Xbox Series S - Unboxing, Setup, and System Tour

hi and welcome to steven hellwig talks tech today i'm going to be doing something special and unboxing the xbox series s that's right it is launch day here and uh i was lucky enough to get a pre-order for this console and got my hands on it i've had every generation of xbox up until this point uh and decided to go with the series s this time um over the last couple years i've really gotten back into playing uh nintendo a little bit more i have uh young kids and so those games generally lend themselves to playing with my daughter and my son and so i do most of my gaming on the nintendo switch so my xbox has really been sitting idle for uh for a while but i wanted to get the new console and check it out figured the series s had everything i needed especially since i just built a brand new gaming computer and i have xbox game pass if i really wanted to go heavy on a game i probably would put it on the pc so have the series s here i'm going to unbox it and walk you through the setup okay we're here ready to unbox and we have the xbox series s uh 512 gigs ssd we look here on the side you can see some more statistics about this 120 frames per second uh xbox velocity architecture whatever that means uh hdr and disk free gaming microsoft had tried disc free gaming with the xbox to uh a lot of anger from fans but it looks like they're finally moving that direction so all digital we can see all sides here uh to open this there are these little tabs i don't know if you can see them kind of like right here little tabs we have one on each side as well as one on the bottom so that'll make it easy for us to open so let's do that we'll get this side here looks like it's taken off some of the box that's unfortunate maybe i will end up cutting these cutting the other ones here you know when that happens let's go down to the bottom and see if it does something similar have a little bit better luck yeah looks like taking a little bit of the box with it [Music] okay and the last side a little bit of the box on all the sides here okay let's see does this lift up or i guess we maybe turn it all back over all right and we'll open it okay so you can i don't know if you can see in the top of this case here i'll show you it doesn't really come out and see if i can move this around see there's a little foam here that i guess sits right on top of that and fits into these grooves says xbox pretty cool that back up and on the front here it says power your dreams that's the whole unit it's a lot smaller than i was anticipating so in the back i can zoom in here we have power cable of the power cable hdmi so this is back here construction manual manual which generally is useless in this this case this looks to be the controller i've heard so much about this nice little foam casing here you can see kind of fits around the controller i'll put it back here in this [Music] area okay so it's nice white controller feels really nice see there's some if you can see the grooves here that are on the underneath side nice grip i have an old xbox controller over here grab this is one of the xbox custom controllers kind of compare size-wise this one looks to be a little bit smaller smaller controller but similar layout not a ton of change here between the two controllers there's definitely a different feel as far as the grip is concerned here it does feel a little bit more compact in the hands certainly we have a different style directional pad the joystick seem to be in very much similar place uh they've added an additional button here in the center on the top side once again a very similar look not a huge amount of difference there triggers seem to be quite similar and you can see let me move it out a little bit you can see that grippy uh those little dots here that add that additional grip are also on the trigger buttons on the top i think those are very similar to kind of the grooves around the d-pads that you had on the sorry the joysticks that you had on the previous xbox so very nice controller is very nice um there's an input here on the bottom which i think is similar to what we had on the last one uh for accessories microphone see what we have here on the battery side so it is empty it looks like it takes rechargeable batteries or is this okay so it comes with uh two duracell batteries open this up yeah so two double a's is what it takes off the bat now i wonder if here i wonder if the no looks like i have duracells in this one as well i have some that have a rechargeable uh rechargeable battery pack so at some point i will test it out or i'll do some research and see if it will fit so let's go ahead and plug those in cover it back up okay so nice very pretty beautiful controller i love the white color i don't see that aging well after a lot of use so i'll have to figure out what the cleaning instructions are okay so i don't see anything else here i'm sure so let's get into the xbox itself okay so on the front power your dreams your slogan here i'll hold it up so you can see very compact in size uh let's see what i have that i could compare it to i don't have my switch up here this is a surface go so you can see it's a little bit longer than the surface go which is the smallest tablet that microsoft makes so a little longer than a surface go but also not as wide as the surface go so extremely compact is the s it is heavy so it's not light uh it's not the type of thing you want to carry around with you but um overall that's pretty awesome when you see how small it is there so it's like maybe okay that just falls off put that back there okay so before we get into that i'm gonna see what they have here on the bottom [Music] and it looks like we have instead of getting started