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As far as connections are concerned, the rear of the Xbox One S is almost identical to the Xbox One: HDMI out, HDMI in, two USB ports, IR out, optical audio out and Ethernet.
The HDMI output has been upgraded from 1.4a to 2.0. The HDMI 1.4 standard is technically capable of supporting 4K, but only at 30Hz. Films and TV shows shown at 30Hz and will look choppy as hell and may give you a headache. HDMI 2.0 means the Xbox One S can output proper 4K at 60Hz.
The Kinect port has gone. This isn’t a deal-breaker for me. It’s a move that also doesn’t surprise me, considering the number of people I know who use the Kinect (none). Those who want to use a Kinect will also be able to connect the peripheral via USB with an adapter. Microsoft is currently giving them away to existing Kinect owners.
An IR blaster has been added to the front. That’s Microsoft’s way of increasing the Xbox One S’ multimedia capabilities.The IR blaster lets you set the Xbox One S to turn on other devices, such as your TV or home-cinema amplifier. It’s a nice idea, but I still found myself using the dedicated remotes as they’re less unpredictable.
The addition of a 2TB storage option is another welcome change. Any Xbox One owner will tell you that even a moderate game library demands plenty of space. And as such, I’d recommend serious gamers opt for the 2TB option over the smaller 500GB and 1TB configurations. At launch time, 2TB was the only option available, but now it’s a rarity.
On the inside, the One S’ specifications mirror those of the Xbox One. It’s powered by an equivalently specced eight-core AMD custom CPU, clocked at 1.75GHz and the same Radeon GPU with 1.23 TFLOPS peak shader throughput and 8GB of DDR3 RAM.
The chipset may be the same as before, but the GPU frequency has increased from 853MHz to 914MHz. This may allow for a minor improvement in performance, but Microsoft says it isn’t supposed to be a selling point. Instead, the extra power is there to handle the strain of HDR games.
