Xbox Series S Review | One Month Later - is It Worth It?

so i've been a playstation gamer ever since i was a kid so what the hell am i doing with the xbox series s well there's two reasons if there was ever a time to buy two consoles and play more games it's now as the world goes to and it is the cheapest way for sony fans to dip their toes into game pass and as of right now a month has passed since i was lucky enough to pick one of these up on one of the random stock drops on amazon and if you're still waiting for it to come back in stock then sit back and enjoy this unique review as i answer two very simple questions is it worthwhile for a playstation gamer to pick one up and more broadly is it any good let's get into it hey up and welcome to new rising media your home of hands-on reviews and gloves of opinions about tech and gaming i'm jason england or our nerd journalist and i thank you right there for taking the time out of your busy day to check out this video cheers right so a bit of preamble to kick off this review starting with the general declarations i bought this console myself it was not provided to me by microsoft and i paid 249 pounds for this or 299 dollars which is the rrp at the moment i've sunk a good 10 to 12 hours a week into playing several games across several generations across several consoles on this thing more on that later and do my playstation gamer comment up at the top of this video i don't say that as if i am quickly rushing to xbox's twitter feed and responding lol playstation rules xbox jewels every now and again because come on it can all be a bit more mature than that we can all love each other it's games who the hell doesn't love games regardless of where they come from i say it because much like when you find your favorite kind of busy drink it's difficult to go elsewhere then you see the maniacs that pick panda pops and you put them straight in the bin where they belong i started with a ps1 for my eighth birthday and a ps2 a couple of years later i did dabble elsewhere though and i picked up an xbox 360 because all of my friends were getting it and online multiplayer was one of my main motivations at the time plus i wasn't going to spend my life savings on a ps3 but then i did jump back over to the ps4 and most recently i've picked up the ps5 which is down there somewhere but i've done my one month review of that which you can find by clicking the i above my head what this love for sony's consoles doesn't make me blind to how good the latest generation of xboxes are and more importantly how good the games are getting on there there are so many people who talk about the ps5 in the series as being the combo breaker of console pairings to get where the ps5 is your go-to console to get the 4k versions of aaa title releases whereas the series s is your game pass portal to all of the xbox exclusives it's like betting on all the horses in a race you win whatever happens as i mentioned in my series s unboxing which again i above my head around there somewhere this makes the series s a game past trojan horse of sorts a way for microsoft to get a seat at sony's dinner table and start to help themselves to more and more of the garlic bread without them noticing sony will obviously kick off but why would you want to get angry at innocent old series s here it is small and non-threatening obviously it's not stolen you garlic bread but also it has fable really weird metaphors aside i've broken this review down in the same way as i did for my ps5 and m1 macbook pro reviews again i above my head managed to get a mention of another video in there cross promotion so how's about we dive in and we take a look at the hardware of this thing my thoughts on the box itself have changed but in the inverse to what actually happened to my thoughts on the ps5 mr midlife just zooming by you see i was one of a minority that thought the ps5 looked good when i got it it was a big box it was a hell of a statement piece to have to say i've got a next-gen console look at this thing but over time its size and its stature was just really annoying to fit anywhere that's what she said but for the series s the opposite happened because when i first looked at this i thought it just looked weird well right it just looks like a fast-food drive-through tunnel system when it's meant to be on its side because of the way that the x is positioned but then this vent on the top again it just looks just strange to me but now to paraphrase blazing squad i'm gonna flip reverse my opinion on it because this small sleek design is an absolute godsend compared to the ps5 for fitting into my home entertainment system fitting into the home setup and for carting to and from as well don't go wrong i loved the idea of next-gen consoles getting big for the benefit of airflow so it didn't sound like a twister movie every time you fired up a game but this is a seriously small and lightweight machine for reference 6.5 by 15.1 by 27.5 centimeters with a weight of just under two kilos and even with these compact dimensions this thing doesn't kick up a loud fuss at all in fact it's mostly been silent for me granted it may take some truly next-gen games to pull it to the test but right now i've had no problems with it whatsoever and the boxiness of the design it's just much more restrained and i'm a much bigger fan of something that is much more restrained in its design as you've probably heard me say multiple times on my underseat dark demon gaming chair review click the eye above my head for that one it just means it melts away nicely into any setup plus the game controller is pretty nice and comfortable to use as well it's not any kind of a massive step up over the last gen plus i'm really not a fan of the fact that they keep using disposable double-a batteries over putting a lithium battery in this thing plus it doesn't have any of the real next-gen feeling haptics or adaptive triggers of the ps5 controller but it feels great in the hand i really like the gripped texture on this controller and it's decent size means you'll struggle to feel real hand fatigue that you normally got with the ps4 pad and now it's time for performance and usability how powerful is it and how does that translate to the end user experience i'm much the same way as i started this section of my ps5 review i'm gonna stick the specs here feel free