Xbox One Hardware Review

Install Times and Sizes

In what seems to be a trend with the new generation of gaming, you are required to install games to your hard drive if you want to play the game. This is the first thing you must do when you put the disc into the console, so prepare to wait for a little while before you can play. Luckily, the Xbox One allows you to start playing the game when the game is only partially installed, but the time varies a lot between different games. A game like NBA Live 14 took 10 minutes or less until I could start playing, but some other titles like Ryse: Son of Rome took a bit longer. This does kind of hurt for someone who is ready to play right away, so it is important to get the game installed as soon as you get home so you can play when you want later.

Any updates to the game must be downloaded before the install as well, so that can take however long depending on your internet connection. One other member of our site took nearly an hour to have Ryse: Fall of Rome install while it took about 15 minutes myself. This definitely seems to be a case of your mileage may vary, so it’s hard to say until you try it on your own system.

The requirement to install all games to the hard drive is also kind of a problem due to storage space issues. The Xbox One console is only 500 GB and can’t be expanded upon. Don’t think that you get full access to the 500 GB hard drive either, as you really only have 362 GB of available space to fill with games due to the operating system and such. You technically can replace the hard drive, which reports say does speed up the operating system, games, and boot time, but it completely voids your warranty, so it would be a terrible idea to do that, at least for right now.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the system is the inability to use external hard drives or flash drives to store information or even transfer media to the system. On both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, you could easily input a flash drive and watch many file types including .mp4 with ease. Neither next generation console is able to do what seems like such a simple task, but hopefully it will be patched into the Xbox One as we know that external hard drive support will be coming eventually.

Snap and TV

One of the best new innovations with the Xbox One is the Snap feature. This allows you to split the screen partially and have about the right 1/4 of the screen take on a different app. You can do this manually or simply say “Xbox Snap (App You Want).” You can’t snap every app, such as YouTube, but there are numerous that you can, including: TV, Netflix, Vudu, Xbox Music, and ESPN. The most useful one for me is TV as I can easily snap the TV feed that I have coming in through the HDMI input from my cable box.

I am a huge sports fan and the ability to check scores, or even watch a bit of a game through the TV, ESPN, or NFL app, is major for someone like me. For others, there are numerous apps that you can do it with. You can even just leave it there the entire time you play if you wish as well. It may be a little small on smaller TVs inside the tiny box, but it’s still very useful. The only thing that would be nice is if there was a simple way to reverse the main window and the snap window temporarily without having to literally go and pick one for the other.

Game DVR

Another really neat addition to the console is Game DVR, which allows you to record your in-game footage at pretty much anytime and upload it to the server, as well as your Skydrive account. All you have to do is say “Xbox Record That” and the Game DVR will instantly record the last 30 seconds you played. This is good when you have something crazy happen in game when you didn’t expect it. You can also choose to record from a base point and then end the clip yourself after. You can’t upload the files directly to YouTube, but you can download the files from your Skydrive on a computer in .mp4 format and upload that to Youtube easily. It may not be as easy as streaming straight to Twitch on the PlayStation 4, but it is still a really useful addition, especially for those that need clips for online videos.

Verdict

The Xbox One is a fantastic system that is a worthy follow-up to Microsoft’s Xbox 360. The console improves on many areas, including a much smoother dashboard experience, but that does not mean that the system is absolutely perfect. The Xbox One definitely has some flaws, just like the PlayStation 4, but that is pretty much expected with any type of technology these days, especially with the ability to patch in new features later. The reinvented Kinect is a vast improvement over the original with the ability to play in small rooms with lesser lighting, as well as very responsive voice commands that are very useful. The launch lineup of games was solid between the first party exclusives and third party titles to give Xbox One owners plenty to play for now. After seeing the abilities of the console in these launch titles, I’d say that the future of the Xbox One is very bright.

[Editor’s Note: The Xbox One was provided to us by Microsoft for review purposes.]