I can almost taste it.

(upbeat music)

Okay, maybe not that close,

but the Xbox Series X and the Xbox Series S

are both arriving on November 10th.

This tiny, dinky little Xbox Series S

is priced at $299

and the larger, more powerful Xbox Series X

comes in at $499.

This is our first look at both of these next-gen consoles.

Okay, so quick caveat.

Microsoft has supplied a preview version

of the Xbox Series X hardware.

So that means I can't show you everything.

There's a few things I can show you

like you know the load times

and just some of the new features as well.

Now before we get into the software side,

let's check out the hardware real quick.

I'm just gonna say this straight up.

I love the look of the little Xbox Series S.

Unlike the larger Xbox Series X,

the Series S is designed for 10 ATP and 1440p gaming

up to 120 frames per second.

It can be hooked up to 4K TV and games will be upscaled,

but I think of the smaller Xbox as the Fortnite console

you might have in a bedroom.

Now, I know what you're thinking.

What is this giant black circular thing?

Well, the Xbox Series S can also be used as a walkie talkie.

(screech) Oscar tango, Charlie, (screech)

over and out. (screech)

Now, this is obviously an Xbox Series S dummy unit.

So I'm gonna have to test the walkie talkie feature properly

and fully during the review.

Psst, it isn't actually a walkie talkie feature.

It's just British sense of humor.

Now, laying walkie talkie jokes aside,

the speaker-like grill on the top of the Series S

is actually used for ventilation.

It helps this tiny console stay cool.

You'll also find ventilation at the sides

and at the rear, there's an ethernet port, two USB ports,

a HD UMI 2.1 port, the power connector

and an expandable storage slot to increase the 512 storage

that comes built in.

You can position the Xbox Series S vertically

or lay it flat horizontally.

And I think the Xbox logo at the front

shows you that this is clearly designed to lay flat.

And that's probably a good thing because this should fit

in most TV stands.

As we don't have a fully working Xbox Series S unit,

I'll leave impressions to a full review,

but Microsoft has promised that Xbox Series X games

will run well on this smaller, less powerful console.

It uses the same CPU found on the larger Xbox Series X

clocked slightly slower and with 512 gig of SSD storage.

Faster storage and way better CPUs are gonna be the key

for this next generation of gaming.

So I think the Xbox Series S

could be a really interesting option.

If you don't own a 4K TV,

you don't really care about 4K gaming

and you just want a cheap entry point

into next gen console gaming.

Now, the Xbox Series X is the complete opposite

of the tiny console.

It stands proud vertically like some kind of monolith.

If you can hear me in there,

please, please give me 120 frames a second.

There's a funky green effect on top,

and no, it's not actually an LED.

It's where the fan sits to push out the warm air.

Microsoft promises up to 120 frames per second for 4K gaming

with ray tracing

and a lot of architectural changes under the hood.

It's clearly designed to sit vertically

even from the basics of the logo at the front,

to the fact that it looks a little awkward and large

on its side.

The base also doesn't attach.

So there's that.

Unlike the smaller Series S,

I think most people are gonna have a hard time

slotting this into their existing TV stands.

It's definitely something you have to consider

before you get one these in your living room.

It's also a massive fingerprint magnet

and my unit already has plenty of smudges.

The port selection on the Xbox Series X

is identical to the S

but a big difference is the Series X

has a 4K Blue-ray drive.

Microsoft is going all digital on the Xbox Series S.

So that means if you'd like to buy your games on disc,

or you'd like to share them with your friends,

then the Xbox Series X is the obvious choice here.

Now, all of this hardware

is designed to obviously improve your existing games

but it's also gonna be ushering in a new

sort of next generation of games

that can really take advantage of this new console hardware.

So there's obviously the faster storage, the better CPUs

and the graphical power that should introduce stuff

like ray tracing into the mainstream.

Both consoles will also come

with an updated Xbox controller.

The key differences are USB-C, a new share button

and an updated D-pad.

You'll still need to use AA batteries

or purchase a rechargeable play-and-charge kit separately

for 24 99.

There's also one terabyte expandable storage cards

to increase storage capacity.

These are priced at $219

which is kind of pricey for storage

but you will need them

if you wanna play games that are enhanced

for the Xbox Series X or S consoles.

Now, you can of course grab some cheaper USB storage

and store your games on there,

but you will need to copy across these enhanced ones

to the console, when you want to actually play them.

