Microsoft - Xbox One S 500GB Minecraft Favorites Console Bundle with 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray - White

We purchased the Xbox One S Minecraft Bundle for our two children (8 & 11) for Chirstmas. They were SO EXCITED to receive it, as it was their main gift wish. We hooked it all up, (which was quick and painless) and waited for the multiple updates to complete. I wasn't impressed by the fact that the system, the and the two controllers had to be updated.... they took about 10-15 minutes EACH to complete. Then, the games that we purchased along with the system, as well as the Minecraft game and Builders Pack that came with the bundle all had to be downloaded to the system. I tolerated all of those updates and downloads because I realized that these processes are necessary for the best gaming experiences. The graphics and ease of use for my two kids were GREAT! The games we bought were Madden 17, Guitar Hero Live, and of course, the Minecraft game it came with, and my kids love them all. This system was an upgrade from our Nintendo Wiii which was purchased about 7 years ago, so it was quite the difference in graphics, and technology. About an hour into playing, however, the system powered off by itself. We though it was strange, but chalked it up to the fact that the system had been overworked. We let the system "cool off" for more than an hour, as suggested in the troubleshooting tips on the Microsoft website, even though the system never did show a warning or feel hot in any way. My kids turned it back on to play, and again, after about an hour of play, it shut itself off again. I changed the settings on the home screen to NOT automatically shut off after a certain amount of time, also as suggested on the website. Again, the system continued to shut itself off randomly after about an hour of play. Late Christmas night, I decided to give the Microsoft chat option a try, and I was so impressed to see that someone was available to chat! The tech help person was VERY understanding, apologetic, and mostly- helpful. He asked me what I had already tried, which I SO appreciated. No one wants to be run through an automatic list of "trys" when they're already frustrated. He gave me a couple of more tips, such as resetting the power supply by unplugging the system for 10 minutes, and then plugging it back in, and he also suggested NOT plugging into a surge protector, but instead directly into a wall outlet. Neither of which worked. He then explained that the system comes with a year warranty, and that he'd be happy to help me set up a repair, BUT he recommended simply exchanging the system at Best Buy since it wasn't beyond the exchange time frame. My kids continued to play the system as it continued to randomly power itself off, until the next day when we took it back to Best Buy for an exchange. They were sold out of the system, but they painlessly refunded the purchase to our Best Buy card (even though the original purchase was made online- which is not the case with all retailers), so we could order another system. That was two days ago, and we're waiting for the new system to arrive. My kids were so disappointed that they haven't been able to play with their new toy during their Christmas break. However, I am so impressed at how easy it has been to get the assistance I needed, and then to return the item to Best Buy. We do A LOT of shopping at Best Buy and will continue to do so. Here's hoping the new system works without ANY issues!

My only complaint about this version is the 500GB drive is way too small. If you can spring for the 1 TB or better yet, 2 TB editions, I would suggest you do so. I've generally been a PlayStation user, right up through the PS3. I decided I would initially skip the PS4 and Xbox one until they showed longevity and got upgraded. I have also, typically bought Xbox machines at the end of their cycle, and I have always liked them. Xbox also seems to start slow and build when they release new machines vs the PlayStation. So i waited to see the new versions of each machine, and went with the Xbox One S over the PS4 Slim. Once again Xbox stated off slow, but in these upgrade versions I think it has taken the lead in architecture, Hard Drive Space, and Price. Compared with the original Xbox One, we have a few key differences. Most good, some would say not all good, but as far as the "Cons" go, none of them mean that much to me. However, I have listed them for those who might care. They are as follows: Pros vs. Original Xbox One: 1) 40% smaller! And yes, the difference is very noticeable (see my comparison pictures) 2) 4K output. Not as big of a deal to most people as 4K adoption is not huge yet, and it's only really for video/Blu-ray (games are up scaled) but I have a 4K TV, so why not get ahead of the curve for once (PS4 Slim does not offer this). 3) The side USB port has been moved from the left side to the front, which is great for space saving 4) No gloss finish. As always, glossy finishes look great on day one but do not age well (easily scuffed and scratched). 5) Built-in power supply. 6) Hardware upgrade. In addition to the 4K hardware upgrade (HDMI 1.4 vs HDMI 2.0), there is more processing power available for HDR. 7) Higher capacity. You can now choose from models ranging from 500GB to 2TB. The extra internal space of the 2TB version was a huge selling point to upgrade. 8) The new Xbox One controller with Bluetooth, 3.5 mm Headphone jack built in, and new textured handles. Current Xbox users seem more excited about the controller than anything else! Cons vs. Original Xbox One (Again, I personally couldn't care less.) 1) As of launch, only available in white. I think it looks slick. 2) No elite version for the real game geeks. 3) Does not offer any option of a bundled Kinect, though it has been clear for awhile that Kinect support has been dwindling, and I find these motion sensors to be gimmicks (Go outside or to a gym. Meet someone Jeez!). 4) Does not include a headset, not even a cheapy earbud-style one. The one thing I do care about. All in all I think it's a great buy for these systems, and it looks like it will be around for a little while longer.

I have a 4k TV and wanted a UHD Blu Ray player. I have a PS4 Pro for 4K games, which look amazing, but maddeningly Sony doesn't include UHD Blu Ray playback on the PS4 Pro. The XB1S was $20 more than a UHD Blu Ray player so I decided to buy it. My experience with the XB1S has been decidedly mixed. Getting it set up was the first problem. Getting surround sound working with it was difficult even though everything was auto detected and worked without configuration on the PS4 Pro. I had to dig through the settings and trial and error things to get surround sound working. That was a bit of a hassle and seemed like it should have been automatic. The second problem I've had is sometimes UHD Blu Ray playback stutters. It seems like the XB1 sometimes does things in the background, even if you are playing a disk, so occasionally it will stutter. It has happened for maybe 10 or 20 seconds in about half of my playback sessions. Not horrible, but something I'd really like fixed seeing as though I bought it primarily for UHD BR. As a gaming and entertainment machine its pretty meh if you have a 4K TV. It doesn't do 4K gaming, and upscaled games don't look nearly as good as they do on the PS4 Pro. I tried playing some games on it but they look significantly worse than what I get on the Pro. The OS is kind of confusing and can be laggy compared to the dead simple and super smooth PS4 OS. Its decent machine but if you are using a 4K TV its most useful as a movie player.

