I bought a gently-used XBOX One X from a guy on EBay about a month or two before the Series X launched. This sounds like a really strange time to buy one, they had been recently discontinued, it was clear there was a new generation approaching, I already had a PlayStation 4 that I liked a lot, so why did I buy it?
Podcast
For a while, I was doing a podcast with a couple of friends called Idle Circuits. It was a lot of fun, and I'd love to start it up again, but at the time I had some guilt on my mind. In a couple of our first episodes, I talked pretty harshly about the XBOX family as a whole, but especially the XBONE. I could not understand why anyone would want to buy one, it didn't seem like a very good console at all. The exclusives were fairly thin, the console itself was sleek, but they never decided on one UI to stick to, so it's entirely possible that if you bought an XBONE on launch, you would have to relearn the entire interface if you stuck it in a closet for too long.
So, I felt guilty. I had never owned an XBOX up to that point, so I really was taking shots at something I knew nothing about. So, when it showed up on Ebay for $320 in box, I decided it was time to try it out.
Regrets?
Nope. Not on either front.
I still don't get the appeal of the XBOX One, or for that matter the Series (S or X). Neither feels like a finished platform to me, mostly because of an unfocused, sloppy UI paired with less compelling exclusives than the PlayStation, an inferior controller, etc. However, I don't regret buying it, if only because I have a PS4 Slim, which isn't nearly as powerful. I do appreciate the ergonomics of the controllers, too, even if I think they're a hilariously dated design.
So let's take it apart.
System UI
In a word, the XBOX One feels slow. It takes an eternity to do just about anything with this interface. If you need a comparison, I can usually start watching a movie on my PlayStation in about half the time (or less) that it takes me to start watching on XBOX. It's not just animation speed, the console takes its sweet time loading everything. The One X is slower than the PS4 slim, let that sink in for a moment.
Home Screen
This doesn't have a unified design language like the PS4. It's close, but it's harder to describe quickly. The system has pages that you can flip up and down between, each page corresponds to a different category. The main category shows recent apps, a permanent shortcut to the "all apps" screen, and a permanent shortcut to the store. It has some advertisements along the bottom, which I think is a butt move.
Paging down (which can be done quickly with the triggers) shows different pages, with varying uses. This can be a category of games (what I use it for), a socials page for a particular game, or Microsoft recommendations. It's sort of akin to Android's home screen widgets, they can really serve any purpose.
All Apps
The problems really start once you hit "all apps". Here we get a classic "Modern" UI experience. The sidebar includes a number of categories you can page to, like apps, games, "manage", storage, etc. However, at the bottom there's a pie chart and some other (identically formatted) text that isn't actually selectable. You can try, but it won't do anything. If this were anything else, I would expect that to be its own menu page, containing the storage settings, or maybe a more advanced view of something, but it's just a display at the bottom of a menu, hanging out there for no reason.
That aside, it's functional. The "all apps" screen includes one feature the PlayStation 4 sorely needs, a "check for updates" button that scans everything on the system for updates. The PlayStation requires that you select every game and manually check for updates if you care that everything is up to date. This is admittedly minor, since on the PlayStation downloads are fast, but it would still be nice.
Settings
Moving on to settings, there's one major good thing, and a few bad things. I'm going to talk about the bad things first.
There are two categories that both seem synonymous with each other. One is the "General" section, the other is the "Preferences" section. This seems minor, but neither one describes the contents. The General section includes a mishmash of power saving settings, display and TV settings, accessibility settings, and so on. Preferences, on the other hand, is an overflow section for seldom-used settings, as far as I can see. There's nothing that holds either of these sections together as a defined "category", they're just things that either wouldn't fit elsewhere, or things that Microsoft seems to think belong in the default area. You could easily rename "General" to "Quick Access" and "Preferences" to "Misc" and it would actually mean more than it does now.
Furthermore, there's a section called "System", that does not include power settings (those are in "General"), but does include access controls. The first place I would think to look for access controls is in the "Account" tab, since it has to do with accounts, but not including the power settings in System is just maddening. I vividly remember spending more time than I'd care to admit searching for where the standby setting was, only to realize that it was in General the whole time.
