PlayStation 5 vs Xbox Series X

The PlayStation 5 has a futuristic design. It's made of white glossy plastic. When it's on, the LED lights emit a blue glow. You can place the console on the included stand both horizontally and vertically. When you put the PlayStation in an upright position, it's 35.8cm high, 9.6cm wide, and 21.6cm long.

The Xbox Series X has a more classic design. It's a black tower with a ventilation grid on top. You can see a green glow under this ventilation grid, but don't let it fool you. This isn't LED lighting, but painted plastic. You can place the console upright with the built-in stand. If you place it lying down, it rests on its rubber feet. You can't detach the base or feet. If you put the Xbox in upright position, it's 30.1cm high, 15.1cm wide, and 15.1cm long.

The PlayStation 5 has less processing power than the Xbox Series X. This is because the processor has a lower clock speed and fewer GPU cores. Sony and Microsoft both express processing power in teraflops. The PS5 has 10.28 TFLOPs. You can play games in 4K resolution at up to 120 fps.

The Xbox Series X is the most powerful console of this generation. It has the fastest processor and the most GPU cores. The processing power of the Xbox Series X is 12.15 TFLOPs. On the Xbox, you can also play games in 4K resolution at up to 120 fps.

Sony isn't shy about the SSD of the PS5 being so fast. With read speeds of up to 5.5GB/s, loading times are a thing of the past. With the PS4, you sometimes have to wait longer than 1 minute for the action to start. With the PS5, you're in the midst of battle right away. With games like Ratchet & Clank, you can switch between the different dimensions without loading screens. You won't waste any time waiting as you're in the game right away.

The SSD of the Xbox is also very fast with read speeds of up to 2.4GB/s. This keeps loading times at a minimum and games will load up to 4 times faster than on the Xbox One. The SSD is a little slower than that of the PlayStation 5 though.

With the PlayStation 5, Sony maintains the strategy of the previous generation by focusing on big, exclusive games. You can play games like Spider-Man and Demon's Souls, for example. With a PlayStation, you can also play games like God of War, Horizon Forbidden West, and Gran Turismo. You can only play these games on the PlayStation and not on the Xbox. The difference is that you buy the games separately from PlayStation and can't play via a Netflix-like subscription, which you can with Xbox. With PlayStation Plus, you'll receive free games each month. These are small games.

You can still buy individual games with Microsoft, but this generation console is focused on the Xbox Game Pass. This is a subscription similar to Netflix. You can play over 100 games for a fixed price per month and even stream them to your Android smartphone. In addition to playing games at home on your Xbox, you can also play games on your phone on the train. The Xbox has few exclusive games compared to the PlayStation. These are Halo or Elder Scrolls, for example. These games are included with the Game Pass. The Game Pass Ultimate even includes EA games and xCloud.

The DualSense controller of the PlayStation 5 has received many new functions compared to the PlayStation 4 controller. The main new functions are haptic feedback and triggers with resistance that adapt to games. In racing games, you can feel if the surface changes through vibrations and you'll feel counter pressure in your stick when someone blocks your attack in a fighting game. The disadvantage of these new functions is that you can't use PlayStation 4 controllers on the PS5.

Microsoft didn't bring many changes to the Xbox controller. Apart from a new share button that allows you to quickly post gameplay videos to social media, the controller is largely identical to the Xbox One controller. The advantage of this is that you can also use all your Xbox One controllers on the new Series X. This is useful if you have a few controllers lying around and like to play games with others on the couch.