What to choose - PS5 or Xbox Series X/S? nextgen battle

Let's start with some technical information. Most likely you have already heard that the stuffing for the PS5 was made by Radeon, using a modified 3rd generation Ryzen processor and an RDNA 2 video core, which together allow the console to deliver 10.28 teraflops of overall performance. And all this for a price tag of $500. Go find it on PC. The console supports the now fashionable hardware ray tracing, but so far it puts the system on the fifth point and you can’t dream of any 60 FPS in 4K. The icing on the cake was almost the fastest SSD in history with transfer rates up to 5.5 GB / s. True, it will not last long, 825 GB by the standards of current AAA projects will fit a maximum of 5 - 6 games. Then we'll have to wait until Sony certifies SSDs from other companies and allows you to install an additional drive in an additional M.2 slot. So far, he is like a gopher from a DMB movie, we don’t see him, but he seems to be there. This version has a traditional disc drive, but if you don't need one, you can buy a digital version of the console without it for $100 less.

The appearance of the console is impressive. If not by design solutions, then at least by size. 39 cm high - go find a suitable cabinet that it will fit into. You can put it on its side on a small stand, but in this form it looks strange. The console is assembled with high quality, a barely noticeable texture with branded circles, triangles, squares and crosses is applied to the white plastic sides. The sides can be removed to clean the case from dust or install a new SSD. The attractive glossy black plastic base picks up fingerprints and dust instantly. Inside, all the iron is covered with a 100 mm fan with a huge two-section radiator on four heat-conducting pipes, and liquid metal is used instead of thermal paste. Despite the doubts of specialists, in new projects at 4K, the console behaved damn quietly and did not heat up above 54 ° C. The Xbox Series X is also very quiet, but gets hotter.

In fact, it will take a very long time to disassemble the console bit by bit, so let's quickly go over what we liked and what disappointed. I liked the microphones built into the gamepad for hands-free calls. They catch speech well and in the future will be used for voice control of the console or web search. I really liked the new adaptive triggers and Haptic Engine vibration motors, which add a whole new layer of sensations from interaction with the gamepad. And the Xbox actually has the same gamepad. It's great that when you turn on and start your account, the set-top box offers to transfer saves and installed games from PS4. The main menu has been cleared of a bunch of unnecessary information, becoming simpler and clearer.

I didn’t particularly like the advertised Tempest 3D Audio three-dimensional sound system. It was talked about a lot at the presentation, but so far it sounds like a Dolby Atmos or DTS:X smoker. Either Sony decided to save on licenses, or Tempest 3D Audio hasn't been finalized yet. Support for Bluetooth-sound is also not delivered, Sony is afraid of delays. Well, the vaunted SSD assembled by Japanese virgins is still losing to the Xbox Series X drive: 29 seconds for a cold start (20 - 25 for Xbox), 9 seconds to wake up from sleep (5 seconds for Xbox) and in general a slightly slower game loading. Although, these are already nit-picking, but against the backdrop of the previous generation, the new items impress with speed. It's too early to draw conclusions on games, the PS5 launch lineup is dominated by projects that are also available on PS4.

We will not pay much attention to the filling. As in the PS5, there is also hardware from AMD, but a little more powerful, which in the future may play into the hands of Microsoft. Unlike the competitor, the company abandoned the dynamic frequency and uses fixed numbers for both the processor and the video core. In the future, this is also a plus for performance, but until we have normal next-gen games, it will not be possible to check. But what caught my eye was how quickly the Xbox switched from game to menu, then back, and then to a new game. It looks like the idea to parallelize memory has worked, allocating fixed volumes for CPU and OS. True, the promised Quick Resume function for instantly switching between running games is still working crookedly. But the "regular" NVMe SSD in the box turned out to be somewhere 20 - 25% faster than the vaunted handmade SSD from Sony. Right now, the Xbox Series X turns on faster, shuts down faster, and loads games faster. On average, it takes no more than 15 seconds to start the game.

Series X is almost perfect in shape: clear edges, right angles, no bevels. In fact, the box body is a stylish black refrigerator. Unlike the PS5, it flies into any interior, like Verka Serdyuchka at a neighbor's wedding. And this is great, there is a place for it on the table, and under the table, and on the shelf, since the case can be placed vertically and put on its side. Too bad the matte plastic leaves behind any corduroy pants, I swear by the Greek gods, it's worth wiping the prints off the sidewall and going to the bathroom to wet the rag to come back and find them again in the same place. Pure mysticism.

In addition to its direct gaming tasks, Xbox can do much more. The local store has a variety of popular streaming apps, movie theaters, and music platforms. It is possible to play movies from Blu-Ray 4K, as well as open almost any video format from external media. Moreover, any permissions are given to her, even 8K. For lovers of pirated content, a workaround was left in the form of a Kodi media center, to which you can tie up torrents and playlists for IPTV. In general, it turned out to be a pretty good alternative to the smart functions of the TV. If you add here the Xbox Game Pass service, which has all the games for PC and past boxes, we have a strong feeling that this is not so much a nextgen, but a cool and stylish PC with its own operating system and powerful hardware, which, if you assemble a computer yourself, will cost you 2-3 times more expensive.

Following the Xbox Series X, we got our hands on the new generation of Microsoft's junior console, which caused so much controversy on the network. With next-gen gaming on the horizon, the lower-end Xbox Series S seems like a great option for gamers who haven't got an expensive 4K OLED TV and aren't keen on paying extra for a disc drive and more powerful hardware. The budget console is capable of delivering a maximum resolution of 1440p, while all projects of the so-called "starter line" like Gears 5 are optimized for the Series S and usually take up 20-30% less disk space. This will allow us to hope that in the future, with the advent of really cool and beautiful projects, the console will not lose its relevance. Roughly speaking, it will be like now with a competitor - they take the usual PS4 for FullHD, PS4 Pro for 4K.

But what do we see now? Gears 5 does indeed run at 1440p and 60 FPS, however dynamic scaling is used which makes it hard to judge the actual resolution. Other popular Microsoft titles, Forza Horizon 4 and Sea of Thieves only support Full HD. At the same time, Ori and the Will of the Wisps and Touryst run at 4K/60 FPS like on the older console. And Watch Dogs: Legion even has ray tracing, but the quality of textures and shadows has been significantly reduced. It seems that the quality of games on the Xbox Series S will depend on the degree of developer interest.

Perhaps, Microsoft chose the price tag and design as the main points of pressure on the buyer. $300 bucks for a pandemic versus $500 for regular boxing is a serious claim to success. In addition, it was the Xbox Series S that turned out to be the most beautiful among all nextgen. If the curling iron looks like a heater from the starship Enterprise, and the Xbox X looks like a refrigerator, the younger Xbox S resembles an old vintage radio. A thin, light and small white box, in the center of which a grid of black "speakers" flaunts. Only it is not music that flows out of it, but excess heat from the cooling system. Throw in the cheapness of an Xbox GamePass subscription and you've got an perfect option, not for avid gamers, but for people who sometimes want to launch a new high-profile toy and pass a couple of evenings behind it.