- At $299, the Xbox Series
S is the cheapest way to get into the next
generation of consoles. All right, with the seals off let's open up the Xbox Series S. Oh okay I like a little
attention to detail so first of all, as we power our dreams we get the tiny tiny little Series S. It's really hard to get
the sort of scale of this until you actually have it in your hands but this has gotta be the
smallest console we've had since like the slim PS2. It's not that much bigger than slim PS2 this is a very clean piece of hardware. So up front, we have a
USB-A port and power button nothing but venting on the sides and around back we have ethernet two more USB for grand total of three as well as we have HDMI 2.1,
the storage expansion module which is the same storage
SSDs as the Series X as well as the power cable. Now just like with the Series X you can set it up vertically
so it has rubber feet there or you can set it down horizontally. It's nice because unlike on the Series X which has that kind of
built-in foot on the bottom I think this looks
equally good either way. So that's what you get inside
the box of an Xbox Series S but what is this console all about. When you look at the Xbox Series S compared to its bigger
brother the Series X it doesn't look as good. Now that makes sense
at $200 less expensive you would expect that there
to be some compromises and they go a lot farther than
just not having a disc drive. But I think it's a lot more complicated than a few minutes with a console would really lead you to believe. So the top line is this, the Series S has a very similar level
of specs to the Series X with one big exception, graphics. So where the Series X
has 12 teraflops of performance the Series S has to get
by with four teraflops now to be clear, that
is still significantly better than the console it
replaces, the Xbox One S but it falls behind at least
on paper, the Xbox One X which for a next gen console seems like a little bit of
a bitter pill to swallow. But that being said the Series S has a very different goal in life it is not trying to run
games at 4k all the time. Instead it is really targeting somewhere between 1080P and 1440P the way they're really setting it up is just like with the original Xbox One which was very much not really meant to push
sort of 4k resolutions until you got up to the One
X, same thing for the Series S this is to be able to bring
all those same features of next gen, but at a lower resolution. Now, if you compare
that with the Series X it is supposed to be the
most powerful console and of course it will take
advantage of the power in a big way. So you're getting 4k 60
on most games compared to that 1080P on the Series S but regardless of what you hook it up to the Series S will look good and it is a major
improvement over the One S where it's not a clear
improvement over though, is the One X which is again, where you have
to temper your expectations. But beyond that, a lot of those same
features are all shared so for example, they both have SSDs. Sure, the Series S has a 512 gig SSD instead of one terabyte, but hey, you're spending $200 less money. Now they both do support
120 FPS, but odds are if you're buying the Series S you're probably a lot more more
likely to have a 60 Hertz TV instead of a brand new
OLED or something. Now when it comes to playing games that are fully optimized, right? We're not talking about backwards compatibility, we're talking about games
which have been designed for the Series S and the Series X, the X surprise surprise looks better. So if you look at the Microsoft's specs they're sort of recommended
what they've designed these consoles for. The Series X is designed to run at 4k 60 and the Series is designed to
run games at 1440P 60 right? But these are simply recommendations a game developer can do what
ever they want pretty much. If you've got a pixel based game you could run it at 8K
if you really wanted to I don't think anyone's gonna
stop you, but realistically these numbers, aren't quite representative of the kind of experiences you're getting on each of these consoles. So take the Series X, for example pretty much every game
that I've tried so far has a pretty robust 4k 60 FPS mode, right? That's pretty much standard and some games have
support for 120 FPS at 4k or even maybe slightly lower like 1440P but really solid performance. Now, on the Series S there are a few games that will support these
higher frame rates, right? So for example, Gears 5 multi-player will run at 1080P 120
FPS, which is awesome. But the thing is, if you do the
math here on the differences while 1440P at 60 sounds
great, that would require about half as many pixels as the Series X. It only has about one
third the GPU horsepower which means that realistically
most games really are going to be running at
closer to that 1080P number. Of course, there's a thing
called dynamic resolution that's been around for a long time which means that you're
always gonna get on at least a lot of games, you're always going to get
like the best resolution. So it may be because
dipping back and forth between 1080P and 1440
or whatever the case is. But regardless this is a little bit more of a 1080P gaming box and the Series X is a little
bit more of a 4k gaming box but the thing is, all the
building blocks are still there. You still have Ray tracing support, you still have support
for the spatial audio, you still have all the same things that will make these
games look and run well and because they have the
same CPU's things like, I don't know GTA 6 should be able to have massive worlds with tons of NPCs, there's a lot of CPU
horsepower behind that. It's just simply that
the graphics settings won't be quite so elaborate and you simply won't see
that same resolution. So the Series S does support
backwards compatible games just like the Series X. That means a lot of original
Xbox games, 360 games, as well as Xbox One games. Although of course, without a disc drive you are going to have
to download these games as opposed to using the physical disks that you may already own. Now, there is another level which is a little bit more disappointing if you were running an Xbox One game which has been optimized for the One X which means that supports things like 4k that won't actually run on the Series S because it defaults to
