Microsoft Xbox One
Microsoft's Xbox One is now two years old, and it's been doing some growing up. It launched as a powerful game console with an included camera and a plethora of media features. The Kinect camera has fallen to the wayside, and the emphasis is now on a recent interface overhaul, a bigger hard drive, and limited backward compatibility. The Xbox One remains a powerful console, and the addition of many compelling cross-platform and exclusive games, along with some price reductions and bundle offers, make it an even more appealing purchase. It's an excellent system that easily earns our Editors' Choice. As with all game systems, however, you need to make sure it's compatible with the games you want to play, and that you won't find yourself too envious of exclusives on the or the .
Like the PlayStation 4, the Xbox One is now available in its original 500GB form, and in a version included with various new bundles that features a 1TB hybrid solid state/HDD drive. We tested the Xbox One Elite Bundle, a $499.99 package with a matte black 1TB drive and the , which we reviewed separately. The 1TB Xbox One is also available in several $399.99 bundles with a non-Elite controller.
Editors' Note: This review has been updated to reflect updates to the system since launch. The score and Editors' Choice designation have not changed.
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Design
The Xbox One doesn't take many design cues from the or the Xbox 360 Slim. Instead, it follows the philosophy of the original Xbox: giant black box. It's big, black, and rectangular, measuring 3 by 12.9 by 11.7 inches (HWD) and weighing about seven pounds. It combines glossy and matte black finishes to lend some style, but no shine can get past its plain blockiness. The PlayStation 4 looks much nicer and slimmer, with its parallelogram shape and the ability to stand on its side to show off its multicolored status light (with an optional stand). The Xbox One has to be laid down horizontally, and is simply black with a white light on it.
The front is dominated by a matte black left half that holds the slot-loading Blu-ray drive, and a glossy right half that features a glowing, flat, touch-sensitive Xbox button. The button turns the system on if you don't want to use the Kinect or a controller, and it's just as infuriatingly sensitive as the Xbox 360 Slim's power and eject buttons. Brushing anything against it, even lightly, can trigger the button. Fortunately, given the voice controls, you don't have to actually touch the Xbox One or go anywhere near it unless you're changing a disc or setting up a gamepad. A USB port sits on the left side of the system, next to a pairing button for registering controllers. The back panel holds an HDMI input and output, the Kinect port, an Ethernet port, an optical audio port, two USB ports, and the power port.
The Kinect camera, used for voice commands and gesture control of the system along with implementation in some games, is no longer emphasized. It's still available in certain bundles, but it's largely been abandoned in the current Xbox One experience.
From a design perspective, even the Xbox One in the 1TB Elite bundle is identical to the launch model.
Controller
The standard Xbox One controller is comfortable, but it's not the impressive leap in design that the PlayStation 4's DualShock 4 gamepad is. It's a mostly matte black gamepad that looks and feels almost identical to the Xbox 360's controller. Instead of the Start and Back buttons, the gamepad has Menu and View buttons that serve the same functions. The triggers provide individual force feedback, rumbling in response to what you're playing apart from the gamepad itself. This feels particularly good for racing games like Forza Motorsport 5, because the right trigger's resistance and response to acceleration feels much more precise with force feedback.
The Xbox Elite Wireless Controller included in the Elite bundle is significantly sturdier, more comfortable, and more customizable than the standard controller. Outside of the bundle, it retails for $149.99 as an optional accessory.
The New Xbox One Experience
Microsoft's latest software update upgrades the console's core operating system from Windows 8 to Windows 10. The interface is still heavily designed for a couch-bound video game experience rather than a full PC operating system, but the underlying software has been moved to Microsoft's latest platform.
The Xbox One menu has literally been turned on its side with the new update. While the original interface was a mostly horizontal affair, built around navigating left and right for nearly everything, the new interface incorporates much more verticality. The visual design is still heavily based on Microsoft's Metro design scheme, which uses large graphical tiles and simple text for menu elements. The four main menu tabs (Home, Community, OneGuide, and Store) are now arranged vertically, so instead of flipping left and right between pages of a given tab, you can simply scroll up and down (or use the left and right triggers to page up and down), which makes the menu layout feel much more coherent.
