 The next generation of game consoles are so close I can almost taste it. 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 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 going to 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 1080p and 1440p gaming at up to 120 frames per second. It can be hooked up to a 4K TV and games will be upscaled, but I think of this 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, Oscar Tango Charlie, over and out. Now, this is obviously an Xbox Series S dummy unit, so I'm going to have to test the walkie-talkie feature properly and fully during a review. Psst, it isn't actually a walkie-talkie feature, it's just British sense of humour. Now, lame walkie-talkie jokes aside, this 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 HDMI 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 512GB of SSD storage. Faster storage and way better CPUs are going to 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 a 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 detach, so there's that. Unlike the smaller Series S, I think most people are going to have a hard time slotting this into their existing TV stands. It's definitely something you have to consider before you get one of 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 Blu-Ray drive. Microsoft is going all digital on the Xbox Series S, so that means if you like to buy your games on disk, or you 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 improve your existing games, but it's also going to be ushering in a new, 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 1TB 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 want to 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 whether the developers go and enhance these games to really take advantage of the SSD. 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 2. Now, let's check out Outer Worlds, which you'll see also benefits from the speed increases. Now, on the Xbox Series X, you'll notice that 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 Gbps uncompressed, compared to just 140 Mbps on the Xbox One X. That's why we're seeing these massive improvements and why 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. 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 kind of 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 on 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 5 seconds of swap time. This feature takes advantage of the SSD on the Xbox Series X and I was able to quickly swap between 5 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 by having run into times where games have frozen up or Quick Resume hasn't worked properly. This is a preview 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 don'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 going to 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 of 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 2. Here is Bungie Shooter running on the Xbox Series X. And overall, it feels just that bit much smoother. Beyond the obvious load time improvements for the game, even things like jumping into menus and changing your character loadout feel a lot faster 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, and even in public events in Destiny 2, the performance felt like it was just holding steady rather than the frame rates dipping like I've seen plenty of times on the Xbox One X version. These are pretty minor things to show you visually, but you just get this stuff automatically and it makes games feel better. Now, we'll be digging into a bunch more performance in games for the actual Xbox Series X review a lot closer to launch. This early look has been encouraging though, particularly for the load time improvements where game developers don't even need to touch their games. Games that support unlocked frame rates will see immediate benefits too. I'm now super interested in seeing games that are fully optimized for this console that eliminate load screens even further and deliver on some of the performance promises that Microsoft has committed to. And there's also Sony with the PlayStation 5 which is also arriving in November. Now, Sony's approach is slightly different to Microsoft with the Xbox Series X flexing its 12 teraflops of power and then the Series S the slightly smaller more affordable option which isn't as powerful. Sony's also doing two PlayStation 5 as well except the internals are all the same. It's just one doesn't have a disk drive and that makes it slightly more affordable as a result. I'm not going to put the PlayStation 5 up against the Xbox or even care who wins the next generation of gaming or anything like that. I'm just glad that these two consoles exist and that they're both pushing the boundaries of next generation gaming. It's super exciting to see what's going to happen over the next few years. And I truly believe that what's inside these next generation consoles, the improvements in the processors, the SSD storage and just the graphical improvements alone. I think all of that combined is truly going to be game changing. OK, thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed our real quick look at the Xbox Series X and the smaller Series S. Now it's getting a little bit dark in here, so I'm going to go and play some more Xbox Series X. I hope that doesn't make you too jealous. Sorry.