I made the mistake of expecting a product to work out of the box...on Christmas. So, instead of gifting my children w/ an X Box One on Christmas, and a half dozen games, they are all scratched off until I fight the after-Christmas return nightmare to get a working X Box. Be aware, this product is a useless brick until it connects to the internet the first time you use it. If for some reason, yours doesn't connect, you cannot even do offline things. The Xbox will do nothing until it connects to internet. Mine appears to have a faulty network card as it can see my wifi signal, just won't connect. And yes, w/ plenty of time of it not working on Christmas day, you can bet I re-entered my password a dozen times, and watched as every other wifi device in the house continued to function perfectly. I even checked my router settings to make sure nothing was set to be pre-screened out. Nope, wide open. Just a bad network card. Poor design that the XBox doesn't offer option to skip internet connection and allow me to play any of the half dozen games I have for offline play. My kids will likely never even use the online play. I was buying this as an add-on to the Wii -U we have, which never was this much trouble. At this point, I am thinking that returning it for a PS4 may be the way to go, except I foolishly sunk money in some games, which would all have to be returned as well. I can't recommend anyone buy this.

I was actually in the market for a 4K UHD Blu-ray player, but the BestBuy employee steered me to the Xbox One S. This particular Minecraft bundle was on sale, and was slightly less expensive than the Samsung 4K player I had come in to purchase. Although I was not interested in gaming, the other features of the Xbox piqued my interest. Really, all I can say is "WOW"! I have tried a few games on the Xbox, and they can be fun, but even without that feature, it’s worth the price. For example, I have direct access on the TV to my OneDrive photo albums and a "real" Internet browser (Microsoft Edge). With apps for Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, etc., there’s no need for another box like a Fire TV or Roku player. On top of that, you can plug in your cable or satellite receiver and integrate the guides. So, want to watch “Christmas Vacation”? Just search for it and let the Xbox find which of your subscribed services are showing it. As a 4K Blu-ray player, it’s great. The quality and speed are excellent and it’s easy to use – just slip the disc in the slot and it starts playing. The Xbox has IR remote control that pretty much emulate all of the functions on the controller. Although you wouldn’t want to use IR to play games, it works very well for scree navigation from my touch screen HT remote. Even without the gaming, I’d buy it again!

The Xbox one S is a great investment and I hope it will continue to improve with future updates. It is a great media box, as you can hook your cable box or satellite box up to is as a pass through to your TV. With your controller, or the Xbox One remote, you can control most of the functions of your Xbox and TV. Setup is simple, but you might have to make some changes to your cable box to be more compatible with the Xbox for TV viewing...sometimes instead of "AUTO" on things like audio and video resolutions, it is better to select your actual TV and Cable box supported best resolution. A lot of times it still says "You lost your TV connection" so I still have to pick up a different remote and turn off then turn on my cable box again, but that is a minor thing. Cortana is helpful, but not as helpful as she could be. You can ask her to turn up and down the volume and look things up on the internet or open and close Xbox apps. It would be awesome if Xbox could control other network connected devices such as media boxes, other PCs with Windows 10, thermostats, or smart room lighting. All in all a great product for media and the games are fun. I don't like having to buy Xbox memberships in order to play online multiplayer games, so I mainly use my Xbox for Minecraft with my kids and multimedia.

I purchased an Xbox instead of a 4K Blu Ray player based on similar pricing and having the ability for me and my daughters to play some games. What continues to surprise me about today's advanced gaming systems is reliability. It seems that this far into it there would not be so many glitches. The first was with getting packaged controller to work. I had to go buy a second one before discovering that the first batch of batteries was bad. That's frustrating to get brand new out of box product to find pre packaged batteries were failed. Other items also occur with strange things without good explanation. I tried downloading Youtube application and it would get to 99% and then error code without installing. With some trial, time, and frustration, I finally completely uninstalled, completely reset system to factory, and eventually got it. Another occurred just last night. When trying to get to Microsoft Store to input a game code it kept booting me back to home screen. On about the 7th attempt it finally let me get to spot for entering code. Again, just a strange unexplained glitch that seems to happen in my experiences with Xbox and previously 360 systems.

I start off by saying I bought this for the Bluray and 4K streaming. I thought I would be the only one using it most of the time. Boy was I was wrong. My daughter was familiar with the Minecraft game that came with it but did not interest her very much. Instead my wife and I downloaded Legos Jurassic World. Since then my wife and daughter play it all the time. I do occasionally but not as much as they do. When you want to lose 2 hours of your time start playing the game and bam 2 hours fly by. Now with all this said about how great it is there are a couple of things so far that keep me from rating a 5 star. First the Legos game will freeze all of a sudden. Has happened twice so far and had to shut down and reboot game. Lost what we had done to that point. Not a huge deal but a pain non the less. Second which may or may not be an issue to you is that unless you have a 4K tv connected to it, the Xbox will not let you set it for 4K output. Now maybe I am not savey enough to figure it out but at least for me I could not get it to set for 4K output. Only 1080p which is what my TV actually is. Like I said these are truly minor things and may not mean anything to you. They happen to be to me. I do highly suggest it for some family fun though.