Gadgetory

- So this is probably a really bad idea. Let's do it. (drill whirring) The Xbox One S All Digital is on its way to stores soon and if you're interested in grabbing one, there's a lot of stuff you can catch up on in terms of accessories to really get the most out of your system. So, everyone who's planning getting an All Digital soon or just any Xbox, here's some stuff you should grab. One of the all-time most important accessories to grab for any system is a headset, and there are a lot of options out there for the Xbox and one particular brand that I've always been a fan of is Steel Series. Now, for a long time, the Steel Series mainline headsets weren't available on Xbox, there were ways to kinda make something work in a roundabout way but you'd still be missing out on certain features. Until now. Soon, they will be releasing their own Xbox One designed Arctis 9X headset. Like the rest of the Arctis line, this offers a really comfortable design. I love the ear cushions, little head band that gives just a little bit of support on the top of your head. Overall, super comfortable design. But there's a lot of things that because this one's designed for Xbox One in particular, gives it a couple of strengths. For instance, this particular headset uses the same dedicated Xbox One connection as controllers, not the Bluetooth ones. That's gonna give you a much faster and easy to set up connection. One of the things that's really cool about a lot of the Arctis headsets that is included in this one, is that while it does use the Xbox One proprietary connection for going to the system, it does still have built in Bluetooth so you can use it with other devices if you like, but on top of that, you can also use both connections simultaneously. So, if you'd like, you can play games while hearing audio from the gameplay as well as talk to people, but also have it connected to your phone via Bluetooth to listen to music at the same time. Like many other big name headsets, this does give you the option to have a couple different EQ profiles to work with. It comes preloaded with four different designs, but you can hook it up to a PC and use Steel Series software to customize them further if you want a very specific design for a game in mind. Another cool thing about the fact that this uses the proprietary Xbox One connection is that if you own one of the Xbox One wireless adaptor's for PC, that'll let you use a controller wirelessly, that's gonna work with one of these headsets as well, giving you that stronger connection. And because this isn't designed for wireless use specifically, it's got a pretty strong battery life at 20 hours and that's using both the Xbox connection and Bluetooth at the same time. One minor drawback worth mentioning, however, is that because this is focused on the wireless approach, if you wanna use it wired, your options are a little more limited. You can use the AUX port to have audio play towards it but that will not allow you to use any chat functions or any kind of the special stuff with Xbox. It's just gonna be audio, that's it. One of the longest debates that's always gone on with controller design in modern systems is how to approach batteries. And for the Xbox One, instead of going with the rechargeable batteries, they've gone with replaceable double AA's which I get, I understand the major merits of, but that's not for everyone and so a really nice way to upgrade from this, is this rechargeable battery pack set. Now, there's a couple reasons why I like this option in particular. It gives you a dock to charge the batteries individually, connected to the Xbox itself drawing power from it so it's a nice little place to remember where they're stored. And it's not the style where it replaces the back plate of the controller, where you actually have this little exposed area, a little bit. I hate that, it annoys me so much. So with these ones, it just keeps it lookin' like a regular controller with nothing changed out and gives you a way to recharge the batteries instead of having to rely on buying separate double AA's. There's just one problem. You would think that any product designed for the One S would work on the One SL Digital and for the most part, that's usually true. The problem in this case, though, is that the little charger for this is designed to lock into the little crevice that's on the side of the One S where the disc tray is that the L Digital doesn't have. Thankfully, though, this is something that you can fix with some light and very easy customization. Don't do this at home. (drill buzzing) Moral of the story, don't assume that something designed for the original One S is going to always work for the One S Digital. (drill buzzing) Fits like a glove. With the newest version of the Xbox One S going completely digital, it is more important than ever to take care of storage space. Now, by default the L Digital comes with a one terabyte hard drive which for a lot of people is fine but it's not always enough. Look, games are getting bigger and bigger and bigger with some major titles like Red Dead Redemption easily hitting basically 100 gigabytes, taking up over a tenth of the hard drive. Now, of course one way you could deal with the issue of limited space is constantly delete things whenever you get something new, trying to figure out what you actually still care about and wanna keep on the hard drive at the same time. But that's obviously really, really annoying to put up with. Especially if you do install a particularly large game. And it's really easy to happen too thanks to Xbox Game Pass which will just blow up your hard drive right away. So the better solution is to use an external hard drive. Obviously there are a lot of different hard drives on the market that you can use, but something that's really cool for Xbox specifically is there are a lot of branded designs so you can get a design by Seagate there are a lot that are just a simple white or green aesthetic, focused on the colors that are usually associated with Xbox. Or if you're lucky, you can track down some special limited edition designs they've done, like this Sea of Thieves one right here. Using these could not be any easier, you just have to plug into the back, or the front I guess, if you want to use that usb port, but I'd rather hide it. You just plug it in, and bam, you have extra space to work with on your system. And it adds a lot more room, as an example, this one right here is a 2 terabyte design, twice as much as what comes on the One S itself, and it isn't bogged down by having the actual system software filling it up to begin with. And again, this is just talking about branded ones, I always enjoy having stuff that just has matching designs and logo's, I just think it's always like, I mean, I sort of I always like to have it as a nice package, but you can also just get any external hard drive and hook it up, and that's going to work. You know, some day it might be really cool that Xbox is gonna get their Cloud streaming software up and running and you can just play any game you want without having to worry about install size. But until that glorious future is actually something that works, this is a great way to go. Something that I consider to be one of Xbox's biggest strengths, is their controllers. Not just the design of it physically, I do think it is the most comfortable controller out of all the mainline options out right now. But the other thing I think they do really, really well, better than any of the other companies