In the last week, some lucky journalists in the international press have been able to spend a lot of time with the new Xbox Series X thanks to units sent to them by Microsoft, and today they have been able to publish their first impressions. The console has only been tested backwards and without titles optimized specifically for the new hardware, but already this has emerged some very interesting information.

The results of these tests could be summarized into three adjectives: powerful, fast, silent. Let's see why.

With regard to the powerfactor, the different journalists have put the console to the test with numerous current-gen games comparing performance with those of Xbox One X, and the results are astounding though not quite surprising, given the excellent work that MS has always shown to be able to do on the back-to-back. Numerous games that on the high-end console of this generation run at 30-40 fps, in fact go to 60 fps on the new console. This is the case of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Dead or Alive 6, Monster Hunter World and Final Fantasy XV,all showing strong performance increases often doubling the frame-rate and reaching 60 fps, with rare drops below that limit. Even games that enjoy two modes - better graphics and better performance - achieve maximum performance at 60 fps despite being set in best graphics mode: this is the case with Hitman 2.

In short, even without any optimizations for the new console, most games receive important and visible performance improvements. This is at least for those games that don't have a frame-rate locked, which are now many since this generation arrived the new most powerful consoles.

The performance increase is not the only advantage the current games will have from shooting on the new console: we come to the speedtopic. Thanks to the console's fast internal SSD, all games receive significant reductions in load times. Here are some examples of how the game is reduced from starting the game to loading a save in full: Red Dead Redemption 2 goes from 2:08 minutes to 38 seconds, Control from 58 to 10 seconds, Final Fantasy XV from 1:11 minutes to 13 seconds, and The Outer Worlds from 43 to 11 seconds. Not bad, if we consider that these are always games not optimized for the new console,but simply run as they are.

The console's speed tests weren't limited to running games, however: the press also verified that a boot with a full shutdown state takes 20 seconds,while a Quick Resume (that is, the quick switch from one running game to another that we had previously left) takes 5-8 seconds. Tests have also shown that the console is able to keep up to 12 games suspended at the same time,at least as far as backward-compatible games are concerned. On this last feature all journalists agree: it is a real "game changer", something that will be rooted in the habits of players and that will become almost as natural as switching from one tab to another on a browser.

And what about the subject of silence? Here, too, everyone agrees that the new console is extremely quiet:at times when some games make Xbox One X fans louder, on Xbox Series X the fan starts but remains barely perceptible. Obviously the real test will be with optimized titles and they will be able to push the hardware to the maximum, but already this seems very good.

Finally, one last interesting note is the space available on the internal SSD: of the total 1TB, once purchased the console will provide us with 802 GB of space. 198 GB is then occupied by the operating system and the memory reserved for Quick Resume: it may seem excessive, but in reality it is even an improvement over the current console: Xbox One X in fact 1TB leaves us free only 780 GB, "eating" 220 GB, and without reserving space for the Quick Resume.

This is the most interesting and important information that has emerged about the console. If you want to know - and see - more, here are the links to the videos posted by those who tried the console:

• Digital Foundry, New
• Venturebeat
• Ars Technica, New
• Gamespot
• Ign