One X

Xbox one X

Xbox One X is all about creating the best possible gaming experience and is now in the best shape of its life,  with support for 4K and HDR right out of the box. It's more powerful, it's faster and it supports the next generation of film formats.

But it's not just that elusive 4K promise. Microsoft says multiplatform games will look and perform the best on the Xbox One X and legacy Xbox One games will play better too. No 4K TV? No problem. Microsoft also says the Xbox One X will use supersampling to downscale a 4K signal to 1080p so those who don't yet own a 4K TV will still enjoy the benefits of improved visual fidelity.

Now that we have the Xbox One X in house and have played around with the hardware, we've seen some evidence that supports Microsoft's "most-powerful" claim, but we're still not sure it's worth the money right now.

On paper, the Xbox One X is lightyears ahead of the launch Xbox One in terms of processing power. The Xbox One S is slightly more advanced than the original because it can handle HDR and output a 4K signal, but that's where it ends. For all intents and purposes the One and S both trail far behind the Xbox one X.

I compared an Xbox One X to an Xbox One S playing Gears of War 4 (which has been updated to take advantage of the X's hardware) side-by-side using two nearly identical 4K TVs. Right out of the gate, the difference in sharpness and detail was very apparent. In some instances comparing textures between the two consoles was night and day.

In terms of pure hardware the Xbox One X is quite interesting. Its 6 teraflops of horsepower is roughly equivalent to a mid to high-end PC gaming GPU, which on the market today costs almost as much as the console itself. So when you consider that along with its 6 teraflops of computing power the Xbox One X also comes with 12 GB of GDDR5 RAM, and has a GPU engine that runs at 1172MHz, it appears an absolute steal.