Xbox Series X | S

[Kryptonian]

I don’t suppose anyone has bought Xbox hardware from Amazon and has a 40% off game pass code they don’t want that I could have?

 

Thanks

[Kayin Amoh]

I would if I could, but how does that stack up against the 'get 3 years of gold and convert to game pass' option? Thanks to good old Moosegrinder pointing me in the right direction I got three years of it for £120.

 

Beats paying £70 for Returnal, I'll tell you that much. 

[Lorfarius]

Did anyone buy a Series S? How are you finding it? I really want to get an X for game pass and the more I look at it I'm not convinced it's better than an S. Don't have a 4k TV and just want to play GP games.

 

Thinking I could get the expansion storage on top for the rrp of the X.

[Lorfarius]

Hmm nevermind. Just realised it won't do a big chunk of games at 120fps.

[koefoed]

Does anyone have a problem with games not updating automatically?

 

I have my Series X set to always keep my games updated but I still manually have to go into the update menu and do it manually.

 

Bit annoying if you want to play only to find out that there is a multi Gb update that needs to be downloaded and installed. 

[Kayin Amoh]

6 minutes ago, koefoed said:

Does anyone have a problem with games not updating automatically?

 

I have my Series X set to always keep my games updated but I still manually have to go into the update menu and do it manually.

 

Bit annoying if you want to play only to find out that there is a multi Gb update that needs to be downloaded and installed. 

 

Nope, works fine for me. Too well, even - it sucks up all my bandwidth while it's downloading game updates and I don't have the best internet around so everything slows down to a crawl while it's grabbing stuff.

 

Settings > System > Updates > Keep console and games up to date. Also ensure that your system's in rest mode as opposed to turning off.

 

This sounds like basic advice, but maybe something's switched itself off without you knowing. Also, apparently it won't auto update games that haven't been played in the last 30 days. Unsure if this is accurate, but I wanted to double check the above and ran across that.

[moosegrinder]

Yeah if you haven't played a game for a while it won't update 

[Hitcher]

5 hours ago, Lorfarius said:

Hmm nevermind. Just realised it won't do a big chunk of games at 120fps.

Does your non-4k TV even do 120fps? And is 120fps really that important to you when 60fps is perfectly fine?

[MattyP]

5 hours ago, Lorfarius said:

Did anyone buy a Series S? How are you finding it? I really want to get an X for game pass and the more I look at it I'm not convinced it's better than an S. Don't have a 4k TV and just want to play GP games.

 

Thinking I could get the expansion storage on top for the rrp of the X.

Well if your sure you'll never need the drive. An S plus expansion card doesn't really make sense TBH you may as well get an X as it works out at around the same price and you have more powerful hardware that is a little more future proofed.

 

Of course the S is a little easier to get hold off than the X. And you would have 1/2 TB more storage with the card over the X I guess.

[Lorfarius]

3 minutes ago, MattyP said:

Well if your sure you'll never need the drive. An S plus expansion card doesn't really make sense TBH you may as well get an X as it works out at around the same price and you have more powerful hardware that is a little more future proofed.

 

Of course the S is a little easier to get hold off than the X. And you would have 1/2 TB more storage with the card over the X I guess.

 

X isn't in stock anywhere and S is readily available. Can only get the X on eBay for close to £600 whilst the S is around £280 with 3 months game pass so diverted my attention! 

 

12 minutes ago, Hitcher said:

Does your non-4k TV even do 120fps? And is 120fps really that important to you when 60fps is perfectly fine?

 

Been watching/reading loads of stuff about how once you see games running at 120 there's no going back. Getting a bit like how it is now with PS4 games capable of doing 60 when they were locked to 30 before. Spider-Man for example ran like treacle when I played them side by side. If it's 4K only I might just order a 32" 4K monitor from Argos to replace the TV.

[moosegrinder]

120 isn't the upgrade that 60 is to 30. Also the S doesn't get the FPS boost fo some games. And any games that had a One X enhancement won't have that enhancement on the Series S.

[Lorfarius]

5 minutes ago, moosegrinder said:

120 isn't the upgrade that 60 is to 30. Also the S doesn't get the FPS boost fo some games. And any games that had a One X enhancement won't have that enhancement on the Series S.

 

I was looking at this, seems to be quite the difference which is what put me off. I could always get an X next year when supply becomes more readily available. It's just if I spend £600 now I just get a console but if I spend £480 I get a console and expansion. Don't think I'll have much use for the disc drive as I can always run stuff like that on my PS5.

[Hodge]

8 minutes ago, Lorfarius said:

 

X isn't in stock anywhere and S is readily available. Can only get the X on eBay for close to £600 whilst the S is around £280 with 3 months game pass so diverted my attention! 

 

 

Been watching/reading loads of stuff about how once you see games running at 120 there's no going back. Getting a bit like how it is now with PS4 games capable of doing 60 when they were locked to 30 before. Spider-Man for example ran like treacle when I played them side by side. If it's 4K only I might just order a 32" 4K monitor from Argos to replace the TV.

I brought myself a 55 LG oled last week which does 4k 120hz. After using my PC to experiment with all resolutions and frame rates. My conclusion is 4k ain't worth the hit in performance and not much better than 2k imo and I'm sat 1.5m away from TV. As for 120hz, it is smoother, but no where near the jump that 60fps is from 30fps. Was trying all these variations out on re village demo on pc yesterday and my preference after all the testing was 2k 60fps with ray tracing on. Which tbh my series S runs re village at 2k 60fps minus ray tracing. 

