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There are three sensible answers in 2026, and the right one depends less on specifications than on what you play and who you play it with.

The PlayStation 5 is the machine to buy for single-player games. Its exclusive line-up is the strongest of the generation and the DualSense pad does things — adaptive triggers, fine haptics — that nothing else does. The Xbox Series X and Series S are the cheapest route into a large library, because Game Pass puts hundreds of games behind one monthly payment instead of behind a shelf of forty-pound purchases. The Nintendo Switch OLED is the only one that leaves the house, and the only place to play Nintendo's own games, which is a category no competitor can substitute for.

If budget is the deciding factor, the Xbox Series S is the least you can spend and still be on this generation: £279.99, all-digital, and small enough to sit under a monitor. If you own discs, or you are buying a 4K television to go with it, the Series X is the better long-term purchase and the gap narrows over a few years of game buying.

All eleven machines we hold are in the Consoles range, and the magazine's guide to the current generation works through the trade-offs at more length than a category page reasonably can.

Every console ships with one pad, which is enough right up until somebody else sits down.

A second controller is the most common thing our console customers add to an order, and the reason is usually local multiplayer — sports games, party games, anything four people can play on one sofa. Sony and Microsoft both sell spare pads in a wide range of colourways at around £59.99, and Nintendo's Joy-Con sets and Pro Controller sit either side of that. The second reason is charging: a pad that goes flat mid-session is a pad you cannot use, and swapping to a charged one beats sitting closer to the console on a short cable.

Above the first-party pads there is a tier of pro controllers — swappable sticks, back paddles, adjustable trigger stops, on-board profiles — from Nacon, PDP's Victrix range, Razer and Turtle Beach. They cost two to three times what a standard pad costs and they are aimed squarely at competitive play. Worth it if you play one game seriously; not worth it if you play ten games casually.

The Controllers range holds 98 of them across every platform, including fight sticks and racing wheels, and the magazine's Which Pad? guide compares the main ones side by side.

Headsets are the largest part of this range at 111 products, and the choice comes down to three things: how it connects, whether you need a microphone, and how long you wear it.

Wired headsets plug straight into the controller and cost the least. There is no battery to run flat, no pairing, and no added latency, which is why they remain the default in competitive play. A Turtle Beach Recon 70 at £30.99 is a perfectly good first headset and gives up very little.

Wireless splits in two. A 2.4GHz dongle gives a dedicated low-latency link and is what most console headsets use; Bluetooth is more convenient, works with a phone as well, and adds a delay you will notice in a shooter. Several headsets now do both and let you run game audio on the dongle and a call on Bluetooth at the same time.

Comfort is the thing people underrate. Weight, clamp force and whether the earpads breathe matter far more over a three-hour session than any specification on the box, and they are the hardest things to judge online — which is what the headset reviews in our magazine are for. Browse the full Headsets range when you have narrowed it down.

Accessories are where a console order quietly grows, and only a few of them earn their place on day one.

Storage comes first if you bought a digital console. A Series S holds 512GB before the system takes its share, and modern games are large; an expansion card or an external drive saves you deleting something every time you install something. On Xbox, Seagate's expansion cards are the officially supported route and behave exactly like internal storage.

Charging comes second. A dual dock keeps two pads topped up and gives them somewhere to live, which matters more than it sounds in a room that is also a living room. After that it is stands, carry cases for the Switch, longer cables and screen protectors — inexpensive items that each solve one specific annoyance.

What is rarely worth buying early is a second headset, a capture card, or anything sold as an upgrade to a part the console already has. The Console Accessories range holds 39 products and the genuinely useful ones are near the top.

We have sold console hardware since 2013.

Order before 2pm on a working day and it is dispatched the same day on an express tracked service, with the tracking number emailed as soon as the order is picked. The dispatch day is stated on every product page before you buy. Every order earns loyalty points, and the points an item earns are shown against it along with what they are worth. Clearpay is available at checkout if you would rather spread the cost over four payments.

If you are weighing two things against each other, our magazine has probably reviewed both — it has covered gaming for as long as the store has been open, and the reviews link straight back to the products. The common questions above cover the ones we are asked most often.