It was late 2017. Microsoft was losing. Badly. The PlayStation 4 was eating their lunch, dinner, and most of their snacks. They needed something to pivot the narrative away from "we have no exclusives" to "we have the most horsepower." That pivot was a sleek, heavy, matte-black slab of silicon. Honestly, if you're asking what is the Xbox One X, you're looking at the peak of the 4K transition era. It wasn't just a refresh. It was a statement.
Microsoft called it Project Scorpio. The hype was intense. When it finally hit shelves, it wasn't just another console; it was the "world’s most powerful console," a title it held with a bit of a chip on its shoulder until the next generation arrived.
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The Specs That Actually Mattered
Look, we could talk about teraflops all day. Six of them, to be exact. But what does that actually mean for someone sitting on their couch? Basically, it meant that for the first time, a console could actually hit Native 4K resolution. Before this, the PS4 Pro—the main rival—was doing a lot of "checkerboard rendering," which is basically a fancy way of saying it was faking it until it made it. The Xbox One X didn't have to fake it.
It used a custom eight-core AMD CPU clocked at 2.3GHz. But the real star was the GPU. With 12GB of GDDR5 RAM, it had enough memory overhead to handle massive textures that made games like Red Dead Redemption 2 look absolutely stunning. I remember booting up Forza Motorsport 7 for the first time on an X. The way the rain beaded on the hood of the car at 60 frames per second was something you usually only saw on a high-end gaming PC that cost three times as much.
There’s this weird misconception that the X was just a "Slim" version. Nope. That was the Xbox One S. The S was the budget entry. The X was the premium powerhouse. It was heavy, too. Like, surprisingly dense. It felt like a piece of high-end AV equipment rather than a plastic toy.
Compatibility and the "Enhanced" Logo
One of the coolest things Microsoft did was the "Xbox One X Enhanced" program. If you saw that badge on a game box, you knew you were getting something special. Developers would go back to old games—think The Witcher 3 or Halo 5—and patch them. They’d add higher resolutions, better frame rates, or improved lighting.
It wasn't just about new games.
If you were into backward compatibility, the One X was a godsend. It could take original Xbox games and Xbox 360 titles and force them to run at higher resolutions. Playing Red Dead Redemption (the first one) on an Xbox One X felt like playing a modern remaster. It was crisp. No jagged edges. No blurry textures. Just raw, brute-force improvement.
Why the Hardware Design Was Genius (and Risky)
Microsoft used something called a vapor chamber for cooling. Usually, you only see that in high-end server blades or top-tier PC graphics cards. It allowed the console to stay remarkably quiet despite pulling a ton of power. My old PS4 Pro sounded like a jet engine taking off whenever I played God of War. The Xbox One X? Mostly a low hum.
But here is the kicker: it was expensive. Launching at $499 was a gamble. Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, basically admitted at the time that the One X wasn't for everyone. It was for the enthusiasts. The people who bought 4K OLED TVs before there was actually anything to watch on them.
The Software Gap: A Nuanced Look
We have to be real here. You can have all the power in the world, but if you don't have the "bangers," does it matter? During the One X lifecycle, Microsoft struggled with first-party titles. While Sony was dropping The Last of Us Part II and Ghost of Tsushima, Xbox was leaning heavily on Gears 5, Sea of Thieves, and Forza.
Don't get me wrong, those games looked incredible on the X. Gears 5 is still one of the best-looking games of that entire decade. But the lack of a "God of War" moment meant that the Xbox One X was often seen as the best place to play third-party games—your Call of Duty, your Assassins Creed, your Madden. If you wanted the best version of Cyberpunk 2077 on a console (before the Series X came out), this was it.
Is the Xbox One X Still Relevant?
This is where it gets interesting. We are now firmly in the era of the Xbox Series X and Series S. So, where does the One X fit?
Interestingly, the Xbox One X is actually more powerful in some specific ways than the newer, cheaper Xbox Series S. While the Series S has a much faster CPU and a lightning-quick SSD, the One X has more raw GPU power and more RAM. This creates a weird situation where some games actually run at a higher resolution on the older One X than they do on the brand-new Series S.
However, the One X is held back by its old-school mechanical hard drive. Loading times are atrocious compared to the new consoles. If you’ve ever waited two minutes for GTA V to load, you know the pain. You can swap in an internal SSD, which helps a lot, but you're still limited by the SATA interface.
The 4K Blu-ray Factor
One thing people often forget when asking what the Xbox One X is: it's a phenomenal media player. It has a physical 4K UHD Blu-ray drive with HDR10 and Dolby Atmos support. For home theater nerds, this was a huge selling point. Sony famously left a 4K drive out of the PS4 Pro, which was a baffling move at the time. If you want a cheap way to play 4K discs today, picking up a used One X is actually a pretty smart hack.
Buying Advice and Real-World Use
If you are looking at one of these in 2026, you're likely seeing them on the used market for anywhere between $150 and $200. Is it worth it?
It depends on what you value. If you want the latest games like Starfield or the newest Forza Motorsport, the One X is going to let you down. It can't run most "Series exclusive" games natively. You’d have to play them via Cloud Gaming, which is... fine, but not the same as native hardware.
But if you have a massive library of physical Xbox One, 360, and OG Xbox discs? The One X is arguably the best "legacy" machine ever built.
- For the Budget 4K Fan: If you have a 4K TV but don't want to drop $500 on a Series X, the One X provides a great 4K experience for thousands of older titles.
- For the Physical Media Collector: It’s a cheap, reliable 4K Blu-ray player that also happens to play Halo.
- For the Retro Gamer: The way this thing "upscales" older titles is still impressive.
What to Check Before You Buy
If you're hunting for a used One X, be careful. These machines are a few years old now. The thermal paste on the processor can dry out, making the fan spin louder than it should. If you buy one and it sounds like a vacuum cleaner, it probably needs a bit of a cleaning and some fresh thermal paste.
Also, check the controller. The controllers that came with the One X were the standard Xbox One controllers with Bluetooth. They're solid, but the thumbsticks tend to drift after a few years of heavy use.
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Actionable Next Steps for Potential Owners
- Check your TV first. If you are still rocking a 1080p screen, the Xbox One X is overkill. You won't see the main benefit. Stick with a One S or a Series S.
- Verify the Model. Make sure it’s the X. The "One S" is white and much thinner. The "One X" is usually black (unless it's the limited Robot White or a special edition like the Cyberpunk one) and has a very distinct "split" design along the side.
- Plan an SSD Upgrade. If you get a One X, buy a cheap external USB 3.0 SSD. Plug it in and move your most-played games to it. It won't make the games run faster, but it will slash those brutal loading screens by half or more.
- Audit your library. Look for the "Enhanced" list online. If your favorite games aren't on that list, you might not notice a huge difference over the base Xbox One.
The Xbox One X was a mid-generation beast that proved Microsoft could still build world-class hardware. It paved the way for the Series X, proving that gamers were willing to pay a premium for power. It’s a heavy, powerful, and slightly stubborn piece of gaming history that still holds its own for 4K media and massive back-catalog libraries.