your shelf before you buy.
Performance
The headline numbers are a custom AMD Zen 2 CPU, a 12-teraflop RDNA 2 GPU and 16GB of GDDR6 memory. In practice, that means 4K at 60fps is a dependable target in most modern games, with ray tracing and 120fps modes available in the titles that support them (you’ll need an HDMI 2.1 TV to benefit from the latter). The 8K badge on the box is marketing; nobody should buy this console for it.
The jump in visual quality over the Xbox One generation is real but less dramatic than some previous console leaps. The big generational change is speed. The custom NVMe SSD cuts load times from minutes to seconds, and that changes how the console feels every day.
Quick Resume and the dashboard
Quick Resume is the Series X’s best trick. It suspends several games at once and lets you jump between them in a few seconds, right back where you left off. It isn’t flawless. Some games still reload from scratch, and the odd title has been known to misbehave after resuming. But when it works, it’s hard to go back.
The dashboard itself is a step behind. It’s quick and responsive, but busy, cluttered with pre-installed apps and largely unchanged from the Xbox One era. The Xbox phone app helps, letting you manage storage and queue up installs remotely.
Noise and heat
This is one area where nearly every review agrees, and it’s a big win. Even under load, the Series X is barely audible, often quieter than the disc drive when a game is installing. It runs warm on top, as you’d expect from a top-venting design, but not alarmingly so. Anyone coming from a jet-engine PS4 or launch Xbox One will notice the difference immediately.
Storage
The 1TB SSD sounds generous, but only about 802GB is usable once the system takes its share, and modern games regularly top 100GB. A USB drive works for playing and storing older games, but titles optimised for Series X|S need the internal SSD or Microsoft’s proprietary expansion cards, which are still expensive. Budget for one if you plan to keep a large library installed.
Controller
The controller is a light refresh of the Xbox One pad: textured grips, a dish-style D-pad and a new Share button for screenshots and clips. It’s comfortable and dependable, but it still runs on AA batteries out of the box, which feels dated at this price.
Games and Game Pass
The Series X never really got its run of system-selling exclusives. Some of Microsoft’s biggest releases underwhelmed, and the company’s multiplatform push means many of its games now arrive on PC and other consoles too. The library is still huge, though. Backwards compatibility covers almost every Xbox generation (Kinect games aside), older titles often load faster and look better thanks to Auto HDR, and the disc drive means your existing collection comes with you. Big upcoming releases like GTA 6 will keep the hardware relevant for a while yet.
Game Pass Ultimate is still the strongest argument for owning one. If you’ll use it, the Series X is one of the best-value ways to play a vast catalogue of games at their best. If you won’t, the case for this console over its rivals gets a lot weaker.
Verdict
The Xbox Series X is a superb piece of hardware: quiet, fast and powerful enough to make 4K gaming feel effortless. At 2026 prices, though, it’s best suited to people with a 4K TV, a physical game collection or a Game Pass habit. If you play on a 1080p screen, the cheaper Series S makes more sense. And with the Series X now well into its life, it’s worth keeping an eye on what Microsoft does next before committing. For everyone else, it’s still an excellent console, just a much more expensive one than it used to be.
