Greetings! This is just going to be another "quick" video.
Not something I planned on doing, necessarily,
but I got one of the new Xbox 360s a few weeks ago
and apparently some viewers noticed that it was in my recent video of Astro Driller and asked my opinion on it.
So instead of sending annoying emails
or lengthy comments
I decided I would just do a really quick video and show
you
what's different.
And give you my opinion on whether or not the new 360 "S" is worth buying.
Or whether or not you should just stick with your regular 360,
or go ahead and get one of these now that they're super cheap.
Now obviously, the biggest difference between the two is going to be the look
of the thing
Uh, this one-- what they're calling the "360 S,"
is the 250GB model, the only one that's out right now.
Some places are calling them the "Elite," which I guess makes since because
it's black, which the Elites have always traditionally been black,
and it's the larger hard drive. Apparently, they're coming out with an "Arcade"
uh, version, that's gonna be, I think, 4GB here.
in a couple of months.
And this one right here, I got...
Oh, I don't know, I think it's a 2008 model.
20GB hard drive.
This is my second one that I've had. My first...
uh, 2007 model died. Red Ring of Death.
and I just transferred the hard drive over.
So, as far as sizing goes, really it's not any slimmer.
Uh, maybe a quarter of an inch. Let's call it the "short"
I suppose. They're actually...
y'know, it's a little bit smaller.
The biggest difference, though, as far as external design
would be the addition of this big
fan here on the side.
And it's, it's deadly quiet. We'll get to that here more in a minute.
Whereas, in the older 360,
you have some ventilation. It's kind of mostly on the side. I think there's one down here, too.
And then you have the hard drive up here on top.
The new 360 S has a hard drive here on the bottom. I think you just take this
bottom vent off.
There is a $20 transfer cable that you can get from Microsoft
to hook the old hard drive up to the new one.
And just transfer everything over that way, but it's a one time thing. So all I did was take a USB stick
and put everything on there through the memory manager thing
and then put it to my new one. Everything went fine. All my licenses were fine.
You'll also notice that there is now no
memory card slots.
The USB area is slightly different. Instead of horizontal, it's now vertical,
which kind of makes since because I like it.
And the new disc drive is not button-based.
Well, it is, but it has a capacitive touch sensitive button,
and also the power button is the same way.
On the back, most everything is the same.
Uh, you have ethernet here and here. HDMI...
Uh, USB slots, now there's three on the back instead of just one,
which is a nice addition, I suppose. Although I don't know why they didn't put them on the front.
You also now have the optical audio output already built into
the console itself, without having to use the one that's in that iffy component cable thing.
When the Kinect comes out this fall, the motion sensing peripheral,
you also now have a port for that right here on the new Xbox.
You could still use it on the older ones, you'll just need an external power supply to do so.
One big change, though, and this interesting. I don't really know why they did it.
The AC adapter port at the bottom of the console there. You'll notice the one on the right. The old 360 is sort of
more square shaped, and the new one has a circular end piece.
See, this here is the older style AC adapter that kind of looks like a--
off-brand LEGO brick.
And this is the new one,
which looks like an oversized PS3 end piece. Well, PS2/PS1, same thing as always. It's more...
rounded. I really have no idea why they changed this at all.
You can also see that the power supplies themselves
are different sizes. The newer one here
and the older one. So it's not quite as big of a brick any more. It still *is* a brick.
But,
I've noticed that it does seem to run a *little* bit cooler,
and that's really a huge, huge thing with these new ones.
Apparently, the power consumption on the newer 360 is something like a third or a half less, I don't know.
It depends on what your older 360 was. This one was already a slightly newer chipset.
So it was a little bit lower.
And I think this one uses, what, the 45 nanometer process, or something like that,
where it runs a whole lot less power and also a little bit cooler.
So, less chance of overheating, plus the new fan and ventilation setup should help that as well.
Also, while I've got this laying like this here,
you can see that the new 360 has a very nice piano black style glossiness.
A lot of people seem to be complaining about the fact that it's fingerprint prone.
Well, I don't know about you guys, but I don't touch my 360 very much.
I'm not one to violate my consoles at night,
or get it drunk and start feeling it up
in inconsiderate fashions.
I don't press the power button to turn it on.
I do like the nice etched logo that's in the new 360 as well, on the side.
It's the little things that count.
You can see a couple of fingerprints, maybe. Um, let's see...
