Xbox One isn’t very portable, so a modder turned it into a laptop

By Will Fulton September 15, 2014

Amateur hardware modder Ed Zarick has taken apart an Xbox One and rebuilt it into a custom, portable laptop with a built-in 1080p screen, the XBook One.

He completely gutted the console and built a svelte new case out of acrylic using his impressive garage workshop‘s Makerbot 2 3D printers and laser cutter. The attached Vizio LCD screen is 22″ and 1080p, which is an upgrade from his previous XBook 360‘s 19″ 720p screen. The laptop features a front-facing, slot-loading disc drive, optional HDMI output, Kinect, built-in speakers, wired power source (unfortunately battery power is just not feasible for the Xbox One), and custom fan shroud to keep it all nice and cool.

Zarick is an EMT/Fireman by day and self-taught engineer and hardware modder by night, sharing his various hacks and modifications on EdsJunk.net. His projects have ranged from the aforementioned Xbox 360 notebook and a netbook-powered mini MAME arcade cabinet to a pressurized water tank in his jeep’s stock rear bumper and an Arc reactor wedding ring box. His work is exemplary of the delightful innovations that can come out of Maker culture.

The XBook One is on sale through his website, starting at $1,095 if you provide the initial console, and should take 2-3 weeks to complete, but due to increasing publicity (like this very article) the wait list is growing quickly.

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Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective…

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