However, the biggest "good thing" about the settings screen is that it even has categories. This is a complaint that I see leveled at the PlayStation (and rightfully so) because finding a specific setting that you want is time consuming. It's not really hard, but it takes a fair amount of seeking through long menus to find what you want, and even if the XBOX settings menu isn't very well organized, at the very least it's well paginated, making it pretty fast to find what you want.
Controllers
I touched on this already, but in my honest opinion the XBOX controller design is just not very good. That's not to say that it's explicitly bad, but it's certainly not the type of quality that you would want out of a current generation system.
Mostly, this just boils down to the feature set. The controller itself is fine, but it's lacking in some key areas.
Motion controls?
This is a big no. The XBOX is home to a lot of shooters, and these benefit the most from motion controls, specifically for aiming. If you're not sure what this feels like, there are plenty of videos online talking about it, I would highly recommend the YouTube channel Nerrel.
Battery?
Furthermore, each XBOX controller ships with a set of Duracells. I don't have anything specific against Duracell, but they're still disposable batteries. It's easy to dismiss this as the cost of better battery life or a good way to save on e-waste since the whole controller isn't junk if its battery wears out, it still encourages you to put regular disposable batteries in the controller. Regardless of what you could do with such a device, most people will take this route over buying rechargeable batteries. In spite of the fact that a single disposable battery isn't much harm to the environment on its own, more than a few quickly becomes significant.
Repairability
XBOX controllers are difficult to take apart, requiring at minimum the use of a plastic pry tool for each grip of the controller. These hang on tightly, too, which is a good thing from a build quality standpoint, but an annoyance at best when trying to take it apart. This means that entry isn't straightforward, and this alone will stop many people from repairing their own controllers.
Even more damning, however, is their use of security torx screws. Many people don't have security torx, even if they have regular torx. While the drivers aren't specific to the controller and can be had from a garden variety hardware store, they're still a specialized piece of equipment that most people don't have.
Fortunately, once you've gotten inside the controller, they're reasonably easy to take apart and put back together, and the pieces aren't tiny and fragile.
Impulse Triggers
This is a neat idea, and I would be very surprised if it wasn't at least partly the inspiration for Sony's later adaptive triggers. Essentially, there's an extra rumble motor in each trigger, providing extra feedback in some games. This works well, where they use it.
Also neat is how the triggers sense a pull. Rather than potentiometers, like in the XBOX 360, the triggers use Hall effect sensors, measuring the distance of a magnet to a sensor inside the controller. This is a very low-wear solution, and it's quite accurate.
Less neat is how the impulse triggers are damped against the casing. Rather than cover the surface that the triggers land on when pressed and released, Microsoft opted to use small strips of foam with adhesive tape on the back to stop the triggers from rattling. This works, but it will eventually peel back, exposing the sticky surface of the tape and causing the triggers to stick. Usually they stick in the resting "up" position, but I've had at least one stick in the down position, which killed my race in Forza the first time it happened.
My Own Bias
I also need to slot in here that my experience with the XBOX controller hasn't been top-notch. I ordered a pair of them on a Black Friday sale on Microsoft's own website, and only ever received one of the two controllers I ordered. Microsoft support was straight up unhelpful, and I have never received the other controller, nor have I seen a refund. This is not directly Microsoft's fault, right after I placed the order I heard news about FedEx drivers taking off with game hardware, and this was shipped by FedEx, but nonetheless, I had a tamper-evident box that was wrapped in packing tape and beaten up, no packing slip at all, no second controller, and no help from Microsoft. I also had no choice in shipping carrier.
To make matters worse, that one controller I got is the very same one that first had a sticky trigger. I had been using it for less than a year when it happened, and shortly after it developed stick drift on the left stick as well. I have since repaired the trigger with some craft foam and some epoxy (works great, by the way, someday I may post about that) but I have not fixed the stick drift issue yet. I do want to point out in fairness that these Alps thumbsticks are a problem that is far from exclusive to the XBOX controller, the DualShock 4 uses the exact same internals, but this is the only controller I've had it happen to so far. Both problems were well within the first year.
Aftermarket Options
The silver lining here is that there are actually good aftermarket controllers that (almost) reach feature parity. I've found that the PowerA Wired controllers have actually really good thumbsticks, that's usually the part that aftermarket controllers mess up, and they're very inexpensive. If another one of my controllers starts experiencing issues, I will buy another one of these aftermarket pads over the official ones at this point, the only feature they lose is the impulse triggers, and they include a couple of things the first-party ones don't have, like programmable grip buttons. This is the first time I've found a third-party cheap controller that is any good at all, so I feel compelled to mention it.