[taps console]
Yeah. I mean, you can see fingerprints, but really it's the same exact frickin' thing with like every device now.
So I really don't see what the big deal is.
There's also a very minute change in the controllers.
Obviously, the new one is black, like the other Elites were,
but instead of the older, sort of nickel, brushed aluminum finish Dashboard button right here,
the new one has a nice chromey look to it.
You also have that nice cut-out logo saying "Xbox 360" there now,
instead of it saying "Microsoft."
The actual thing itself feels pretty much identical. The only thing tactile that I feel that's different
is down here it's now glossy and smooth,
instead of all the other ones, where it was gray and... not as smooth.
One last major difference that the new 360 really provides:
built-in wifi.
You know, with the older 360, this was a very commonplace thing: the ethernet jack.
This is a frickin' pain if you've got a billion other systems that need this thing,
and then you have to plug it in back here every time you wanna get online.
Plus the wifi itself costs like a hundred-something dollars for a stupid little 802.11g adapter.
With this one, you don't have to worry about that, plus it's upgraded to 802.11n.
I don't have a router right now to take advantage of that, but really, it's making me think about it because
I'm thinking about upgrading my desktop to it now after seeing how well this performs
on the 802.11 network elsewhere.
Now, I do have a couple of gripes with the thing.
One big one is the cord that it comes with.
This is a standard composite connection with RCA plugs.
No...
anything useful about it. This is for hooking up to an old-school CRT TV, and if you've got that, that's fine.
But I don't.
Originally, my Xbox 360 Pro,
and the other Elite Xboxes that have come out before this came with component cables.
The Elite even came with HDMI at one point.
But now, for the same price as those other ones,
it comes with this piece of crap.
Thankfully, I already had HDMI and component cables to use for this,
but if I didn't, that's an added expense.
It does come with a headset, even though it's not wireless. It doesn't come with any new batteries.
It doesn't come with any bundled games at this point.
Really, it could have done a lot more, just judging by the previous Elite
and special edition packs that you would get for 300 bucks.
I wish it came with more. It doesn't.
I don't know if that's really a complaint. It's more of just an observation.
I mentioned that the newer one is much quieter, so I'm going to try to demonstrate that here.
This is the older 360 model.
[whirring]
Older tray...
[clicks and grinds open]
Whoop-de-doo.
[clicks and grinds shut]
If that were in 3D, that would have looked totally rad.
And here we have the newer model.
[chime]
[muffled whirs]
Yeah, it's really hard to hear. It's actually about on par with what my PS3 is.
Also, you'll notice that weird little sound that it makes at the start.
[chime]
It's pretty cool.
[chime]
[repeated chimes]
New drive also has a different sound a cool little bleepy sound.
[bing]
[swooshes open]
Yeah...
[bing]
[swooshes shut]
It's not quite-- [bing]
to the microwave-level sound effect as the PS3 has when it starts up or opens discs and stuff like that, but--
[bing and swoosh]
You know. It is what it is.
It lets you know when you're pressing the button
so it has its job, I guess.
One other good thing I've also noticed while using the new 360 is that
when you're working around in the Dashboard,
and you're flipping through a lot of stuff, or going from, say, the Arcade marketplace to your--
whatever.
Different areas in the Dashboard.
It seems to run quite a bit quicker.
You used to get maybe a second or two of lag in between sections with the older one.
With this one, I have not noticed that at all.
It's very small, but it's noticeable to me, because I kind of abuse menu systems.
So is the new 360 worth buying or not?
Well, as of now, the retail price is pretty much what all the others have been:
$299 for a 250GB model.
The reason I got one is because I think it looks awesome,
and the fact that I was going to sell this one
to somebody that needed one. So, I'm going to give them a good price,
and then put the money towards this one. So...
It made sense for me.
This one was an older model. It's a 20GB model. It didn't have built-in wifi.
It's a lot louder. It runs hotter. There's the chance of a Red Ring, I guess?
And then, of course, there's the awesomeness factor and all the other little things that this new one has.
So for me, it made a lot of sense. If you have an older 360
and need all these new features. You haven't upgraded your hard drive, or bought the wifi adapter...
Yes! Get it now! Sell your old one.
If you have invested a lot in your older 360 with a bigger hard drive, wifi, things like that,
you might wanna think twice about it because you're not really buying much else by getting a new one,
other than the fact that it's...
glossy.
So.
New Xbox 360 S.
Pretty friggin' sweet in the right situation.