The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are very hard to find and the best time to buy them for the holidays was yesterday. If you can’t get your hands on one, consider a cheaper available alternative: the Xbox Series S, Microsoft’s entry-level option.
Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X consoles have been nearly impossible to buy since both consoles even hit store shelves in November 2020, and this Christmas shopping season will likely be the hardest in terms of finding game consoles in over a year. decade. We’ve got tips to help you get your hands on one. But if that doesn’t work, the Xbox Series S might be the most realistic way to get a new console this year. And it’s a good option – it will play almost all the same new games for years to come, with the same snappy user experience in a smaller package. Plus, it’s an excellent delivery system for what we believe to be the best deal in gaming right now: an Xbox Game Pass subscription. And at $300, it’s much cheaper than those other consoles.
How I learned to love the Series S
I moved across the country in August. I watched nervously as the movers loaded my TV and my Xbox Series X, my PlayStation 5, and my gaming PC into their truck. I kept an Xbox Series S with me, thinking I could use it for movies and apps for a few weeks while I waited for the movers to meet me in Brooklyn.
It took me about 40 days to get those things.
In the meantime, longing for video games to distract me from the absence of most of my earthly possessions, I succumbed and started playing the Series S. And I was surprised that it was the small console that could.
The Series S user experience is just as “next-gen” as the Series X and PS5, thanks in part to the fast NVMe SSD storage in the Series S. Games loaded very, very quickly on my Series S and the Xbox Series Quick Resume (which essentially brings phone-style quick app switching to games on the Series S) worked without issue. This cheaper console offered the same quality of life improvements as its more expensive counterparts, and from day to day that felt almost as important to me as anything else. And in keeping with Xbox’s big focus this year (and years to come), the Series S is a great way to experience Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass subscription service both now and in the future.
Xbox Game Pass includes hundreds of games that subscribers can download and play for a monthly fee. The roster includes older catalog titles as well as some high-profile new games, such as Fall’s Back 4 Blood as well as titles owned by Microsoft, such as Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5. The basic version of Xbox Game Pass is only on Xbox consoles and on PCs running Windows 10 and above, but Game Pass Ultimate includes both Xbox and PC titles and also offers remote access to some games via cloud streaming, meaning you can use a browser or even your phone.
I was also able to stream 4K content on the Series S on a borrowed TV, including rented movies and purchased content on storefronts like Apple’s, where I also got a portion of the new season of Ted Lasso. It would be hard to find faster, smoother options than the Series S as a multimedia box, and there are very few media apps that aren’t currently on Xbox Series consoles.
Series S compromises won’t bother most people
To be clear, the Xbox Series S is a compromise console and has some pros and cons. Priced at $300, it’s $200 less than the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5 with a disc drive, and it’s $100 less than the PS5 without a disc drive. It’s also small, weighing in at just under 8 pounds, a few pounds less than the Series X and just over half the weight of the PS5. Its size makes it even smaller than the Xbox One S or the original PlayStation 4. It’s also quiet. It’s a small, innocent, white box, with a black circle marking the device’s fan to add a little personality. It is so modest that you may not expect much from it.
If you’re a demanding player who is on the best possible console to play your games, the Series S is probably not for you. The Series S’s small size results in downscaled performance compared to its larger counterparts and competition. The Xbox Series S is graphically about a third as powerful as the Series X, but it has a comparable CPU and equally fast storage (although there is less of it – about half as much). That means games are less likely to reach “true” 4K resolution, instead often running in 1080p, just like on the Xbox One and PS4. Also, some advanced graphics effects, such as ray-tracing, are scaled back on the Series S.
But in most other ways, the Series S does everything the other new consoles do. The Series S still has capable graphics hardware. And there are great looking versions of games on the system, especially if you’re not gaming on a 4K TV or can’t tell the difference between 4K and 1080p. It has a very fast processor – only marginally slower than that of the Series X – which allows for games with higher frame rates than on the PS4 and Xbox One. That translates to games that play better and look nicer: Fortnite, can run at 120 frames per second on the Series S, for example, as well as on the Series X and PS5. And Xbox has rolled out the FPS Boost feature to more and more previous-generation titles, doubling their frame rates on the Series S and Series X, so the Xbox One games you might already own will often play even better on the Series S and Series X. the series s.
There is still stock available, if you don’t wait too long
The Series S was great in my situation, but it seems like a solid option for a number of other scenarios as well. It travels well, as it fits in just about any luggage or even a carry-on, along with a controller, power cord, and HDMI cable. And for me it was a lifeline for games. It treated Psychonauts 2 stunning at 60fps, and it did the same for the recently released Diablo 2: Resurrected and Aliens: Fireteam Elite. And the recent multiplayer beta for the coming Halo Infinite ran at double the standard frame rate of the Xbox One version of the game. None of these games were as sharp on a 4K TV as they were on a more powerful system, but they ran and looked good enough.
If you’re giving a gaming gift, the best gift isn’t the platonic ideal of a perfect, powerful gaming console — it’s the system that someone can play games on right now. And the Series S is more than enough to play great games for years to come. It will probably get harder to find as the holidays approach. But for now, you can find it quite regularly without much effort and without pulling your hair out.
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