running the standard Xbox One builds of games and there are a couple
of reasons for that. So while technically
it would be very close to being powerful enough,
the GPU is not quite there with what the One X did and you actually need
a little bit above that to be able to accurately run it to make sure you're not
losing any performance which is why they've opted
to keep those games running in these standard modes. So essentially, if you're
running a game on your Xbox One or your One S it's got a pretty much look and perform the exact
same way on the Series S. You'll have a little bit more overhead so some games may run at a
slightly higher frame rate but you're not going to get
the added visual benefit of something like 4k, that a lot of games like "Red
Dead 2", for example offer. So just like with the Xbox One
you can install older games so Xbox One and earlier
onto a USB 3.0 hard drive and plug it into your Series S. This is absolutely what you should do with both of these consoles realistically if you're playing a lot of older games because even one terabyte on the Series X isn't that much storage space and you look at games like "Red Dead" which can be nearly 100 gigs that eats up a ton of that really quickly. There's something that I think is actually really worth considering are the sizes of these consoles. Everyone knows that the PS5 is about as large as Linus's ego but the PS5 is sort of a
different school of thought when it comes to designing a console the Series X has that
dual motherboard approach which means that it actually
is a relatively compact sort of chassis. It's a little bit bigger than something like the One or the One X,
but still relatively small. However, both of these consoles pale in comparison to the Series S which is by far the smallest
Xbox they've ever made. I'll be real, this thing is
tiny where I actually can't fit I have a fairly small TV cabinet at home I actually can't fit the
one X in the cabinet. I actually, I have to put it onto the side beside the TV, but the Series S will slide right in there no problem. Now that's a really nice thing, right? Not everyone has a ton of space when you're looking at a console which is closer to something
like a Wii than an Xbox One that is a nice sort of benefit. Now, is that enough of a reason
to buy a brand new console? Just because it's less
powerful and therefore smaller? No, and of course you
do lose the disc drive but it's something worth considering. I think the elephant in the room when you're talking about the Series S is the PS5 digital edition. So the $400 price tag of that console means the Series S does look a little bit
questionable, right? So unlike what Xbox have done which is essentially build two consoles one of which is the full-fat Series X and one of which is the digital
only less powerful Series S Sony have gone with a
completely different approach. Both the PS5 and the
PS5 digital edition had the exact same specs games
will run the exact same way. There's no difference whatsoever between those two consoles, besides the fact that one of
them lacks an optical drive. Now, obviously I'm not out here trying to tell you to buy a PlayStation if you're watching your Series S video and you're about to click
the buy button on Amazon. What I do think it is
something to consider the price to performance on that Series S compared to the price to performance on the PS5 digital edition is pretty off the charts. Now it's a little bit weird
because we've never really had a console generation like this. Generally speaking, you
get the new console, it's great and then, especially
with the last generation you get an enhanced model later, right? But this time around, we're
starting right out the gate with the PS5 and the Series X which are really very
powerful very clearly on par with a lot of gaming PCs and then you have the Series S
which is certainly no slouch. It has all the base
features, you have the CPU, you have the SSD, but it is
significantly less powerful and it is certainly an outlier
going into this generation because while of course games will be supporting the Series S and the Series X and the PS5
for five, six, seven years. I don't think the Series S can get dropped or anything like that but your expectations have
to be a little bit lower. I do think Microsoft made
a lot of smart decisions with the S in sort of designing a console which can pretty much
run all the same games just at lower resolution which I think is a reasonable trade-off but it depends on what
kind of gamer you are. If you want to know about
the 4k 120 experience and you wanna really crank
everything to the max the Series S isn't for you. But if you were someone who maybe wants a secondary
console maybe you game on PC and you wanna be able to
play in the living room. Maybe you have a PS4, PS5 you want to try out Xbox Game Pass. Maybe you're just someone
who wants to take a look at next gen and play all these new games but you don't necessarily
care about 4k max out settings that I think is where the
Series S makes a ton of sense. It is certainly not as good of a console in raw power as something
like the Series X but ultimately, I wouldn't
be surprised if the Series S comes very close if not outsells the X. $300 I think is a really easy number to go cool, yeah, yeah whatever but that's a really
compelling price point. So recently on Twitter, I actually did a little
bit of a calculation on like looking at inflation and kind of the price of previous consoles compared to today and the Series S and
the, even the X and PS5 but specifically the
Series S is downright cheap compared to a lot of previous console which is a great thing. Usually you have to wait a few
years to get like a slim model for prices to come down,
but right out the gate looking at a $300 next gen
console, it is not for everyone but I think a lot of people
will be happy with the Series S as long as you have your
expectations in check. This is really an
evolution of the Xbox One not a replacement for the One X, thank you very much for watching, make sure to subscribe to the channel for lots more Xbox and PS5 content until next time I'm going
to go fit the Series S in my cabinet because it actually fits.
