Whisper quiet and super fast: a hands-on preview with Xbox Series X

It's not the final product but we've been testing a preview unit of Microsoft's new console - and we're impressed

Until now, it's all been marketing. Every feature, every technological advancement, promised for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, have been untested. But over the last three weeks, Microsoft has been sending out preview units of the Series X to journalists around the world. Just as the company blinked first and announced the price and launch date of its next machine before Sony, it is now allowing proper scrutiny of the hardware before its competitor.

The console we've been testing for the past week is not the final product and its user interface is apparently not what we'll see at launch - this is usual for the initial run of review consoles, which tend to be based on the debug units used by game developers. Consequently, we're limited in terms of what we can cover. But even at this stage, and with these limitations, this is an impressive and exciting console. Here's what we found.