 About every year and a half, PC gamers are used to getting a whole new generation of graphics cards with noticeably better performance that they can easily slot into their existing system for a quick upgrade. Console fans, though, are usually forced to wait long periods for a new generation of tech. For example, it was eight freaking years between the release date of the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One. So to alleviate this problem somewhat, console makers have been releasing incremental updates to existing platforms, just like the new Xbox One S from Microsoft. With improved performance and functionality beyond just being smaller, can it trade blows with a modern gaming PC? Let's find out. The Xbox One S Massdrop is featuring the AKG K553 ProStudio headphones featuring over-ear closed-back construction. Check them out in the link in the description down below. With past console generations, refreshes of the same platform usually took the form of adding enhanced connectivity, such as Wi-Fi and some additional storage space. But the Xbox One S has taken a bit of a different approach to console redesign. Although there is now a 2TB option doubling the capacity of the previous largest Xbox One model, the other improvements are quite a bit more interesting. Not only is the Xbox One S 40% smaller than the original behemoth, Microsoft also ditched the massive external power brick in favor for an internal power supply. You now only need to use one rather small power cord to plug it into the wall. Despite this, the One S remains surprisingly light and easy enough to move around when you need to, so points to Microsoft for that. The standard edition comes in a white color scheme with black trim, which in my opinion is pretty slick, especially compared to the original Xbox One, which some folks, myself included, said looked a little drab. In the box, you'll find an updated controller, which is very similar to the original, but with Bluetooth for connecting to PCs, some improved range, and a textured grip, so it won't go squirting out of your hand in a tense moment. Also, this new IR blaster, which can accept inputs for multiple devices, so you can control things like your TV. And one of the big selling points here is 4K support, which is completely absent from the original Xbox One. But there's a caveat. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this doesn't mean you can render games at 4K. If you want this, you'll have to wait for yet another Xbox update codenamed Project Scorpio, due in late 2017. What the Xbox One S does instead is upscale 1080p games to 4K, so the Xbox will play nicely with your 4K TV in your living room if you have one. But do note that your TV or monitor will need to be HDMI 2.0 compliant for this upscaling to work at all. But if you can live without true 4K gaming and are mainly interested in using 4K to watch movies and TV shows, the good news is that the Xbox One S can not only handle 4K streaming from services like Netflix, but also supports 4K Blu-ray discs natively, a very nice feature for home theater enthusiasts who want the superior sound quality of a physical disc and folks who don't have good enough internet connection to stream 4K. By comparison, the Xbox One S's closest competitor, the soon-to-be-released PlayStation 4 Pro, only supports HD Blu-ray. The One S also features HDR, or High Dynamic Range support, which will give you nicer colors and more realistic contrast if you have a TV that supports it. But what's going on inside? The internals are mostly the same, as you can see from these teardown photos from our friends over at iFixit, but one very interesting difference is the SoC has undergone a die shrink using a 16 nanometer process as opposed to the 28 present in the original Xbox One. This allows it to use less power, probably the reason Microsoft was able to fit the PSU inside the chassis, and to be clocked significantly faster. Indeed, the Xbox One S supports 914 MHz on the GPU, 61 more than the original model. And that leads into the $64,000 question, how well does it game? A common point made by PC gamers who eschew consoles is that even a mid-range GPU will easily outperform the latest consoles. So we put the Xbox One S up against the moderately priced AMD Radeon RX 470, as well as the more premium Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 to see how close the console can get to PC quality visuals in three different titles. The system we used with our RX 470 came in just at about $500 US dollars on PC part picker, while our more performance oriented GTX 1070 system came in at just a little bit under $1,250. Microsoft has been pushing pretty hard how the Xbox One S apparently functions very well during intense sequences in Gears of War 4. So let's start with that. Make sure you have the cog wheel on YouTube set to 1080p60 so that you can see the differences here. Now to Microsoft's credit, the game remained perfectly playable even during combat situations and the game looked quite nice overall. But it's rather easy to tell here that both our mid-range and higher end PCs ran the game a lot more smoothly, even on ultra settings. Our PC's GPUs also enabled slightly nicer looking textures across the board. Moving on to Forza Horizons 3, the results were rather similar. The RX 470 and the GTX 1070 gave us smoother gameplay as well as better detail on things like bodies of water and environmental elements such as the sides of these canyons. Draw distances also appeared to be quite a bit better on PC, although it must be noted that the problem was not removed entirely, just kind of moved back to a hopefully less focused on area. There was also less aliasing noticeable on things like guard rails and foliage. However, we did run into some stuttering issues on PC that we didn't have to deal with on the Xbox, which Microsoft should be addressing with a patch. But nevertheless, image quality was a bit better on PC with smoother gameplay even though we were running things on ultra settings. It's just unfortunate that we had yet another case of a less polished PC version of a game. Finally, Rise of the Tomb Raider. This game also looked actually quite good on the Xbox One S, though once again it was a lot less smooth than it was on either of our PC's GPUs, which were running the game at the very high preset. Although the Xbox One S came in a lot closer to matching our PC in the image quality department than either of the two previous games, there were still some noticeable differences on things like these vertical sheets of ice Lara Croft has to climb. Now moving on, unfortunately the Xbox's 4K output did not want to play nicely with our capture equipment, so we don't have footage for you. But what I can tell you is that the upscaling was quite good in all of our test titles. Although it still lagged behind PC in terms of smoothness of play and image quality, and in no way does this upscaling substitute for actual native 4K rendering, our game still looked pretty darn good without any significant slowdowns from the 1080p mode or etc. or excessive blurriness or any of that stuff. So if you happen to have a 4K TV, I definitely recommend enabling this feature and at least trying it out. Now this performance section may have come across rather negative to the One S, but put into perspective of price, it actually shouldn't. There are obvious and major trade-offs like the upgradability of a PC, the versatility of a keyboard and mouse for input, the expandability, the option to do other things, etc. etc. I'm sure you're all well versed in this. But despite all of that, and despite my preference definitely being on the PC side of things, getting for $300 US dollars 4K Blu-ray support, which is nearly impossible to find on PCs right now, and some actually pretty decent performance, was impressive. Personally, of course, I would choose a PC any day for a huge amount of reasons, like the agility of an SSD for the wide variety of tasks that I perform on a computer at a time, to actually being able to get work done in an optimal setting. But what do you choose? Let me know in the comments down below and try not to kill each other while you're at it. That would be wonderful. FreshBooks is excited to announce the launch of a new version of their cloud accounting software. It's been redesigned from the ground up and custom built for how you want to work. FreshBooks in general is a simple way to be more productive, organized and to get paid more quickly. You can create and send professional looking invoices in less than 30 seconds, and set up online payments with just a couple clicks and get paid up to four days faster. You can see when your client has seen your invoice and put an end to all the guessing games. For your unrestricted 30 day free trial, just go to freshbooks.com slash tech tips and enter Linus Tech Tips in the how did you hear about us section. Thanks for watching guys. If this video sucked, you know what to do. But if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit the like button or check out the link of where to buy stuff like an Xbox One S, but you'll probably end up buying PC components. That's also cool. Amazon link, video description down below. Also check out our merch store down there while you're down there. Go on the community forum, talk about this thing compared to PC. Also, again, try not to kill each other. We like actually have moderators over there and don't start a flame war. Just talk about the positives and negatives without getting mad at each other. Don't be a dick. Welcome to the internet. See you next time. Watch this video if you want to see our old school image comparison versus the original Xbox One. See ya.