Double-tapping the Xbox button on your controller (or going left from the Home screen) brings up a Quick Access menu. From here you can see who's online, read notifications and messages, and change settings. Without the Kinect's voice commands, this is also the easiest way to snap apps to the side of the screen. Snapped apps stay on the right side of the screen and are clearly visible while you browse the menu, play a game, or watch a video. You can snap the Game DVR software to record footage of gameplay, Media Player to play movies or music, or Microsoft Edge (Windows 10's Internet Explorer replacement) to keep a Web site on the screen.
The main menu is built around a prominent tile that displays the currently open software, which you can jump into and out of by tapping the Xbox/Nexus button on the controller. Now, instead of jumping left and right to look at anything, you can scroll straight down to view your recently opened software. The last few tiles you opened get prominent rows with multiple options like accessing different games' hub pages and viewing your captured footage and screenshots. Below those rows sit a collection of smaller tiles representing all of the software currently installed on the system.
Community displays your Xbox Live friends' recent achievements, while OneGuide shows shared media and the movies and music you can access through the online services currently installed and any live television programming (more on this below). The Store tab breaks open into additional tabs for Apps, Games, Movies & TV, and Music, with each sub-tab also organized vertically for browsing.
Performance
The 1TB version of the Xbox One has a hybrid drive that uses solid state media for part of the on-board storage. Microsoft claims this makes the system quicker to load than the hard-drive-only 500GB model. Killer Instinct was a hair faster on the 1TB Xbox One, loading matches in 11-12 seconds compared with between 12-13 seconds on the 500GB system, which is hardly a noticeable difference. Gears of War: Ultimate Edition was even less apparent, with both systems getting to the game's title screen from the main menu in approximately 30 seconds. The 1TB Xbox One's hybrid drive might be a little bit faster, but don't expect a big jump in performance.
Gameplay Sharing
Even without Game DVR snapped or a Kinect connected, the new Xbox One interface lets you easily capture screenshots or record five-minute clips of gameplay. Double-tapping the Xbox button from a game not only brings up the Quick Access menu, but gives the option to save your screen or the last five minutes of video from your game by pressing X or Y. It's not quite as convenient as the dedicated Share button on the PlayStation 4's controller, but it's still very accessible.
Upload Studio lets you edit clips and post them to social media, or upload them to Microsoft's OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) cloud storage. Once a clip is uploaded to your OneDrive account, you can download it as an MP4 file to your computer and use it any way you want. The Upload Studio is fairly bare bones, with only some rudimentary trimming, splicing (which requires five video clips), picture-in-picture editing, and a handful of intro filters.
OneGuide and TV
The Xbox One integrates into your TV watching thanks to its HDMI input and OneGuide. It offers a full program guide of your cable or satellite service alongside the usual selection of online media apps, all wrapped up in one menu you can control with your voice.
The Xbox One uses an HDMI passthrough to send any source connected to it to the screen whenever you select Watch TV. Ideally this would be your set-top box, so you can completely control television watching with your voice and OneGuide, though you also can use any HDMI source, like a home theater PC. The system was originally designed to control set-top boxes with the infrared emitter built into the Kinect, but if you don't have a Kinect, the Xbox One supports third-party IR blasters. The Xbox One now also supports the use of third-party USB television tuners for viewing over-the-air television, but we have not tested them with the system.
OneGuide is a Rovio-based program guide in the Xbox One's menu system that shows what's on your cable or satellite service with a grid, just like your set-top box's guide. You can organize your favorite channels easily, along with dedicated app channels for different streaming media services.