right now, is the visual look of them. There are a lot of different Xbox One controller designs in a variety of different colors and patterns and special designs, and a lot of them are super cool looking. (electronic music) On top of that though, if there's no controller design out that really resonates with you just quite right, or you can't find the exact color or design you're looking for, you can do it yourself, thanks to Xbox Design Lab. As an example, I love Cuphead, it's one of my favorite games on the Xbox, and I really wanted a controller that had that style to it, because they just didn't make one. So, I made my own, with this red, black and white design. And honestly, this is a pretty straightforward standard design, just going with a single color for the main body, triggers and back and the little sticks and D-pad, there's a lot more you can do, and even pick different shading designs for the main body, if you like, and adding gradings to it. This give a sense of personalization and customization on an Xbox I don't really feel like you get as strongly on the other systems. I'm always a big fan of having that controller that feels like your controller, because it's your favorite color, or a design that you think is particularly cool, or it celebrates a game you really love. Xbox give you the best ground to do that. Of course, if you don't care about visuals at all, and you just want strictly performance, you could always spend a bit more money and upgrade to an Xbox One Elite Controller which does have two color options now, there is the old school original black one, and this white design which I really like, with the gray offsets. We did customize this one a little more though, adding the gold on the D-pad, which looks super nice. With this, you're gonna get the comfortable shape and design of the standard Xbox One controller, but also getting paddles on the back, additional button options, adjustable trigger stops, replaceable stick heads and even a changeable D-pad. Giving you just a little more control to fine tune what's the most comfortable design for whatever game you're playing. Either way, whether you're focused on looks or performance, I think it's great to be able to pick up an additional Xbox controller, just to get that one that fits your style a bit more. I'm a big fan of being able to use whatever controller I like for a specific game, and something that Microsoft has opened up for the Xbox One that I really appreciate, is the option to use keyboard and mouse for specific games, up to the developers whether or not they want to have that option available. Now with this, you can just use any keyboard and mouse that you have lying around that has a usb you can plug into your system, but there's actually one specifically Xbox One branded and designed option from Razor that I really like. The Razor Turret. There's a couple of things about how this combo is designed that makes it more appropriate for an Xbox console versus a tradition PC setup. One of the biggest is the fact that it is designed to fit comfortably on your lap as an actual lap setup, instead of something that you used on a desk. 'Cause, let's face it, most people playing on an Xbox One are using an entertainment setup, not a desk. This is accomplished by having a built in wrist rest, as well as comfortable pads on the bottom of the keyboard for when it's resting on your lap, and it even has a little pullout tray to put the mouse on, that is lightly magnetic, sort of keeps the mouse sticking to it, instead of, it's just gonna slide and fall off. One minor feature that I actually think is really cool, for this specific example of using it on an Xbox though, is that both the keyboard and mouse are tied to the same wireless dongle. You're not taking up two usb ports on your Xbox, You just have one little dongle plugged in that's going to connect both of those wirelessly, and give you a great, clean connection. And of course it would not be a Razor product without having built in RGB lights that you can customize using an app that is not only on the PC, but also available on the Xbox One itself, so if you don't want to deal with plugging it into another device, you can do it right there on your Xbox and customize the lights however you like. Another thing that is really important when dealing with a purely digital focused approach to consoles, is making sure that you have the strongest internet connection possible, that way, data links are going as fast as they can, and it's also helpful for playing stuff online, because you want to have best connection possible to not freak out mid-match. So, what might be one of the most interesting branded items I've ever seen, is an Xbox One Linksys router. Now, to be clear, when I say branded, it's on the box there's actually nothing physically different, visually on the system, but what's interesting about this, it's actually designed so that right out of the box, it's designed to prioritize the Xbox One over anything else running on the network. What this means is that no matter what's going on in your house, if other people are just trying to watch Netflix, or do other things, if you're on the Xbox, and you're just trying to download a game, you're playing something online, and it is making sure you get the strongest connection that you need to get that kind of stuff done. And I can't, I'm just gonna set this thing down, 'cause this ridiculous, I'm like holding a, yeah. And I can't really stress enough how surprisingly important this is, because there's nothing more frustrating than setting up a brand new system, getting ready to play some games, and then realize, I need to wait for every single one to install. It's one of the kinda downsides of the digitally focused future, but kinda an inevitable aspect of it. I find where this especially become noticeable is with Xbox Game Pass, because when you're in the situation where, hey, here's this entire, gigantic list of games you have never played, or maybe not even heard of, and you want to try them out, well it's hard to keep the excitement up when you select a game that you think sounds cool, and now you need to wait three hours. So, make sure that you have the fastest download speed possible, to make sure that that gap is as small as possible, so you can jump right into the gameplay, just really changes the experience. Now we actually compared using this against the mesh networks that we normally use in our offices, and for a little under half the price in comparison, it was giving us better performance as far as download speeds goes, and about the same ping. So if you want to make sure that nothing else in your house is fighting your Xbox for bandwidth, pretty cool way to go. Now while I think all these products are awesome and worth picking up, I realize that not everyone wants to throw down on all this stuff right away, as soon as they get a new system So in terms of prioritizing, I think there's really two main ones to focus on, depending on your personal needs. If you're planning on playing just a lot of different single player stuff, or you just wanna play as many games as possible, an external hard drive is definitely a great way to go. On the other hand, if you're planning on just focusing on multi player games and a very small subset of them, I would instead go for the headset, it is so, so important to have high quality audio, and a way to of course, chat with other people. Again, all this stuff is worth grabbing, but if it's something first, I'd go with one of those.