The Best Game Consoles for Every Type of Player (2024)

When you’re spending hundreds of dollars for a new gaming console, you want the best you can get. Which is good news: The current crop of consoles are all excellent—and excellent for different reasons. Whether you’re hoping to plop an Xbox or PlayStation in front of your TV or bring a Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck on your daily commute, this cheat sheet will help you pick a winner.

It’s impossible to describe a single console as the best overall because the one that makes the most sense for you might not be the best console for others. “I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all answer to what’s the best gaming console,” says Shannon Liao, the deputy gaming editor at technology and culture site Inverse who has also written about videogames at the Washington Post, CNN and the Verge. “It’ll heavily depend on the person’s experience playing videogames and preferences for what genres they enjoy.”

Should you get a Microsoft Xbox or a Sony PlayStation for your living room?

If you want to settle in on the couch and fire up the most graphically demanding and system-taxing titles on a giant TV, you’ll be choosing between Microsoft’s Xbox or Sony’s PlayStation. Right now, your options are the Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S or PlayStation 5. Many of today’s most critically acclaimed games can be found on both systems, but each console will have exclusive titles that could sweeten the case for one or the other.

For Xbox, that includes the popular “Halo” and “Gears of War” franchises, as well as the upcoming fourth game in the “Fable” series, “The Outer Worlds 2” and “The Elder Scrolls VI” sequels. On PlayStation, you get games like “Marvel’s Spider-Man 2,” in addition to the “God of War,” “Horizon” and “The Last of Us” franchises.

“The most important thing to decide on are the games themselves,” says Stephen Totilo, founder of the Game File newsletter, former gaming reporter at Axios and former editor in chief of Kotaku.

He notes that game publisher exclusivity is evolving: “The big catch there is that Microsoft is beginning to test releasing some of its games on PlayStation or [Nintendo] Switch. Not a ton, and nothing brand new, but it’s a thing.”

Both Xbox and PlayStation consoles grant you access to each console makers’ respective subscription gaming services—think Netflix, but games instead of movies. If you’re looking to pay a monthly fee to access a plethora of games, in addition to (or rather than) buying them piecemeal, there’s a clear winner: Xbox.

“Xbox Game Pass is the best offering, with hundreds of games offered as part of a monthly subscription, along with new releases from Xbox’s own studios, day and date—the catch being that Xbox has not been generating as many great games as its competitors’ studios,” Totilo says. “PlayStation’s PS Plus service is also worth a look, though it doesn’t have Game Pass’s depth. You could conceivably buy a Series S (or X) with a Game Pass sub, never buy a game outright and be pretty satisfied.”

It’s also worth considering your friends’ console preferences. A number of popular multiplayer games support cross-play, or the ability to party up with (or get shot by) gamers across different consoles, even desktop PCs. But it’ll be easier to meet up with your friends, create group chats and teams and compare accomplishments if you’re all gaming on the same platform.

The Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 are neck-and-neck for graphical quality and raw performance. You might experience slightly faster game- or level-loading times on one versus the other from game to game, but most people wouldn’t notice a difference in how games look and feel. Both consoles can output at up to 120-hertz refresh rates, which many recent TVs support. This means the image refreshes 120 times a second for buttery-smooth gameplay, but each console makes graphical concessions to get there. The Xbox models have a slight advantage in that they support both Dolby Atmos audio and Dolby Vision out of the box, providing for a cinematic experience with immersive audio and more vibrant colors, whereas the PlayStation 5 gets a version of Dolby Atmos from a software update, but no Dolby Vision.

Note that new versions of the PlayStation and Xbox could be announced as soon as June 2024, but if you’re looking to play now, the current consoles are excellent products.

The Xbox Series X versus the Xbox Series S

The Xbox Series X is Microsoft’s flagship console and our main Xbox recommendation. For $500, you get a console that’s powerful enough to output a 4K picture without issue, along with a built-in Blu-ray drive for physical games and 4K UHD movies. The console itself is huge—nearly a foot tall with a 6-inch-square base—but the games look much better than on the smaller, less-powerful Xbox Series S.

That said, if you don’t have a 4K television (most larger TVs are 4K, and two-thirds of Americans own one), and don’t care about buying games on discs, the $350 Xbox Series S with one terabyte of storage is a fine alternative—the extra storage is the same as found on the Series X worth the premium over the entry-level, $300 Series S). In a perfect world, the Xbox Series S can do everything else the Series X can do, including 120-hertz gaming, Dolby Atmos and Vision and full access to Xbox Game Pass. However, you may find that some games are locked to 30 frames-per-second instead of the smoother 60-plus frames-per-second that the Series X can dish out, especially older titles that are backwards-compatible with Microsoft’s latest Xboxes.