instructions about how to connect it up uh power cord hdmi and then there is an app download the app tap set up console search screen okay so we will and then how to set up the controller you can see instructions here instructions and then controller configuration so it looks like there's an app that you'll have to follow the instructions on i have that app on my phone i believe and i will download it see if there's anything else under here oops no seeing anything else i would have assumed there would have been a power brick um usually there's a power brick that goes with these cables but it looks like this might plug directly into the console so it's interesting to figure out that here later okay so i'm going to clear this out here okay so here we are with the console there's some of these things out of the way let's move it on a little bit and let's open it on the other end flip it over it's taped very nicely good job with the packaging as always microsoft products are packaged really well all right to the side here once again you can see how compact it is really i did not understand how small this was in uh in the pictures and the videos i really thought it was uh you know console size a lot bigger than this i had seen that tom warren had put this inside his gaming pc so it should have given me a clue but still didn't really register so it has this little finish here at the top there's been a lot of comment about that how that looks i like it but i'm once again biased so i wouldn't necessarily take my opinion on the look but i think it's really neat looking and i'll hold it up to this camera here you can see the bottom just overall very nice compact device so looking at the back for the connections start with ethernet port it's like a couple usb hdmi out a slot for storage expansion this is a 512 uh ssd so it doesn't have the most storage in the world and certainly with the size of some of the games you can run out of storage space pretty quickly so i think storage expansion does come into play with this console and then has power and then a place to lock it considering everything is digital and there are no disks um you're definitely gonna probably have to expand storage if you start to get a lot of games on the front there is the sync button that's been around since the last console maybe even the one before that and then it looks like usb for charging okay great well that is a first look and unboxing of the xbox series s hold it up again so you can see it all right and then we will hook this up and go through the setup process [Music] so when you first launch the xbox series s it takes you to a screen to configure your xbox and it requires you to install the xbox app on your mobile device and uh you'll see once you launch the app and log in it will ask you if you want to set up a new console so we're gonna go through the setup steps for this console it's asking me to enter the code on my tv so i will do that here mwd and we'll say connect to console okay i will say uh only this time it's usually my default one and asked me for that kind of information and it is now connected with the console so you'll see my phone is connected and looks like the console's reading is connected as well so we'll hit next here english that's good i'm gonna go ahead and choose use this here put that in i'll have to blur that out later join the network okay so it is joining the console to the network and the console is now online awesome let's see what's next here in the app so it is going to update the console there's a 793 megabyte update so we will go ahead and put it let it update so you see it's updating here on the right and we can choose some various settings energy savings which is lowest power consumption instant on uh so we're going to use instant on we can kind of test how fast it is uh signing and security options and security preferences first option is no barriers so people can sign in see your data webpage that you use microsoft account change your settings and buy things with that without extra steps ask for my pass key ask your pass key before signing in and then lock it down you'll need to authorize things changing settings i have little kids and i've heard horror stories of people's stuff getting or things getting purchased without them knowing it so i'm gonna say lock it down and we'll say keep my games and apps up to date that will be good uh so turn on remote features when you're when remote features are turned on your phone can communicate with your console anytime you want install new games remotely use xbox remote play that sounds great i would like to turn that on okay now let's get you signed in with your xbox profile let's do that okay telling me about how the data is being used and let's see here help make your xbox experience better when you send microsoft optional diagnostic and usage data about your console we use the data doing console better by enhancing game recommendations improving console performance optional data requires includes app and feature usage so we will say no thanks in this case and sharing with publishers okay so we're going to create a console name here this console is in my office so we'll say office xbox it's not typing there we go office xbox we'll see next we want to keep in touch no that's okay all right and this is my old console uh my xbox one which is called the one and it can copy my system settings so i think i will actually start fresh give me a good opportunity to really set this up and see what it's like all right all done explore the app while your console updates discover and install new games on your console chat and play with your xbox friends watch and share game clips with your friends okay we are back the xbox console has updated we are now