Just wanted to submit this review that I've been working on hoping it would prove useful for anyone considering the new console.
As a day one owner of the original Xbox one, I love the system and its still going strong. I feel I can be quite subjective as I also have a Ps4 and an Alienware Alpha. I never sell a console and love to have all the old gems. So when the Slim model was announced I was initially disappointed as I liked the sound of the 500gb model shown at e3, but it became clear this model would be released later, in fact even later for the UK. But I held my patience and waited for the 22nd of September.
I’ve had my 4k TV since late last year, its a belting TV from a company called finlux, who are a European, direct to consumer, electronics company. They had a great deal on so I took the early plunge. Its a 55inch curved set and performs really nicely. I’ve had the NVIDIA shield running through it and streamed 4k Netflix which looked great. I also run all my consoles through it and have been impressed with the upscaling software in the TV set itself. Its easy to compare too, as I have my media hardwired by HDMI through to the bedroom TV which is a sturdy 1080p set. The difference was noticeable with both games and movies. But I really wanted to see UHD blu-ray in action given the huge amounts of compression in image quality which has to occur in order to stream 4k media.
So fast forward to today. I wish to put a review for up for any prospective buyers of the Xbox one S, or for anyone interested in investing in 4k media in general.
First off the console itself is beautiful, and the new controller is amazing. I always love my day one pad, it felt better quality than the standard controller somehow. But this new controller is equal if not greater in feel and comfort. Plus it looks awesome. I like how the two central button, guide and view have been elevated. I haven’t had need to test the Bluetooth connectivity so cannot comment on that. But it paired nicely and the range seems really good. I can take it in another room and it still works fine. I have the console stood vertically, I purchased a stand that hasn’t arrived yet, but it stands quite securely without. Set up was a breeze, seems much quicker than the day one, but the that had a lot of Kinect configurations to deal with. My only issue during set up was in that my background that was set on my day one console did not appear when I signed in. I was just a standard black. I thought these things would be shared, I changed it to some tomb raider achievement art, and sure enough my day one changed too. So not sure what happened there. I put it down to it being due to my old background being locally stored image on the day one. Anyway that wasn’t an issue, just a surprise.
I removed the 2tb external drive from the day one and plugged it into the slim, boom, all my games. Took around 60 seconds to detect 60+ games. I was aware that this should of worked, but was nevertheless impressed at how easy it was. The only issue I have run into was when syncing the data for fallout 4. It took a long time to sync on first boot, and when it did my vault tec workshop dlc was missing. I messed around for a few minutes doing reboots etc, before I removed the drive, plugged it back into the day one console, booted the game. At this point the dlc was present, so I replugged it into the slim and it did another sync attempt that picked up the missing dlc. Problem solved, took about 10 minutes.
Regards to image quality, I must say I am extremely impressed. The xbox picked up the 4k tv straight away and turned on 4k output. I had to manually select 10bit colour though as it defaulted 8bit. Green ticks, all good. The dashboard looks really bright and crisp. Noticeably more so than with the day one. I feel having the slim doing the upscaling produced better results than the TV doing it. Everything looks amazing, really sharp and vibrant in colour. Fallout 4 looked beautiful. Had a blast playing nuka-world. Now with regards to the pass through. I was initially disappointed that the passthrough would not support 4k, especially as I have the shield which outputs at 4k. But the more I thought about it the more I thought, “well what content would I actually play from the shield that I couldn’t on the xbox. So I decided to just continue with my current setup which was to just stick the alpha through the hdmi pass through. That way I get steam, desktop and hivemind (a slick kodi interface) all in the one guide section of the xbox, which is of course “snappable”, my favourite feature of this gen. Well to my surprise, the slim does actually upscale the signal coming through the pass through. My TV detects a 4k signal from the slim so I know its the xbox doing the upscaling. I must say the difference is impressive. My hivemind (KOdi) interface looks awesome, really bright and the text pops nicely. The image quality of basic 720p streams is outstanding, Monday night raw never looked so...sweaty! So in hindsight, even the passthrough is receiving a massive bump in image quality from using the slim upscaling. Colour me impressed.
So next I tried the ultimate image quality, I popped in my new 4k Revenant blu-ray. This would be the first time my eyes had experienced a true, uncompressed, non streamed, non upscaled 4k movie. Now this film isn’t the vibrant colourfast, but holy cheese, you can see everything, its like the depth of the picture grew. You can make out everything, every leaf, every particle of snow. It was just glorious, and the films pretty dull, so really all your doing is watching how pretty it is! Cant wait to expand my UHD film collection. I’ve got bourne pre ordered and am waiting for more films like independence day as pickings are quite slim at the moment. But I am happily now the owner of a 4k bluray player, and for £200. Boom! The only advice I would give to potential purchasers is that you’ll need to update the bluray app that is installed on the slim, just goto the store and download the new one. So moving on from image. The console is silent, even when gaming. Although my day one doesn’t make a peep either. Xbox just seems to of really nailed the cooling this generation. My ps4 sounds like a jet most of the time! Score one for the boys in green on this one. The ui is really snappy, I am in the preview programme and have suffered the laggy ui’s we’ve been getting in recent builds. In fact my day one is currently suffering from the whole “press home....wait 30secs....ahh there it is”, non of this is present on the slim. Makes me wonder if a factory reset of the day one would help. The slim is also registered in the preview so they are both running the same builds, I checked and double checked. Snapping is quick, and my media remote swaps between the two consoles without a hitch, in fact the ir sensor on the slim is much more forgiving than the Kinect. I don’t have to really point the media remote at the slim, whereas I have to aim it right at the Kinect on the day one. In home streaming to a windows 10 tablet work great too, no real improvement over the day one, but no issues to report there.
In summary the new Xbox one s is an awesome update to the already sturdy Xbox one. If you have a 4k tv and like the upscaling abilities then I would seriously encourage upgrading to the slim, if not for the apparent improved upscaling abilities them certainly for the 4k blu ray player which at this stage is a bargain. These things plus the new pad make it a solid purchase.
Thanks for reading.
Submitted by darth666bane666 | #Specialdealer Special Offer Online Shopping Store 2016
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