 

If your looking for a reason to splash out on a new monitor, yeah go series x. If your happy with 1080 go series S is my opinion. 

[AI]

23 minutes ago, Lorfarius said:

Been watching/reading loads of stuff about how once you see games running at 120 there's no going back.

 

The only reason 120fps games are feasible at the moment on Xbox Series is because nearly everything is cross-gen so there is power to spare. As this generation moves towards games running on Series consoles only, 30 and 60fps will probably be the only choices available. Plus 30 to 60fps is waaaaaayyy more noticeable than 60 to 120fps.

[Chooch]

8 minutes ago, Lorfarius said:

 

I was looking at this, seems to be quite the difference which is what put me off. I could always get an X next year when supply becomes more readily available. It's just if I spend £600 now I just get a console but if I spend £480 I get a console and expansion. Don't think I'll have much use for the disc drive as I can always run stuff like that on my PS5.

While the X is much harder to get, buying it for £600 or waiting until next year aren’t the only two options. You could have an X in a few weeks for RRP with a little bit of effort using stock trackers. 

[Lorfarius]

Just now, Chooch said:

While the X is much harder to get, buying it for £600 or waiting until next year aren’t the only two options. You could have an X in a few weeks with a little bit of effort using stock trackers. 

 

Nah I'm way too impatient for that 

[Mr. Gerbik]

6 hours ago, Lorfarius said:

Hmm nevermind. Just realised it won't do a big chunk of games at 120fps.

On a Series S, I think BC games will run in One S mode. You'll miss out on enhancements for OG and 360 games, but even worse One games will run in 900p or even lower in some cases. It depends on how important older games are for you - in my case, it was very important. 900p at 30FPS looks very crummy even on a 1080p set imho, and even though you wouldn't get 4k I thought the benefits of downsampling were pretty awesome on my old 1080p telly. 

 

And maybe you don't have a 4k telly now but what about in a year? Or two years? Those 2010 tellies won't last forever! And besides why not treat yourself after the shitty year we've all had. Go on

[daifuco]

5 minutes ago, Lorfarius said:

 

Nah I'm way too impatient for that 

 

THere is only one thing that made me sell my S to a forumite to get a X. Although the compatibility is being upgraded constantly by default you will play the XBOX ONE games as S on the series S, that means that you will play games under 1080p. Depending on the TV that might look kinda bad. 

 

But other than that it is an amazing machine and very well designed. I kinda miss mine. The X is a bit like a scary monolith in my room.

[Stanley]

 I’d say go for the Series S, you can always upgrade in the future. 

[Lorfarius]

I ended up flogging my last 4K TV  a few years back because I wasn't that impressed with it all. The films looked awful and I got bored with the games (ended up flogging my PS4 Pro at the time). These days I've moved the living room about as I'm at a desk on a Noble gaming chair, so my gaming TV is off to my left and my PC screen infront/to my right so I can turn to use either as I need. The days of a living room TV are well behind me as it's the old TV space has all been converted into retro gaming shelf storage.

 

My 27" PC monitor is 4K as I bought that in 2016 and compared to the gaming set one it looks miles better up close so I'm tempted to shift a slightly bigger/newer one in as I spend most of my time staring at it every day.  I don't mind reselling things later to get something better besides I suspect there will be a redesign of the X in the next few years so will probably do me fine then. Man I think my life is 75% gaming, waste far too much money on it 

[Lorfarius]

 

[Popo]

I agree with the consensus in the thread @Lorfarius. The S is without a doubt a sexy little piece of kit, and a very appealing price point. But no 4K, no 120fps, no disk drive, basically no ray tracing, 500GB storage, no boost mode, no One X enhancements… I mean, those first 2 wouldn’t bother me at all, but even discounting them, the X is a much better long term proposition. 
 

Buy S now and X later, when they become available, if you don’t have the patience - and I sympathise with you massively here, the Series consoles are fantastic! That’s if you ca afford it, or are willing to sell the S later. Maybe sign up to some stock alerts, they do come good eventually, and by all accounts the Xbox is more available than PS5 (though I appreciate that’ll come as cold comfort given your fruitless search so far).

 

You may not appreciate me saying this, but by far the biggest upgrade this generation, for me, was going OLED. Once you come to expect the greater depth and vibrancy of colours, it’s hard to go back. I even hate playing my Switch in handheld mode now!

[Hanzo the Razor]

I don't see the point in buying an S, flogging it then getting an X. Be patient and don't take second best.

[Lorfarius]

Found a pretty good breakdown video here. It's amazing what's packed into this thing for the price:

 

 

[Mr. Gerbik]

Get an X

[Stanley]

Yeah S is awesome, the power, the size, price etc. But it’s even more amazing what they packed into the X for £200 more. 

[Dudley]

Yeah the S is an astonishing machine but I suspect you would not be satisified.

[Hanzo the Razor]

24 minutes ago, Lorfarius said:

Found a pretty good breakdown video here. It's amazing what's packed into this thing for the price:

 

 

 

Just buy one then.

[Majora]

If you have a TV that can support all the features then get an X. If you don't have a TV that can support all the features and don't plan to for several years, get an S.

[Popo]

3 minutes ago, Majora said:

If you have a TV that can support all the features then get an X. If you don't have a TV that can support all the features and don't plan to for several years, get an S.

No! Get an X, then get the TV to unlock its full potential. 

 

I’d honestly argue that the X has enough benefits that, for an enthusiast, the S is ultimately pointless. You’ll get one and just end up dwelling on what it doesn’t do, rather than what it does.