The New Xbox Series X Is Completely Different and Still Exactly the Same

The new $450 Xbox Series X is a big, white brick. It’s so brick-like that it doesn’t have any slot to put your last remaining game discs. But don’t think of this redesign like you would Sony’s PlayStation 5 Pro. It’s not smaller in stature and lacks a disc drive, like Sony’s slim PS5. Inside, it’s a different story. Video teardowns show Microsoft’s gaming arm has completely redesigned the guts of the Series X for 2024. Despite that, the slightly cheaper console doesn’t seem like the redesign Xbox needed it to be.

Starting Tuesday, there are now two new Xbox Series X versions and a Series S with more storage space. There’s the $600 Galaxy Black edition Series X with a sparkly exterior and 2 TB of SSD storage. Lastly, the Robot White 1 TB digital edition costs $50 under the base model MSRP (though the current Series X plus controller costs $480 on Amazon) and lacks the disc drive. It’s the version of Microsoft’s console that’s supposed to entice potential or current Game Pass subscribers.

We’ve heard a lot of consternation over disc drives as of late. The $700 PlayStation 5 Pro will ship without one in the box, and you’ll need to spend $80 extra to play your discs. How does Xbox fit into that debate? The all-white, seamless digital edition console has an otherworldly aesthetic. It’s either an alien device or an oversized child’s building block. I can’t even say it looks like a toaster, especially when the Xbox Series S exists.

YouTuber Austin Evans did a weigh-in and teardown of both the Galaxy Black and Robot White Xbox Series X. Despite having more storage than before, the 2 TB version weighs .38 pounds less. Without the disc drive, the white version weighs 1 pound lighter.

Does that matter too much for a console that will sit on your TV stand for the rest of its working life? No, not really. When you look inside the new disc drive-less version, you’ll see Xbox removed the drive and left it as an empty void. According to Evans, you can’t physically integrate a new disc drive into the digital edition either since the newly redesigned internals don’t have the connections to power it.

The most dramatic—and potentially impactful—changes all surround the CPU and cooling apparatus. Xbox reconfigured the motherboard to support a new 6 nm SOC, smaller than the original’s CPU.  The new consoles now sport a completely reconfigured heatsink. The new Series X uses heat pipes, whereas the 2020 version uses a larger vapor chamber. That cooling apparatus is far better than any heat pipe solution but is also more expensive. Evans supposed that the smaller chip requires less voltage to hit current clock speeds, requiring a less expensive cooling system.

It’s not like Xbox is alone in eschewing a vapor chamber. The PlayStation 5 has used heat pipes throughout several internal redesigns since its launch in 2020. As Evans pointed out in previous teardowns, Sony pulled a similar move with its pre-slim PS5, reducing the chip size and shrinking the heatsink, all without lowering the price.

According to Evans’ tests, the new versions run with less power draw than the original consoles by approximately 11W on average when on menus and in-game. They weren’t expelling more or less heat than the original and didn’t sound any louder (that is, not anything above a whisper).

The engineering that went into redesigning the new Xbox is significant, but it won’t make any real difference for consumers. You won’t save anything noticeable on your monthly power bill. With all new consoles and internals, it would have been more heartening to see a reduction, or at least competing on price for more storage, especially if Microsoft is spending less on cooling than previously. Then, one could make a better argument for buying one. As for now, it’s better to think of these consoles as exactly the same as before or—in the big white brick’s case—more limited.