The Series S has one unexpected advantage over the Series X: vacation or business travel.

“The sleeper choice for portability is the Xbox Series S, a lower-cost current-gen Xbox that’s barely larger than a bestselling hardcover novel,” Totilo says. It’s roughly the same width, but an inch shorter and less than half the thickness. “The Series S can’t be played when disconnected from a TV, but it’s very easy to toss it in a bag and take it on a trip to some other home or hotel that has a TV.”

Which version of the PlayStation 5 is best?

This one’s easy. The PlayStation 5 Slim and PlayStation 5 Slim Digital Edition are exactly the same, minus one detail: The former has a built-in, 4K UHD Blu-ray player and costs $50 more as a result. It’s worth the cost.

“Having a disc drive on the console is just nice to have, in case you do get some physical copies and want to quickly start a game up,” says Liao, who notes the PlayStation 5 is the only DVD player in her home. “That being said, if you don’t care about collecting any physical copies or if you lack physical storage space, you can find every game online anyway.”

Should you get a Nintendo Switch or a Valve Steam Deck?

Though you can connect Nintendo’s Switch and Valve’s Steam Deck to your TV, both consoles are designed just as much for your backpack as your living room. The screens and controls—detachable, in the Switch’s case—are built directly into each hand-held console, giving you a few hours’ of battery-powered fun.

If you were to just consider specs, the Steam Deck is the superior console by a long shot. Though it costs about $200 more, Valve’s console lets you play more graphically-demanding games that Nintendo’s Switch would never be able to run (or really struggles with). On the flip side, the Switch is the only place to play Nintendo’s first-party (and generally family-friendly) games, including anything with “Mario” in the title—“Mario Kart 8,” “Mario Party Superstars” and more—as well as the “Pokémon” and “Zelda” franchises.

The Steam deck comes with at least eight times the storage space of the Switch; a slightly larger, higher-resolution display; 50% higher maximum frame rates; faster Wi-Fi; and can output a 4K, 120-hertz image to a connected television (versus the Switch’s 60 hertz at 1080p). Its large size rides the fine line between portable and pain-in-the-butt when you’re lugging it around town, but that’s the Steam Deck’s only true annoyance.

The sheer number of games you can access via Valve’s Steam store is the Bowser to Nintendo’s Shy Guy—much larger and a lot more impressive. With a little know-how, you can even install other gaming services to download and play their titles (e.g. Epic’s Games Store or Blizzard’s Battle.net). The Steam Deck is incredibly customizable, from its look and feel, to its controller setups, to its power settings and graphical capabilities. Nintendo’s Switch is a much simpler experience—but that’s not necessarily bad.” The Switch is an extremely accessible all-ages machine that’s built up a wonderful library of games, but it’s an awkward recommendation for anyone who wants something new and hot that shows off the cutting edge of tech,” says Nadia Oxford, a freelance journalist who has covered console gaming for more than a decade. “There’s been some notable migration to the Steam Deck as a more powerful Switch alternative, but it’s not a great choice for someone who appreciates games on a more casual level. Or someone who just wants to play Nintendo games, of course.”

Which Steam Deck is the best for gaming?

Valve’s Steam Deck comes in two different configurations, centered on the type of display it uses: an LCD version and an OLED version. The lowest-price OLED Steam Deck costs $150 more than Valve’s single LCD model, but you get a gorgeous screen that’s 0.4 inches larger and can max out at an extra 30 frames per second. The OLED version also supports Wi-Fi 6E, a bigger battery that gives you anywhere from an extra hour to four hours of gameplay.

The vibrant colors and rich, true blacks that you get from the Steam Deck’s OLED model are its biggest selling point. The display is perfect to pair alongside all the graphically demanding AAA titles the Steam Deck can handle, giving you an experience you won’t want to downgrade once you’ve tried it out.

Which Nintendo Switch is the best for gaming?

Nintendo’s Switch console is also split into three versions with two different screen technologies—LCD and OLED—but there are fewer critical differences between them. The OLED version has a slightly larger screen than the standard by almost an inch, as well as double the internal storage (64 gigabytes). And the Switch OLED’s docking station, used to connect to your TV and charge the console, has an Ethernet port for speedier downloads if your wireless network isn’t great.

Otherwise, the handhelds are the exact same for overall performance and capabilities. The OLED version isn’t any speedier, nor do you get any extra battery life, just a much better display. So much so, it’s absolutely worth the extra $50 you’ll pay for it unless you’re only planning to park your Switch in its dock and play games using your TV’s screen.For ultimate portability (on a smaller screen), or if you have kids each demanding their own console, consider the Switch Lite, a lower-price model that’s designed to be used on the go, rather than docked to a TV.