Is the S worth a look in?

Hey gang!

Earlier in the week, I posted asking about the possibility of buying an X in the UK, and I think the general consensus is that it's not gonna be in my hands for another few months, at best!

However, I am considering buying the S instead!

Now, the price is an obvious positive. Over £200 cheaper, and plays all the same games. If I remember what I read right, it still plays games in 1440p, which for me, is totally fine! In addition to these upsides, I don't think I can oversell how much of a good deal Game Pass is. Like £11 a month for an absolute ENORMOUS backlof of games, and if I remember E3 right, every single new first party game is coming to Game Pass day one. That is an incredible deal!

Now, the downsides. It's not necessarily an upgrade. I already have a PS4 Pro, and I'm not really sure how comparable the two are in power/graphical fidelity. In addition to this, the 512GB SSD isn't great. I also hate how there's no disc drive too, because I watch a lot of Blu-Rays/DVDS. Furthermore, it's a bit of a holdover console. I might one day want an X, but the cheapness is really hard to ignore

Help me out duders! If you have an S, or even an X, please let me know what your experiences are like with those consoles!

I believe the series S does 1440p and can upscale some things to 4K, but does not do native 4K. It also supports variable ray shading & ray tracing. The 512GB SSD for a digital only console does seem rough though.

Love my S as a game pass machine and things still look great on my Oled.

Coming from a launch Xbox One, the Series S has felt incredibly modern to me since the day I bought it (Day 1). I'm a 1080p TV owner with ZERO interest in upgrading to 4K whilst my current TV is still working, and a game pass subscriber. The S is all I need, and unless my TV breaks, will be all I need this generation.

Reasons for the upgrade:

Game Pass: it speaks for itself as you explain in the OP.

Quick Resume: Don't overlook this feature, it's wonderful and to this day feels truly next gen.

Size: Its small and cute if that's your thing. Shockingly small, and whisper quiet too.

If you play on a 4K TV, then graphically it may not feel like an upgrade from your PS4 Pro, but everything else about how snappy it is will.

I added an external 2TB SSD to my Series S to solve the storage issue. Some games need to be on the internal SSD to be played, but the majority of games (for now) will boot from the external, or you can transfer between the two which is quick.

I was all set to buy an S last year, but at the last minute I chickened out and bought an X. Didn't have a 4K TV at the time, but I knew it was just a matter of time.

If you're okay with digital-only or lower performance than the Series X, then go for it or otherwise if you're not too sure, so I personally suggest you should buy the Series X instead.

From watching some Digital Foundry videos, while the Series S is technically capable of outputting at 1440p, very few games actually do and there are already examples of games running at resolutions below 1080p. Overall, the machine seems pretty impressive for the price, but I just wanted to point out that caveat about the resolution if that's important to you.

As a side note, that probably doesn't factor in your decision - I truly love the design of the S. I stand mine up vertically (sits snug on a simple stand I picked up online), and to me it reminds me of something Dieter Rams may have designed for Braun.

I use it as a Game Pass machine on a 60Hz 1440p monitor and it's been nothing but a treat. 4K gaming wasn't a factor for me, and I'm not much of a pixel peeper, so I haven't noticed any cases of sub par resolutions.

One thing I will note is that storage is an issue; but not a problem if you are willing to run an external drive and swap out games.

For the price, performance, and goddamn size, the S is an impressive piece of hardware.

But, and I've beaten this drum before, I just can't see it being a good investment.

It's already quite a bit underpowered for what it's competing against - that means you're going to be getting a lot of 1080p games now and probably a fair number of 720p games in the future. These will output at 1440p, of course, and the Series S actually can output 4K, but internally they'll render at a lower resolution and just not look great. And run poorly. When I had a One S, anything I tried to play on it ran like hot garbage and I can't imagine a future where the Series S isn't in the same boat. Right now, it's mostly OK, but I wouldn't bank on that staying the case in the future.

But say I'm wrong and the Series S continues to be OK in the future as far as performance and quality goes. Or, say you never notice poor framerates and low resolution doesn't bother you. The Series S has a modern problem that I consider a killing blow to any recommendation I might give - its storage size. It's only got 512GB of storage. In an era where Call of Duty 2019 takes up 200GB on its own and several other games approach the 100GB or even 200GB mark, and in some cases surpass it, I cannot in good conscience tell anyone that a Series S is a good purchase. The 1TB expansion card to bring the Series S up to a reasonable level of storage is $200, which - here in the states - brings the total cost of the machine up to that of a Series X anyway, just to get to something that would be acceptable out of the box.

If you don’t have a 4K screen ABSOLUTELY get an S