How good are the Xbox Series S and Series X?

Even if it’s not a white Christmas, it looks like being a stay-indoors one, which is good news for the makers of the new generation of games consoles; less so for the parents and grandparents who will have to pay for them.
The new Xbox Series S and Series X consolesThe new Xbox Series S and Series X consoles
The new Xbox Series S and Series X consoles

The arrival in Britain of the latest Xbox consoles – the Series X and Series S – follows so many months of teasing that the expectancy among people who enjoy this sort of thing is almost palpable.

In gaming, finishing first means almost everything, and the arrival of the new boxes a couple of weeks ahead of the rival product from Sony, the PlayStation 5, has given their owner, Microsoft, a potential competitive advantage. But what will you get for your money, and is the upgrade a worthwhile investment?

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In a way, the question is redundant because the most dedicated gamers want to compete only on the latest games, and many of those will be incompatible with previous consoles. So if you find yourself being nagged for a new one this Christmas, good luck fighting your corner.

Exactly £200 separates the compact new Series S Xbox from the larger and more powerful Series X, which will set you back £449. Even so, the cheaper product is something of a behemoth, with around as much processing power as a PlayStation 4 Pro and the facility to run games in Quad HD resolution – which is more detailed than regular high definition but less so than 4K “ultra” HD – and at up to 120 frames per second, for lifelike movement.

The Series S will also let you watch movies from Netflix, Amazon, Disney and similar platforms in full 4K, assuming your TV supports it.

What it does not allow is the use of any of the old gaming discs, DVDs or Blu-rays your family may have built up over the years. There is no DVD drive at all, which means games must be downloaded over the internet. In this respect, the offering is similar to Google’s online-only Stadia platform.

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The Xbox Series X, on the other hand, has a built in optical drive which can read CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray and 4K UHD Blu-ray discs, and all previous Xbox games, save for those built originally for the discontinued Kinect motion-control system.

The Series X is by some way the most powerful device Xbox has made, with double the processing power of the current generation Xbox One X, which is a powerhouse in its own right. In fact, its innards are more closely aligned to a high-end gaming PC than to a console, with a graphics chip that can run games in full 4K resolution. Unlike a gaming computer, though, it remains cool and quiet in normal use.

The cost of owning one of these does not end with the purchase price. Consoles – or more precisely their owners – need feeding constantly, and an X-Box “game pass”, a library of 100 or more games for instant streaming, costs around £11 a month. Depending on how often the machine is used, this may work out cheaper than buying each new game when it’s released – or it may be a bottomless money pit.

In comparison, Stadia membership costs £9 a month, but because it uses your existing laptop, desktop PC, phone or tablet, there is no upfront cost. That makes it a better deal, but again it’s pointless telling that to a hard-core gamer who wants only the best visual experience possible.

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In that respect, the new Xboxes are streets ahead of Stadia, and their facility to rapidly launch and switch between games, and to display realistic lighting rather than cartoon-style effects, puts them in a class by themselves.

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