This is the positive side of the otherwise hilariously dated controller design; it's easier to copy. Motion sensors are a lot harder to get right, as are pressure-sensitive buttons, but something this basic is almost screaming to be cloned, and fortunately there's at least one of these good clones by now. For that matter, the wire is a good thing, too, if for no other reason than you don't have to deal with batteries.
One negative to the PowerA specifically, however, is that the headphone jack is kind of noisy. The noise floor on the first-party controllers is much better. Between this, the wire, and the impulse triggers, make your own decision about which to buy, but the aftermarket is definitely the path I would choose.
Disc Games
When you stick a disc into a PlayStation, up to at least the PS4, the console reads the disc, maybe installs something, then lets you launch into the game. This does vary from game to game, but most games let you launch in within a couple of minutes.
On the XBOX One (and by extension probably also the Series X), the console has to first copy the entire game from the disc to the console. It runs at (by my rough estimate) around 200-300 Mbps or so, so if you have a fast internet connection, you may end up loading into a game faster if you bought it digitally.
For me, my internet connection was 25 Mbps, far below 200, so the disc made sense still. However, games on XBOX seem to like downloading patches the size of the game even more than PlayStation games do. This leaves you with a giant window of time where you're waiting for the game to copy off of the disc, and also to download all of the required updates. It can take a very long time.
XBOX Live
It's no PlayStation Network. They do allow free games to be played without a subscription fee, but changing your "Gamer tag"* costs $10. Yuck. Otherwise, I don't have anything notable to say about it.
Game Pass
I categorize this as a part of XBOX Live. Strictly speaking, it's not, but it behaves sort of like a natural extension to a Live subscription.
However, I can't really talk about the XBOX without bringing up Game Pass. Originally, there was no reason to buy XBOX over PlayStation for anybody, in my opinion. However, if you play a lot of multi platform games and you end up spending a lot of money on them, Game Pass makes sense. It lets you play games without buying them, and honestly the experience is pretty good. It's basically the long-coveted "Netflix of Games" that everybody thinks we all need. Even Sony now has something quite similar to it.
That's the rub, though. If you don't play a lot of games, or more specifically you don't already play a lot of games on XBOX, this won't make any sense to you. You'll be paying a monthly subscription fee for something that you would honestly not be spending that much money on anyhow, and to top it all off you can get a very similar service now on PlayStation, with their much richer games library.
For someone like me, I play a lot of one game for a while, regardless of age, and I buy my games when they're cheap. I don't have a $20 limit on game purchases, but I buy so few of them now because I tend to take my time taking them apart that I end up with a better value for dollar than I would from Game Pass.
Make your own calculation on the value of this, before you decide to jump in. If you do, it's basically just an alternate way to pay for games, just like before.
Be careful, though, they do tend to remove games from Game Pass from time to time, so if you start using it regularly you should watch Microsoft's news on the service, lest you find the game you're half-way through suddenly isn't yours to play anymore. Overall, this is the real reason why I don't subscribe.
Conclusions
So, honestly, everything I've taken issue with is something that you can put up with. I wouldn't call you crazy for it. The console plays games very well, and there are a lot of (especially multi-platform) games that are well worth your time on the console.
However, it's just not really a standout option over the PlayStation. The experience is notably inferior, and it's lacking some important focus and featureset that the PlayStation has had covered for years by now.
If you already bought one, great, you really shouldn't have any regrets, so long as you don't desperately want to play one of Sony's games. However, if you're looking to buy one, I can really only recommend it if you play a lot of games. The less featureful controller, combined with the smaller audience means that you're unlikely to find the absolute best version of a game on XBOX over PlayStation, unless the developer is invested in the platform or owned by Microsoft, but that's not to say that it does its job badly.
Enjoy it if you have one, but temper your expectations if you don't.
* Cringe name, by the way.
Edit 2022-11-10: Added the "good" part of the settings panel, game pass section, extended the conclusion to match. I also added more information about the controller, including my own bias and the section about PowerA (whom I have no business relationship with, to be perfectly clear)