Unboxing
Place the box with the hanger facing upwards, moving left to right.
On the left and right-hand sides you’ll find two adhesive circles holding the top in place.
Removing these with a fingernail is difficult, but doable. I’d suggest possibly carefully cutting these with a blade if you have one.
You’ll find a rectangular printed piece on one long side of the box, place the box with this piece facing upwards.
With the hanger to the right and the printed piece upwards, you can pull the holder out of what turns out to be a cardboard outer sleeve..
Inside you’ll find a plastic tab which is linked to the expansion card itself. Pulling this carefully along and upwards and holding the card with the other hand will allow you to remove it from the box.
The aforementioned plastic tab on the card must be removed before used. Holding the card in one hand, pull the tab along and away from the unit. Once done, it can be thrown away.
The final step before using this expansion storage is to remove the plastic cover (which you should hold on to).
DOing this is as straightforward as holding the shiny covered end in one hand and the solid non-cover end in the other and gently pulling the two apart.
Installation
Installing the card in your Xbox Series X Or S is pretty much as simple as unwrapping the card was. Look for an almost oblong slot on the back of your Series S or on the side of the Series X with all the ports/connectors on it. This slot, given it doesn’t look like say a USB port, HDMI connector or ehternet port is the port for the expansion card.
This card was, seemingly, only designed to go in one way. Short of finding a 100% foolproof way to fit the unit in first try, you can, as I did, push the unit (with the plastic cover removed of course) uncovered end first into the slot. If it doesn’t go in, don’t force it, simply flip it over 180 degrees and try again. On either the first or second attempt, you should feel a smooth sliding motion as the card is incerted and a firm connection is established.
Usage
Using this card, once again, is easy, as it shows up just like any other hard drive, though instead of course referred to as “storage expansion card”. Of course, you can rename this as well under settings>system>storage as well, should you wish.
It already comes formatted to work with Xbox consoles, so that’s one less thing for you to worry about and copying games is done via the usual places (mostly through the previously referenced storage screen.
Playing Gears 5 and other titles that were only stored on the card did not feel any different to playing them form the internal hard drive. Whilst you may initially think that’s a negative, that is in fact a positive. This card sets out to have the same performance and speed as the internal hard drives of the Series Consoles and it definitely delivers.