The Xbox Series X has just had its price slashed at Amazon back down to ?360
A Series X, this much below retail?
I struggle to believe this is the first time I've actually written about the Xbox Series X, but here we are. We saw a myriad of excellent bundle deals for Black Friday on the Series X, but if you want the standalone console, then Amazon has it for its lowest price ever - currently, it's £360, giving you a rather large saving on its usual retail price.
The Series X remains Microsoft's most powerful console, able to play games at upwards of 4K at 120fps, and comes with a range of exciting exclusives for you to get stuck into, including the latest entries into both sides of the Forza series, as well as Starfield, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and a lot more. Oh, and of course, you get the fun of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which still astounds as to its value for money, especially if you can take advantage of the conversion trick with Xbox Game Pass Core (I still miss Gold!).
The Series X also comes with convenient features such as a Blu-Ray disc drive, where the Series S doesn't, as well as a bigger internal 1TB SSD. You can of course upgrade that with the proprietary expansion cards from both Seagate and Western Digital, which are a simple slot-in upgrade. Nonetheless, the 1TB storage is enough for quite a few games, and games will certainly load rather snappily from it, while you also get the benefit of Quick Resume. When you exit a game out to load an app or do something else, the Series X leaves it in a suspended state, so when you go back to it, you can jump back into the action from where you left off. The Series X also supports Smart Delivery , a handy feature where if you purchase a game from the Microsoft Store, it'll always use the best version available. For instance, if the game you've purchased is an Xbox One title, as soon as a Series X verision launches, it'll upgrade to that version, giving you better visual fidelity and sharper gameplay, by rights.
The Series X controller is also especially comfortable to use in-hand and is a generally solid upgrade over the older Xbox One controller, with a textured finish and more solid-feeling buttons and triggers. I didn't mind the One controller, but the base Series X controller is excellent. Then there's also the slew of additional accessories available, ranging from Microsoft's own headset to the fantastic Elite Series 2 controller, or all manner of customised variants of the standard controller. You certainly are spoilt for choice.
It's wonderful to see the Xbox Series X this much below retail and for it to return to the price we saw it for at Black Friday from Amazon. If you're after a Series X in time for Christmas, this is an absolute steal.