Something that’s completely new to next-gen consoles is the type of external hard drives that we’ll be using. Just from my observations, it seems to be the thing that people are struggling to get their heads around the most.
From first impressions after a week with the Xbox Series X and the 1TB Expansion Card, I’m pretty convinced that from a design point of view, this is a really good solution for next-gen consoles, where the speeds of external hard drives were never going to be a viable option for loading next-gen games.
From a size point of view it’s much, much smaller than I expected it to be, with it resembling the form factor of an old-school memory card more closely than a chunky external hard drive. It feels like a part of the Xbox Series X both from a design and functionality point of view, which is the biggest compliment that I can give it. You can plug it in and remove it at any time, without it causing any issues, and it feels like an extension of Xbox Series X storage rather than some foreign external drive that feels clunky to use.
In terms of how it goes into the Xbox Series X, it only goes in one way, so it’s fairly impossible to get it wrong, and within seconds of loading it into your Xbox Series X it’s recognised as your secondary drive and you’re ready to start (or continue) using it.
Just as a reminder, you can use your ordinary external hard drive with the Xbox Series X, but it’ll only be for Xbox One games. You can also use the external hard drive to store Xbox Series X games but won’t be able to play them off the drive. The only way to currently play Xbox Series X games is by using the internal SSD on the Xbox Series X (which gives your 800GB of storage out of the box) or by grabbing the Xbox Series X Expansion Card for $359 AUD.
All-in-all, first impressions of the Expansion Card are really good. It’s not going to be a must-have purchase for most people on day one, but if you do feel like you want to double your storage space on the Xbox Series X, I do really like this solution. It might end up costing a little more than it does to expand the storage of the PS5, but it’s a really consumer friendly, well-designed solution that you can’t really go wrong with.
You can find the rest of our Xbox Series X impressions HERE.
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