I asked college student and gamer David Finder to write a review of the new Xbox 360 S from Microsoft, and from his excellent and detailed review below, I obviously chose the right person.

The new Xbox 360 is everything an Xbox fan could hope for; slim new design, quiet and cool, and with the same touch-sensitive buttons that made the Playstation 3 look futuristic when it first came out.

But this is the problem: the new 360, far from a revolutionary design, would have been a fitting competitor for the Playstation 3 when it came out in late 2006, and now feels like too little, too late.

The Xbox 360 S, as Microsoft is calling it, is a fantastic evolution for the Xbox 360. It fixes every major problem the original Xbox 360 had. Where every recent past Xbox 360 variant, such as the Elite or Arcade, was a modification, the new Xbox 360 S is a total redesign that finally puts the Xbox 360 on par with the Sony Playstation 3’s hardware.

The infamous Red Ring of Death error, where overheating Xboxes would break permanently, has been completely rectified. The design of the new unit shows how far Microsoft has gone to eliminate heat issues altogether. The older memory units and hard drives have also been replaced with modern, more modular designs. Furthermore, the new X-Box 360 S has several new USB ports for controllers and memory sticks, a new port for the upcoming ‘Kinect’ motion sensor, and built in high-def HDMI and audio ports. Last but not least, the new Xbox has a built-in wireless-n adapter for connecting to Wi-Fi internet.

One of the most striking features of the new Xbox is how quiet and cool it is. As an owner of several perior Xbox 360s, I had long gotten used to the loud whirring of the fans and the overheating that several hours of playtime could cause. However, the new Xbox has had all of these issues resolved.
Air vents grace the top, bottom, and side of the unit, and it sports a single larger, quieter fan to replace the smaller, noisier versions of the original unit. As well, the hardware architecture of the unit has been replaced with newer, smaller hardware, allowing better air flow. The disk drive of the 360 S has also been replaced with a much quieter version, so that the unit can barely be heard at all, and certainly not over any video games you would currently be playing.

The new Xbox has also undergone a memory upgrade. The new system now boasts a massive 250gb hard drive, which is more than enough to store all the games, music, and videos one would need. The old memory units of the original Xbox 360 have been replaced altogether with new USB flash drives, similar to those one would use on a computer. However, do not mistake the two, as the new flash drives for the Xbox 360 S will not work on a computer.

You however may use your own flash drives as well, but like the flash drives made for the Xbox, they will be formatted by the Xbox and their contents will only be usable by an Xbox. This is a disappointment, as computer connectivity (and essentially any storage medium, from USB drives to portable hard drives) were touted by the Playstation 3 when it first came out, and Microsoft has clearly given the signal that it has no intention of allowing the Xbox 360 to do the same now, for reasons of preventing cheating associated with using saved games from other people or the internet.
However, the new USB memory sticks can store much, much more than the old memory units. Where the memory units could house 512mb maximum of data, the new memory sticks can hold up to 16gb (16000mb). In realistic terms, where the old memory sticks could hold maybe a few game saves at most, the new sticks could hold nearly two entire games.

The hard drive has also gone through a major shakeup with the new Xbox 360 S. The new unit contains a 250gb hard drive, a huge increase from the more widely available previous hard drives or the original 20gb hard drive that came with the Xbox 360. This hard drive puts the Xbox in much stronger competition with the Playstation 3’s similarly sized (and smaller in some cases) standard hard drives. However, the older Xbox 360 hard drives are incompatible, but can have their contents transferred to the new Xbox 360 S via a cable, similar to the Xbox 360 Elite.

Like the rest of the improvements, the final upgrade is a much-needed improvement that the Xbox 360 should have seen some time ago; the integration of a built-in Wireless-N adapter. This was also added to the Xbox 360 Elite, but should have been standard, in part so that we do not have to pay obscene amounts of money for an overpriced add-on adapter.

The only ‘new’ feature is the addition of a powered USB port, likely for the upcoming Kinect motion sensor that Microsoft will be soon selling for the console. Everything else is something that should have been added to the console a year ago. The Xbox 360 S does not feel like a new and revolutionary console. It feels like what Microsoft should have released back when the Playstation 3 was on the rise. But this is expected. This generation of game consoles has gone on much longer than the previous ones. Periodic upgrades are to be expected. The new Xbox 360 S is far superior to every Xbox 360 previous, and is undeniably the Xbox 360 everyone should buy, hands down. It is a fitting equal to the Playstation 3 and the best console that Microsoft has released yet. But is it worth buying?

The answer is simple; if you already own an Xbox, No. For a newcomer to the market, or another console owner defecting, the Xbox 360 S is an easy purchase. Coming in cheaper than the Playstation 3 (and forcing the older Xbox 360 models down to prices cheaper than the Wii), the Xbox 360 S is the perfect buy. But as a college student on a budget (and who already owns an original Xbox 360) the Xbox 360 S ultimately seems like an unnecessary purchase.

Games do not run noticeably faster on the Xbox 360 S, connection speed for multiplayer games is no different, and hardware for the original Xbox 360 such as hard drives are still readily available. The larger hard drive is a huge bonus, but most gamers do not take advantage of the massive hard drive, which is mostly used for saving games so that they run faster and with less load times than from a disk, and downloading and playing media such as movies and music.

Games still run fine off a disk on the older Xbox 360s, and for those of us who already purchased the add-on wireless dongle, the new Xbox 360 S holds no allure aside from being a quieter machine. Microsoft even prepared their new Kinect device to run on the older machines, albeit with one extra cable for the wall socket.

So while the Xbox 360 S is superior in every way, it is not a new Xbox, merely an upgraded one, and to some of us gamers it feels like too little, too late. For now, I will stick to my now-obsolete box until it inevitably gives me the red ring of death, and then maybe I’ll consider the Xbox 360 S.

Source:http://blogs.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php/news/techman/20972-review-xbox-360-s