But you should be able to play

a bunch of older Xbox One games from the USB storage.

It just really depends where the developers go

and enhance these games

to really take advantage of the SSD.

(upbeat music)

Now, speaking of older games,

I've been testing a bunch of backward compatible games

over the past week

and it's fair to say the Xbox Series X improves all of them,

even though game developers haven't enhanced them

for this new console just yet.

Load times are incredibly good in most games now.

Let's check out Warframe to show you what I mean.

Warframe loads in around 30 seconds on the Xbox Series X

while on the older One X, it takes about a minute longer.

Now I'm not going to force you

to watch too many tedious load screens with me

but doing these comparisons really highlighted

just how long it takes for the current Xbox One X

to load games.

I could press A, go grab a coffee,

come back and still have time to read an email

before some games load.

It's encouraging that we're seeing big improvements

without developers even touching games

and really taking advantage of the SSD in the Xbox Series X.

These speed improvements are obvious in most games

and I've noticed them in pretty much every single game

I've been testing over the past week,

whether that's Assassin's Creed Odyssey, No Man's Sky

or Red Dead Redemption Two.

Now, let's check out our two worlds

which you'll see also benefits from the speed increases.

Now on the Xbox Series X,

you'll notice the outer worlds

loads in around about 10 seconds

but on the older Xbox One X,

I have enough time to tell you

that this new Xbox has an SSD that transfers data

at 2.4 gigabits per second uncompressed,

compared to just 140 megabits per second on the Xbox One X.

That's why we're seeing these massive improvements.

And while you had to wait minutes

for some games to load on the current gen consoles.

and now the Xbox One's ancient hard drive

has stopped spinning and finally loaded.

Congratulations on your second place there buddy.

Now, I could show you a bunch more comparisons

but I think you get the point.

I'm now really looking forward

to seeing what game developers can do

to really take advantage of the SSD.

(dramatic music)

Another advantage of the power inside the Xbox Series X

is a new feature called Quick Resume.

The Xbox One had a similar feature

but it kinda didn't really work very well

and it just felt like most games didn't really support it.

It was hit-and-miss shall we say.

Now that is definitely not the case in the Xbox Series X.

As you can see, I'm able to quickly swap

between multiple games here

and they all individually resume

after around about five seconds of swap time.

This feature takes advantage of the SSD

on the X box Series X

and I was able to quickly swap between five games freely.

The limit will really depend

on what type of games you're playing.

It surprisingly still works

even when you power the console down

or you reboot it for updates

which means you can quickly continue where you left off

in a variety of games.

And that's pretty great.

If you're busy tackling a single player campaign game

and then your buddy invites you to play a multiplayer game,

you can just tap the Invite and not worry about save points.

When Quick Resume works, it works really well.

I have run into times where games are frozen up

or Quick Resume hasn't worked properly.

This is a preview on Xbox so,

I'm not going to judge it too harshly just yet

but not every game does support Quick Resume though.

So games like Sea of Thieves,

those big, massive online multiplayer games,

they didn't work with Quick Resume

and it kind of makes sense.

They're not the sort of single player campaign mode

where you quickly switch out and you just resume it later.

They'll carry on in the background

regardless of whether you're playing them or not.

Now games that do support it

will throw up a little Quick Resume at the top right,

So you know exactly when your game is coming back to life.

Since this is a preview Xbox Series X,

I'm not gonna delve too deep into performance just yet

especially as games haven't been fully optimized

for this new console.

We'll leave the side-by-side frame rate comparisons

to the excellent folks at Digital Foundry.

But what I will say is I'm really impressed

with just how speedy and smooth games feel.

It feels like I'm playing a typical Xbox

but one that's actually keeping up with how I want to play

with higher frame rates and smoother gameplay

and with way lower load times.

I wasn't able to test all the games I wanted to

on the Xbox Series X just yet,

simply because Microsoft is still testing

a bunch of these games to make sure they run well.

I was however able to play Destiny Two.

Here is bungee shooter running on the Xbox Series X

and overall, it feels just that bit much smoother.

The only obvious load time improvements for the game.

even things like jumping into menus

and changing your character load out

feel a lot on the Series X.

Just look at how long it takes the older Xbox One

to even load my character in a menu for comparison.

That's a few seconds just to get to the character screen.

The Xbox Series X improves these little experiences

you have in games