Say the obvious thing first: nobody chooses a console on specifications. You choose the games, the friends you play with, and the subscription you already pay for. A hardware ranking cannot see any of that, and this one puts the Nintendo Switch 2 last while it is the console most households will enjoy most.
Read this as a description of the hardware, not as advice. Every figure below is the live computed Mars Score.
Joint highest: PlayStation 5 Pro and Xbox Series X 2TB
Both 81.0. The PS5 Pro is $699 with RDNA 3 at roughly 16.7 TFLOPS — the most graphics power here — 2 TB, VR support, and no disc drive (it is a separate accessory). The Xbox Series X 2TB is $599 with 12 TFLOPS, 2 TB and a disc drive included.
The Sony machine is faster; the Microsoft machine is $100 cheaper and plays physical media. That, plus which exclusives you want, is the whole comparison.
The sensible PlayStation: PS5 Slim and Digital Edition
Both 72.7, at $499 with a disc drive and $449 without. 10.3 TFLOPS, 16 GB, 1 TB, VR support, and the Digital Edition is 2.6 kg against the Slim's 3.2.
The $50 for a disc drive pays for itself in about three second-hand games. Buy the Slim unless you are certain you will never own a disc.
The launch PS5 (71.1, $499) is the same machine at 4.5 kg — the heaviest console here — with 825 GB rather than 1 TB. There is no reason to choose it over the Slim.
The cheap way in: Xbox Series S
Mars Score 66.6 at $349 for 1 TB, or 512 GB at $299 (62.2).
4 TFLOPS and 10 GB of RAM — a third of the Series X's graphics power — targeting 1440p rather than 4K, at 1.93 kg. With Game Pass it is the cheapest route to a modern library that exists, and the 512 GB model fills up almost immediately: pay the $50.
The handhelds: Lenovo Legion Go and ASUS ROG Ally X
63.3 at $699 and 63.2 at $799. Both run a Ryzen Z1 Extreme at about 8.6 TFLOPS — more graphics power than a PS5 Slim, in a device you hold.
The Legion Go has a 1600p screen at 144 Hz and detachable controllers; the ROG Ally X has 1080p at 120 Hz but 24 GB of RAM, the most in this top ten, 1 TB of storage, and weighs 678 g against 854 g.
They rank low because they have no HDMI output — recorded as zero, which is accurate, not missing — and because the model reads a small screen as a limitation. What they are is a Windows PC that plays your existing Steam library on a train.
Last place, and the one to buy: Nintendo Switch 2
Mars Score 60.9 at $449. About 3.1 TFLOPS docked — the least graphics power on this page by a wide margin — 12 GB of RAM, 256 GB of storage, and 535 g, the lightest device here.
It docks to a TV at 4K, undocks to a handheld, plays Nintendo's games, and none of those facts appear in a TFLOPS figure. Our model ranks hardware; this console's argument is that it is the only place to play Mario, Zelda and Smash, and that it is the console people actually use together in a room.
Who should buy it: families, and anyone who wants the games only Nintendo makes. Which is most people, which is why it outsells everything above it.
How to choose, in four questions
- Which exclusives do you want? This decides it. Everything below is a tiebreak.
- Subscription maths. Game Pass makes the Series S the cheapest large library in gaming; PlayStation's exclusives are bought individually.
- Discs or not. A $50 difference, and second-hand games cost half of new ones.
- Storage fills faster than you expect. 256 GB (Switch 2) and 512 GB models hold about four modern games. All of these expand; budget for it.
All consoles in the catalog are ranked on the game consoles page, and the full dataset behind these scores is open data.
Turn this reading into a better product decision
This buying guide is a decision framework, not a substitute for checking the exact variant, regional price, availability, and warranty that apply to you. Use the linked catalog data to separate published facts from personal priorities, then compare the final shortlist directly rather than relying on a generic ranking.
Verify the fit
Open the Game Consoles category page to filter the relevant field, then inspect full product profiles and the score methodology.
Keep the recommendation current
This article references 10 catalog products; use the live product pages for current specifications and comparison links.
vsMars keeps editorial judgment, normalized Mars Score inputs, and affiliate links separate. If a detail is missing or out of date, report it so the catalog and this article can be corrected.