Xbox Series S review: next-gen gaming on a budget - and in style

Digital Foundry presents the definitive verdict on an entirely new type of games console - Microsoft's junior Series machine, which aims to bring you the same games at lower resolutions. Does it work?

[darthv72]

It's a nice compact little powerhouse.

[DaveZero]

I love it I do, it like lightning at operating.

If do not have that all expensive 4k upwards tv, choose the smart move and buy an Xbox Series S at a fraction of the cost of the other consoles.

Gets you an upgrade cheaper all while taking you along into next gen, I think it will do well the console will.

There is also gamepass ultimate that comes with it, eleven quid a month and get all those games and now EA play added to the side of an already impressive console and service.

[Father__Merrin]

I agree it's a small compact powerful console. What gets me the most is image clarity I was surprised at it? Does anyone know if it auto supersamples if your on a 1080p panel

[Sgt_Slaughter]

It gets you to next-gen on a budget, but that savings goes out the window immediately when you're restricted to digital-only games and the very small hard drive space which means an external drive would need to be purchased sooner.

[darthv72]

Unlike the PS5 (both versions) the internal SSD is not surface mounted, it is replaceable. So it is very promising that there will be other iterations with larger capacity drives as well as varying capacity plug in SSD from different companies.

This is just the first model of digital with 512 but you can bet there will be 1tb and probably even 2tb models. All in due time.

[DaveZero]

@Mayne you will go buy additional storage for your console at some point because all you got was about 6GB, that will push the playstation even more past its initial price. That's if can have external storage on the playstation which I'm not to sure about or was it the internal that cant be removed like the Xbox internals can.

Let's face it your point is flawed because its still cheaper, buy a Series S then buy a storage and it may cost a total of 450+, buy a playstation at 500 plus, then the cost of the same storage drive that's 700 quid.

[SegaGamer]

It's not NEEDED at all, it would be more convenient for sure, but it's not needed. You can still easily install a handful of games on it and then delete those games when you are done. I don't know anybody that plays a ton of games at once. The most I will play is 3, but more often than not it is two.

I have had less than 500gb of space on my SSD on my pc for years now, and I have managed just fine. I still have 225gb of storage on it with 13 games installed. 99.9% of games aren't monster sized games like COD.

[DaveZero]

Someone with common sense that isnt a Fanboy from the sony side trying to fit a puzzle together in there head and make a point out of sillyness.

I had a 1TB hardrive on my standard xbox one, I will say this my internal was always clean and empty and my 1TB was always kept half full. If I can make do with a half full 1TB drive, I know full well I can do with 364gb with ease. Besides now the consoles are faster, all you have to do is do what you said and delete the games and put others on download for the exact night, turn off xbox and while asleep they all download for next day.

Or you could just do what I said above which is buy a cheap 1TB hardrive and just swap games around, it takes no time at all to move games.

[DaveZero]

Alot of people may of already had an external from there xbox one, I just move games onto the internal (the better drive) then from it onto my 1TB, it doesnt take long to transfer between drives.

To be fair I'd rather buy another xbox series S console than buy a little storage drives that's the consoles price itself. Nice tech the new cards but at the mo a little to expensive and id rather just have have multiple consoles on the go with 364gb in them. I mean I do not know about playstation but on xbox you can have your gamer tag on as many consoles you like, sure you can only log in at one console at a time but if I had a second series S and had certain games on both consoles, now with how fast they are and for the S price, really does make sense buying another S or two over a storage card itself.