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The Xbox Series S is small, for an Xbox

It’s smaller than a breadbox

By Maddy Myers@MIDImyers Oct 29, 2020, 3:58pm EDT

Graphic featuring six different photos of the Xbox-S with various household objects for size comparisons

Maddy Myers has run Polygon’s games section since 2020 as deputy editor. She has worked in games journalism since 2007, at Kotaku, The Mary Sue, and the Boston Phoenix.

Part of Xbox Series X: Everything you need to know

The Xbox Series S is the smallest Xbox that Microsoft has ever made. I now have one in my home. I can’t tell you anything about how it works yet. But I can tell you that it is small. Well, it’s small by Xbox standards.

I love the size and the look of the Series S. I don’t have any other next-generation console to compare it to, since I don’t have an Xbox Series X like my boss Chris Plante, and I don’t have a PlayStation 5 like my colleague Russ Frushtick, who has already been struggling to figure out where to put Sony’s huge device in his home.

Eventually, I will have to worry about where I’m going to put the PS5, and I’m not looking forward to it. But I have experienced no anxiety about where to put the Xbox Series S. It looks good wherever I put it. Like the PS5, it’s white and visually striking, but unlike the PS5, its few other visual accents make it both adorable and sleek. It has a big black circular fan on one of its flat sides and a black-and-white power button on an adjacent side panel. The Xbox Series S looks ready for Ascot opening day.

It is also, as I said, charmingly small.

But it’s not that small. It’s small for an Xbox, but it’s bigger than some of my other consoles. The Xbox Series S weighs 4.25 pounds, whereas the Nintendo Switch weighs less than a pound, even with Joy-Cons attached. Of course, Nintendo doesn’t make the same promises about performance that Microsoft has made for the Xbox Series S, but we’re not talking about what’s under the hood, here. We’re just talking about the object itself.

Correction (Nov. 2): A previous version of this story misstated the weight of the Xbox Series S.

Photo of an Xbox-S console and a Nintendo Switch

The Xbox Series S is 10.8 inches tall, 5.9 inches long, and 2.5 inches thick, which makes it look like it’s a part of the Wii and Wii U’s family. It is still the big one of this trio, though.

The Nintendo Wii U, the Xbox Series S, and the Nintendo Wii (left to right)

It positively towers over this figurine of Street Fighter’s Ken.

It’s even taller than my jumbo bottle of olive oil!

Photo of an Xbox-S console next to a bottle of olive oil on a kitchen shelf

Then again, the Xbox Series S is smaller than my cat Warren Worthington, who was hiding under the couch and did not want to participate in this photo shoot. (He weighs 11 pounds.)