By now you may have seen videos of the Xbox Series X giving off smoke like a home vaporizer. In reality, the effect is fake and easy to recreate — using a different kind of vaporizer.
Videos began circulating late Tuesday night, showing the Xbox Series X giving off streams of white smoke. The posts quickly made the rounds on social media, either earnestly or in jest, but the claims have now been debunked.
Spanish fan account @XboxStudios produced a video recreating the effect using a vape pen. As the Xbox Series X’s circular fan draws air from the bottom of the console to the massive exhaust on the top, the vape smoke was sucked up through the console and expelled, giving the appearance — at first glance — that the system itself is smoking and possibly combusting internally.
While these videos demonstrate the strength of the new console’s fan, they also drown out the noise of any other potential launch issues. Some users have been reporting strange noises from the disc drive, or simply being unable to insert a disc, though changing the system’s orientation appears to help in some instances.
Microsoft has yet to comment on the videos. In the meantime, we highly recommend that you do not blow smoke through your $600 piece of brand new gaming hardware.
In CGM’s review of the Xbox Series X, Editor-in-Chief Brendan Frye noted, “the Series X has managed to remain almost completely silent throughout all testing we did with the system. Even better, it never felt overly hot, delivering the same level of heat you would expect from past consoles, even when pushing the console with more modern games.”