going to uh get into it so you can see my phone has connected to the console here i have the uh beautiful new xbox controller that i'm using so i've connected it here hit a to connect now it wants to update my controller okay we'll see hopefully this will take a little bit shorter time than the last one so we'll let this apply the update this is happening remotely i don't think the xbox one did this i think you had to be plugged in to update the controller so this is a new feature i think of the uh series s and x okay we're back again after another update and it looks like the console is updated this time uh so we'll click next here and see what it takes us into okay so it's going to find the best setting for my tv in this case my tv is my computer monitor so uh it'll be interesting to see what it comes up with all right how does this look looks fine sure 4k it shall be and let's go to the home screen okay so i'm in the xbox series s dashboard here and i'm gonna walk you through a couple quick features of the uh series s dashboard series x dashboard i think the dashboard is kind of the same uh across the board but i'm gonna quickly walk you through some of the key features uh first on the console you know to every xbox controller is that nice center button that lights up with the x and that is what will pull up your menu uh on the left hand side here it pops out uh you'll have home you'll be able to see your games and apps go into your settings uh this is a game that i'm installing forza motorsports seven uh community and xbox game pass game pass is taking front and center here in xbox series s and xbox series x um i have a game pass ultimate subscription now ea play is a part of that so excited to use both of those services to install games on the new console down here we can see notifications go into game pass settings going to the store if there are movies or other games you wanted to purchase uh search and then audio settings this is really around chat so headset chat mic mixing um going into my notifications here some notifications for game pass some things that have been unlocked for achievements already and fo forza motorsports seven um and it looks like it's ready to go even though it's not fully downloaded i could go in and play it which is pretty neat going up across the top here we have people and friends chat achievements uh capture and share so as streaming and recording has become a much bigger part of gaming uh it's really been built into the system i don't do a lot of game streaming so i'm not gonna go into all of these settings but i do record sometimes games that i'm playing if you see i probably have a ton of fifa content that i recorded on fifa 17 when i used to play that a lot more and then there are my profile settings and i can customize the guide so i'm gonna look for settings here and i see settings down here okay we're gonna go in there okay as we look through settings um you have your general settings which is going to be networking personalization family safety tv display settings audio power sleep mode these are pretty much the same as on the previous console there seems to be quite a lot more settings around customization moving things around in the guide for instance if i want to move this farther up i can say okay achievements are more important and then and the people or the chat section so i can adjust that and select done adjusting my background lots of custom color and customization settings here let me see if i can quickly uh get into this remember what this passcode is okay so i can adjust my default color um so choose that light blue maybe uh can you have our background be a solid color or game art not sure where game art is as a selection option i think we probably have to set that from the game achievement art custom image screenshot so these are other options we have for backgrounds so i could say i've been playing asia vampires recently we can maybe take something from flight simulator and achievement instead of the background none of these actually are quite nice enough for a background so i think i will pass on that option all right uh we have account settings here which i'm going to skip over this is once again more around um payment billing privacy that kind of thing system settings you can look at the console info uh storage so you'll see here that i'm starting to use up at my capacity pretty quickly uh and i'm only installing two games so a secondary hard drive will probably become quite needed on this console then we have backup and transfer signed up content restrictions updates location and time settings other devices and accessories right now i only have my controller but i could connect a mouse media remote and uh digital assistants which is new which would be this uh this is actually getting quite annoying this password thing i'll have to probably turn that off at some point so trust me in there is your if you wanted to configure uh google assistant or alexa you can do that in there and then uh some additional preferences notification preferences idle options so in here i can say you know dim screen after 10 minutes show me things when idle capture and share off options break reminder which is really cool i have this set to an hour and so it's going to make me put this in isn't it it looks like it's inexcapable so i have this to remind me to take a break every hour and a half um you can set it it's it's default is never so i'm actually going to move that down to an hour and then ease of access settings so that's great microsoft's made a lot of uh investment into uh making um xbox accessible i think you've seen that with the adaptive controller so this is just more of that being built into the console so going back out to the home screen