Because TV watching is done entirely with an HDMI passthrough and infrared blaster, you can keep your cable box and remote and use it just like you used to. The Xbox One basically just acts like a remote control and program guide for your cable box, changing channels and working with the box just like a remote would, while adding useful features like multitasking with picture-in-picture.
The PlayStation 4 has the same Blu-ray capabilities and much of the same selection of streaming services as the Xbox One. It lacks the cable/satellite integration and HDMI passthrough, however, limiting its support with live television. If you're in a market currently served by it, PlayStation Vue offers a live television and DVR service for many popular cable, satellite, and broadcast channels on the PS4. It's a separate service from your cable or satellite subscription, and because of geographical limitations it isn't as flexible as the Xbox One's support for your current setup.
Xbox Live Gold
You need Xbox Live Gold ($60 per year) if you want to play games online. However, Microsoft no longer requires it to access OneGuide, make calls with Skype (if you have a Kinect), or watch streaming media services like Netflix and Hulu Plus. If you're not a big online game player, you don't have to worry about getting Gold anymore.
Gaming
Like the PlayStation 4, the Xbox One is now two years into its life cycle, and developers are still getting plenty of power out of the system. Most major video game releases like Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, , and Assassin's Creed: Syndicate are cross-platform, and performance on both the PS4 and the Xbox One are similar.
Outside of cross-platform games, the Xbox One has an appreciable selection of exclusives like , , , and . As always, you should always consider the available games before committing to a system. Performance and even features don't mean as much as whether or not a game console has the titles you want to play.
Xbox 360 Backward Compatibility
As of the November 2015 update to the Xbox One, backward compatibility with Xbox 360 games is now available. Both disc-based and downloadable XBLA games for the Xbox 360 can be played on the Xbox One almost as if they were native titles. The number of supported games is currently just over 100, but includes the Gears of War series and some other notable titles, and Microsoft will be expanding the list in the future.
Supported Xbox 360 disc-based games can be inserted into the Xbox One's disc drive and loaded normally. XBLA titles that can run on the Xbox One will show up in your My Games and Apps menu as games you can download. In both cases, the Xbox One emulates an Xbox 360 environment to run the older titles.
When you open an Xbox 360 game on the Xbox One, the screen changes to an Xbox 360 environment, and your Xbox Live information is imported. The Xbox/Nexus button still brings up the Xbox One menu, and you can move in and out of the game, snap Xbox One apps, and capture footage just like any Xbox One title. Pressing the Menu and View buttons brings up the Xbox 360 menu, for navigating Xbox Live through the game.
I downloaded and played Shadow Complex, an Xbox 360 XBLA game, on the Xbox One. It loaded and played perfectly. I saw similar performance in the Xbox 360 games included in the Rare Replay collection. The Xbox One makes no effort to upconvert, smooth, or otherwise improve the graphics of Xbox 360 games.
Conclusions
If you want a pure game system, the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 are in a dead heat. As a media streamer, though, especially if you subscribe to cable or satellite service, the Xbox One is a better bet. The soft abandonment of Kinect isn't a big deal, especially with the new Windows 10-based interface and refinements to the menus. The console isn't reliant on voice control to a significant extent any longer, and the addition of backward compatibility makes it more attractive than ever. Ultimately, though, it's all about the games you want to play. Media features should come after that when choosing a game console.
You need a good gamepad to play games, and both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have them. The Xbox One gamepad is a slightly updated version of the Xbox 360 controller, with a more rounded feel and trigger buttons that offer individual force feedback. The DualShock 4, the PS4's gamepad, is a completely overhauled controller that keeps the best parts of the DualShock 3 gamepad and fixes the worst. The analog sticks feel better, the triggers are more responsive, and the controller just feels nicer in the hand. It even features a built-in speaker and a potentially useful but so far underutilized touchpad in the middle. The only problem with the DualShock 4 is the light bar that marks which controllers are on and assigned to which players. Fortunately, Sony has since updated the PS4 to let you dim the light bar significantly, which cuts down on glare.
