// ENGADGET — GAMING
What does the Xbox Series X have that the Playstation 5 Pro doesn't?
The Xbox Series X offers convenient features like Smart Delivery and Quick Resume.
The PS5 Pro is the most powerful games console you can buy right now, and that likely won't change for at least the next year or two. In terms of raw GPU specs, its clever built-in upscaling technology, and overall gameplay performance (even if the noticeable differences can often be negligible), the PS5 Pro has both the standard PS5 and the Xbox Series X|S beat.
But performance isn't everything, and if you're considering buying either a PS5 Pro or the flagship Xbox, you might be wondering what Microsoft's console's unique selling points are, if any. The most obvious starting point is that the Series X is cheaper, starting at $750 for the all-digital version. The PS5 Pro now costs a whopping $900 following Sony's price hike earlier this year.
But there are plenty of other factors to consider as well. Here are eight things the Xbox Series X has that the PlayStation 5 Pro doesn't.
The Xbox Series X has a lot of useful features that still impress more than six years after the console's launch, and one of those is Smart Delivery. What this basically does is ensure that when you buy a game for your Xbox you'll automatically receive the best available version for the hardware, in this case the Series X. Any features that have been added in updates, such as ray tracing or unlocked frame rate, will download automatically so you know you're always squeezing every drop of power from your console.
The PS5 Pro might be more powerful than the Xbox Series X, but Sony doesn't have a Smart Delivery equivalent, so when you download a game from your library to the PS5 you'll often have to choose between the PS4 and PS5 (if one exists) versions, rather than the console doing it for you. Sometimes, you may also encounter issues with picking up your old saves from a PS4 version of a game when you move, forcing you to manually download them from the cloud before the PS5 version recognizes it. Smart Delivery syncs your saves across console generations automatically.
This one is pretty simple. When the Xbox Series X and base PS5 first arrived back in 2020, a disc drive was still an expectation for consoles. While the PS5 also launched with the option of a discless model, the Series X was initially only available with a drive (a cheaper all-digital variant eventually arrived in 2024), so if you'd racked up a big physical library of Xbox One games or blu-ray movies, you could still use them without a hitch.
Although you can still add a disc drive for just shy of $80 on top of what you've already paid for the console, the PS5 Pro ditched the disc drive out of the box, rendering your physical PS5 games completely useless. Sony's recent decision to stop making disc-based PS5 games altogether in 2028 means it's unlikely that the PS6 will have one either, although the same probably goes for the next Xbox.
Quick Resume is arguably the most impressive Xbox Series X/S feature, even today. It's an SSD-leveraging magic trick that lets you suspend up to three current generation games (more if you're playing older games) in the background, so you can pick back up exactly where you left off almost instantly.
When a game is suspended using Quick Resume, it moves to the SSD, so you'll be able to return to the point you were at even after switching off or even unplugging the console. If you're the kind of impatient player who hates loading screens and being forced to sit through title sequences every time you boot up a game, it's a bit of a godsend. That is, if you mainly play single-player games. Live service games that constantly check for a connection tend not to play as nicely with the feature.