those are the core settings uh if we navigate here to the store we can look at the various games and apps that we have available to us assassin's creed valhalla is out so that's one you can certainly pick up if you like to buy a game you have access to your game pass games here so i'm installing forza and i think fifa 20 right now and then you also have lots of apps so there have been some really nice apps that uh let's see here today okay apps home yeah uh some nice apps that came uh with the xbox series s i don't think i've gone to the right place here we go entertainment apps so you have apple tv netflix disney plus hulu youtube tv i saw in here prime video uh so a good portion of the streaming services are here was even surprised to see peacock uh that is one that i am forced to use to get all of the premier league games that used to just come for free on tv but lots of great streaming services hopefully microsoft will add more this is a great system if you need a streaming device it will definitely serve as both a streaming and a gaming device so it's great two-in-one there of course you can always buy movies tv shows through the xbox that's been around for a while and looks like there's some additional things here under hardware if you wanted to purchase hardware through the xbox not something that i've done but if you want to purchase some interesting controllers um i have one myself and my wife got me a while back and the dolphins colors as i'm a dolphins fan uh i'm not sure if that'll work with this xbox probably not but [Music] i'll look that up later cool some other settings here cart if you need to redeem a code wishlist not sure what that does and then other settings for the store so we'll head back home [Music] um on this home menu as you scroll down you can actually add things to the home menu so you'll see i have added ea sports fifa 20 and forza motorsport 7 to the home menu uh that's in addition to the other parts of the home home menu here which you can move around uh so entertainment your pins which are your apps game pass i've added store events community and then add more so if you hit the this button on the controller here to customize you can grab stuff and say move it up and down right okay and then when you go into a specific game page you can also you know add stuff to move it onto your home screen so i think it's pretty neat you can add games that you're playing right now to your home screen and then take it off your home screen later on when you're not playing it so much anymore that's a nice little feature there you can customize uh my games and apps similar to the xbox one where you can see your games and apps in here these are the games that i have going uh forza i think is still downloading it might be downloaded now but i think it's still downloading and i have uh ea sports fifa 20 and ori and the will of wisps queued up orion the blind forest was one of my favorite games for xbox one so i'm excited to try this out on the new console here i can see which apps i've installed the bulk of these are apps that came on the console and then a couple others that i've installed and then there's something called groups which i guess these are my pins um i have not really messed around with that as of yet let's go back home see if there's anything else uh there's looks like there are some xbox assistants accessories tips and tricks here but that is the bulk of walking through the console um so i will go in let's do this let's fire up forza so i have it started here looks like uh i haven't played it yet and i will give you a little preview of this follow this line here looks like i'm driving a porsche and i'm about to crash it into the wall in this s-curve fairly nice it has been a while since i've played forza so interesting to pick this game back up again on the series s i usually like to shift gears when i play these kinds of games it's a little weird driving it doesn't automatic clearly not doing so hot overall the scenery looks good the graphics look amazing as usual not sure if much has been done for this game specifically for the series s but it has been a while playing the nintendo switch since i've been back into games like this on the xbox console which just has this amazing graphics uh so it'll be interesting to get games like valhalla and play that a little bit and get back into some more heavy console gaming okay we'll click back out and go home here thanks again for joining me today here on stephen hellwig talks tech for this look into the xbox series s um i have enjoyed uh unboxing this and getting to play with it a little bit here looking forward to playing with it some more as more games get installed uh if you are looking for a console in the 299 to or 300 range you really only have one choice right now and that is the series s uh it certainly kind of ticked my boxes when i saw the announcements between the playstation 5 the series x and the series s uh for me i think it met all the needs i had from a gaming standpoint have a gaming pc i have a nintendo switch so a series x while certainly would love to have one probably wasn't necessary so went for the lower price point here uh has access to all the same games and i think it's going to serve my needs from a graphical standpoint and just a game play and experience standpoint as well if there are other things you'd like to see me review please feel free to put them in the comments below and as always i'd love a like subscribe share with your friends all right thanks you

Channel: Stephen Helwig Talks Tech

Views: 16,817

Rating: 4.8834081 out of 5

Keywords: gaming, xbox series s, uboxing, video games

Id: FRgDBiyjL8s

Length: 31min 9sec (1869 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020