to take a look at them if you're interested in that kind of stuff take note you got them good because no one cares really the wii absolutely trounced the ps3 and xbox 360 sales and that thing couldn't even do hd because it was intuitive and it used what limited power it had to give a great user experience and for the xbox series s this is a tale of two parts for me resolution and speed the series s is capable of 1440p gaming 120 frames a second which is good in fact it's great consoles rarely have the ability to reach such a high frame rate but this recent crop does bringing you closer to the pc master race than ever before but for those who want the absolute best the series x and the ps4 are the only two consoles that can do 4k gaming in fact on paper the series s has less power technically than the xbox one x which means that via the pretty clever smart delivery function where you get the best version of the game no matter what piece of xbox hardware you're playing it on you actually play the xbox one s version of older games and no doubt you see current games more restrained on this system like forza horizon 4 running at 1080p on this machine rather than 4k if you've just invested in a massive 4k telly and you want to make the most of that picture this is not the box for you you should save up some money and grab yourself the series x and in fact if you do so you'll actually get a decent amount of storage as well with just 512 gigabytes on the ssd of this with a very limited amount of that actually available to use after the os you're left having to make those difficult decisions about what games to have and not have on the system all over again and plus the proprietary one terabyte storage expansion can set you back a couple hundred quid and before you know it this plus storage expansion is the same cost as an xbox series x so if you're wanting that you might as well dole out for the bigger one but that's not to say this thing isn't powerful some games like ori will of the wisps can still run at 4k 60fps and it looks beautiful but this is not consistent across all games simply put if you want the absolute best picture don't get this but if you don't necessarily care about that and if 1440p is fine for you which it'll be fine for most people then do give this a look as for the speed part i know that this doesn't have the custom ssd of the ps5 but microsoft have done some insane software wizardry with quick resume here let's take an example here say i'm playing skate 3 on here and i've been playing it in here in the spare room on my 4k monitor back here and i want to move the carnage through to the living room for the bigger screen experience normally with the ps4 i'd have to unplug everything take it through plug it all in go through the startup sequence and load up the game and get back to where it was before for the series s and i don't know how they've managed to do this especially when i have to unplug the power sometimes this thing starts up instantly and then i open the game and the quick resume icon appears in the top corner and before i know it i am back to the exact pause screen where i'd left off before not only that but then i'd want to switch games to forza horizon 4 and i'll see it saved that spot in the game as well this is arguably the most next generation part of this package is it perfect no it's a little inconsistent at times in that 75 of the time it'll work every time and not all games support it right now but when it does there's nothing quite like it and the fact that they've got it working at this point means that it's only up from here for the feature now for the most important part of any games console is it easy to use and are there good games on it and to that first question the answer is yes but it takes a little getting used to the whole ui is a little overcrowded whereas the ps5 ui relies on a simple rows and columns format this is just all over the shop with items in different directions and a couple of windows that can come over the top of whatever you're doing as well after a while it will just click and it will make sense i especially do like the ui integrations with my phone to import screen captures and then i can post them to twitter far more easily on my phone than trying to use the keyboard on the ps5 with my controller but microsoft could do with putting some work into cleaning up the os give apps and games and console beaches very different elements on the os rather than have them all jumbled into one menu at the top stop relying on a wide array of tabs across all kinds of different directions and give each element its own sense of purpose and now for the games obviously this thing doesn't come with a disk drive so you can't go and get something pre-owned from game and pop it in you're relying on the online store pricing games which obviously they stick a lot closer to the rrp that's that's how they get you but of course chances are you're not going to pay a single penny for a gain on this thing because you're going to be relying on that wonderful service called game pass which i can happily say if you do you will not be disappointed it's a great and ever-changing mix of triple-a blockbusters and indie darlings with a core base of first party titles like you'll keep grim batsu again and again and again and for example i absolutely loved playing hellblade forza horizon 4 gears 5 halo 5 and i'm just tearing through the master chief collection at the moment but alongside this i also enjoyed donut county and the outer wilds and with ea play included in the price as well i've really enjoyed the unique experience of sea of solitude and sure the games on there at the moment they don't really feel that next-gen because they're not next-gen games and the next-gen library for these new consoles is basically non-existent but in that same vein i don't get the insanely good value for money of something like game pass i don't get a constantly curated library of great titles no matter what i want to do whether it's playing overcooked with the misses or chainsawing someone in half on doom internal when i've had a particularly bad day at work in fact you could argue that to some degree i've been playing this a little bit more than i've been playing my ps5 because this is a great content discovery machine basically the games are good and microsoft have made an