Recently Sony released a teardown video of the PS5, giving us an incredibly detailed look at the console and all the hardware that makes it work.
It’s going to take a lot of time to digest the information that was revealed in that video, though for now plenty of key points have already been uncovered. The latest of note is the fact that the PS5 has noticeably faster Wi-Fi and USB ports than the Xbox Series X.
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As spotted by VG247, the PS5’s hardware had a number of key surprises that helps surpass the hardware inside the Xbox Series X. The first is that each PS5 is equipped by a Wi-Fi 6 antenna, meaning the console can connect to the next-gen network and benefit from faster and more consistent speeds - even when there are a lot of other wireless devices connected to the network.
Wi-Fi 6 hardware is currently still rather expensive. But given the fact this current console is likely to last at least several years, it’s a good way to future-proof current PS5 hardware. Especially since the Xbox Series X still has a Wi-Fi 5 chip. It’ll help keep costs down, but then you get none of the benefits of Wi-Fi 6 should you ever upgrade your home network.
The other point of note is that the PS5’s USB ports are pretty darn fast. The front USB-C and rear USB 3.0 ports (the blue ones) are SuperSpeed rated, and can offer speeds of up to 10 Gbps. The front USB 2.0 port is only rated for ‘HiSpeed’, which is limited to 480 Mbps. The Xbox Series X doesn’t have any USB-C ports, while the rest of its USB 3.1 Type-A ports can only offer 5 Gbps.
That said the prospect of having slower USB ports isn’t really going to be that big a deal. Neither the PS5 or Xbox Series X will you play next-gen games built for the consoles from USB storage - backwards compatible Xbox games should work, however - so there aren’t going to be very many times when you’ll need a high bandwidth USB port, let alone three.
Are these differences going to make much difference to you? Unlikely, but it does mean that the PS5 has some level of hardware superiority. Or at least it does in the case of its wireless and wired connectivity, and that’s going to serve it better as we get a few years on from release day.
