Gadgetory

for over a decade Sony Microsoft have been fighting for console supremacy in nearly two years into the latest console cycle how did the Xbox one and PlayStation 4 stack up to kick things off let's take a look at the console hardware and here you'll see a big difference the ps4 has a smaller footprint while also being thinner which is no small feat take a look at the iFixit teardown and you'll see that the PlayStation is built more like a laptop compared to the distinctly desktop like Xbox one considering the red ring of death overheating issues to plug the 360 it's not a surprise that Microsoft played it a bit safe this generation but there's no getting around that the Xbox looks more like a VCR than a game console thankfully you can customize both with a skin from deep brand which I have on my consoles it's easy to get the exact look you want like two-tone carbon fiber or my personal favorite the 1981 edition ps4 look past the well looks and the consoles are surprisingly similar up front you'll find a slot loading blu-ray drive and power buttons on each and while they're perfectly usable I do prefer the bigger touch sensitive buttons on the Xbox compared to the smaller less accurate buttons on the PlayStation you'll find a pair of USB 3.0 ports on the front of the ps4 where the Xbox has one usb on the side along with two more around back you'll also find the power connector HDMI out optical audio HDMI n dedicated Kinect port IR blaster and Ethernet jack compare this to the ps4 and we've got the same HDMI optical audio ethernet and proprietary PlayStation camera port but the Xbox is the clear winner for this one the extra USB 3.0 is nice the IR blaster can be helpful for home theater setups and the HDMI IN allows the Xbox to control a cable or satellite box it also comes with dual band Wi-Fi compared to the single stream 2.4 gigahertz solution on the ps4 if you live in an area with a lot of Wi-Fi networks like I do the Xbox one does a much better job of pulling in a consistent signal or the ps4 has so many wireless issues I had to run an Ethernet cable for it it's not all good news for the Xbox though while both come with 500 gigabytes of capacity the ps4 officially supports swapping drives you can add a larger hard drive or go the SSD route to cut down on loading times what awesome but at least the Xbox one allows installing games on a USB Drive which the ps4 doesn't even though the Xbox is bigger it also needs a large external power supply where the PlayStation is able to make an internal power supply work making it quite a bit easier to fit into tighter setups something else to consider is that these consoles can put off some serious heat take a look at the Xbox one and it tops out around 41 degrees Celsius under a full gaming load which isn't too bad this is mostly thanks to the top half of the console venting the hot air move over to the ps4 and you'll see similar temps on top however most the exhaust happens in the rear and here we're reaching nearly 60 degrees this isn't dangerous but you'll want to make sure the ps4 has access to plenty of cool air put it in a crowded entertainment console and you could have issues dealing with all of that heat can result in a noisy console so next I ran Grand Theft Auto 5 on both the Xbox and PlayStation for 10 minutes and measured how loud they got while the Xbox one is barely audible the ps4 gets considerably louder during gaming this isn't much of an issue but the Xbox scores a clear win here next I measured power consumption for each console at idle while watching YouTube and playing GTA 5 here the Xbox makes the clean sweep consuming 30 less watts at idle and is still significant 16 fewer watts under gaming some of this gap has to do with the more power-hungry gddr5 memory inside the ps4 but Microsoft has done a good job of optimizing for less demanding use which is likely to make up most of the consoles lifespan sony has built a better looking console and more compact package with some serious power under the hood but Microsoft made a lot of good choices to make a quieter cooler console with more hardware features giving it the edge in this one that's not the whole story though want to know how the controller stack up how about the performance stay tuned this console war is just getting started