incredible service where you will discover new experiences that you have never played before but speaking of the games coming for this what will the future hold for the xbox series s this will be the ultimate test for the series s because while it technically has similar hardware to the series x it is nowhere near as powerful so what does that mean for the crop of real next-gen games that are coming down the pipeline will they perform well on this machine that has two terabytes less than the xbox one x the simple answer is i don't know and that's the gamble that you make with buying a cheaper machine like this i have no doubt that microsoft's first party lineup of games will perform perfectly fine on this what about beyond the next couple of years will the restrictive power of this machine cost it its future will developers end up feeling tied down by this and eventually move on from supporting it maybe we get a cyberpunk situation where the newest launchers are just downright unplayable on this thing or maybe we'll get a serious s tier of game pass with all the latest games that wouldn't be able to play on this are just hidden from you these are big questions for the next few years of this thing but as of right now and as for the next 24 months this will be fine for you so that's it right not exactly because there's an entirely different side to this machine that many people may not even see for the entire time that they use it but with an hour of elbow grease and 12 quid or 19 you can turn the cheapest next-gen console into arguably the best emulator i have ever used i won't go into too much detail here you can read my future about installing retroarch onto this and my experience playing on it i'll pop the link down in the description below or there are plenty of super detailed in-depth videos about the experience as well one that i'll highlight is a really great video from modern vintage gamer about the emulator but for those looking for specific step-by-step guides just search you'll find so so many but it's suffice to say playing all of your favorites on one box including playstation games feels weird on an xbox plus being able to play old playstation games on an xbox makes this xbox better at playstation backwards compatibility than an actual playstation awkward so for what it's worth don't miss out on doing this it's completely legal it's easy to do via microsoft's rules of setting up a developer account switching this dev mode and side loading a uwp program and this doesn't take over your entire console you still have the microsoft world garden experience as well where you'll probably spend most of your time anyway because they do such a great job with game pass and everything else on there but for those trips back in time we all need to the games of yesteryear like reminding yourself that ssx tricky turns 20 years old this year and that ea absolutely need to make a remaster it's just a very nice thing to have and it dramatically increases the amount of time we'll be playing on this thing and increases the value of the box okay so let's relate everything back to the key questions i asked up at the top of this video as a playstation gamer do you absolutely need an xbox series s no of course not don't don't be silly but it is a worthwhile purchase if you've been looking over at microsoft offering fawning over game pass it's an affordable entry point into the xbox ecosystem the hardware is nice and compact and quiet in operation the controller fits nice in your hand and is comfortable for long periods of play and of course game pass is one of the best subscription services going at the moment there are some caveats though the os takes a little bit of getting used to for playstation newcomers the limited storage on this thing is a problem and the fact that microsoft still don't put a rechargeable battery in with their controllers is very annoying and across a couple of tiles not every single one just a very small minority the difference in visual fidelity between this and the likes of a ps5 or the series x is pretty stark provided you can live with these compromises and remember this is just a game pass machine to your main ps5 then you're golden you're gonna have so much fun with this for gamers in general who have waited for that initial storm of the release window to die down only to be in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is limited stock drops and argos e-commerce for the americans out there watching this think walmart's online coming system only about 10 times worse the conclusion is a little bit different if you want a full 4k next generation console experience save up your money and get yourself the series x or the ps5 but if you don't care so much about that insane level of visual fidelity and really be honest with yourself with that question because you hear a lot of people saying oh 4k really matters but actually does it i've no doubt looked at games on this and thought that looks pretty so most of you will have no problems with this and if you just want a good box that plays good games at a good price there is really nothing better out there right now than the xbox series x all right and that is going to do it thank you all so very very much for watching this video it means the absolute world that you'd come to check out my videos are you interested in buying an xbox series are you saving up your pennies for the bigger next-gen consoles or are you gonna wait for a little bit because by the end of this year the picture could be very different for something like this go and let me know in the comments and as always likes if you enjoyed the video subs if you loved it and i'll see you in the next one take care you

Channel: New Rising Media

Views: 31,233

Rating: 4.7199583 out of 5

Keywords: Jason England, New Rising Media, xbox series s unboxing, xbox series s vs xbox series x, xbox series s review, series s vs series x, series s review, series s vs one x, Xbox, next generation, console wars, xbox series x vs ps5, xbox series s restock, xbox series s ray tracing, xbox series x/s review, Xbox Series S, Series S, xbox series s one month review, xbox series s gameplay, xbox series, xbox series s controller, quick resume xbox series x, xbox series s 1 month later

Id: LjZCIX6tyfw

Length: 18min 48sec (1128 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2021