Review: Xbox 360 S

The new Xbox 360 S console from Microsoft can pretty much be summed up with a just a few words – smaller, quieter, shinier, with built-in wireless connectivity.

According to everyone except Microsoft, the ‘S’ stands for Slim. In reality the 360 S is only half a centimetre slimmer than the older models, and about three centimetres shorter when standing up.

The glossy black finish is a total fingerprint magnet, and sadly it feels a little bit flimsier than the previous design, although personally I think the sharper, angular lines are a nice change from curvy white.

Popping the hood, you find a few more tangible differences. Instead of spending the thick end of $200 for a wireless adapter you now get built-in Wireless N connectivity, and a relatively huge 250GB hard drive (only select Elite bundles have been released with this size drive previously). Instead of being clipped onto the top of the Xbox, the hard drive now slots into the main body of the unit, but you’re still limited to using only official Microsoft drives for any future upgrades.

On the front of the 360 S are the power and eject buttons, which are now touch-sensitive, and give a chirpy little beep when actuated. There are still two USB ports on the front panel, but gone are the two memory cards ports – they’ve been replaced by two more USB ports on the back of the unit, giving a total of 5 USB ports into which you can plug any USB storage device for storing or transferring data to and from the Xbox.

On the rear of the 360 S you have a power input, three USB ports, AV output, HDMI output and a separate TOSlink digital optical audio output, which is a welcome addition. Also on the back panel is a Kinect port. All Xbox 360 consoles are compatible with Kinect, Microsoft’s upcoming controller-free input device, however the 360 S has a dedicated port for it which means you won’t need to use another jack to power the Kinect.

The two whiny little fans featured at the rear of the old Xbox units have been replaced by a single, larger, lower speed fan on the side panel. It still pumps out a fair amount of heat, but it is virtually silent. The CPU/GPU chipset has gone from a 65nm to a 45nm manufacturing process, so in theory it should be cooler running and more power efficient.

When running games or content off the HDD it’s definitely whisper quiet, however the DVD drive still sounds like a meat grinder – this can be offset by loading your games onto the HDD, and with 250GB of space, why wouldn’t you?

Despite all the tweaks, there are no performance enhancements in the 360 S. Graphics quality is the same as any other Xbox 360, and from the reports I’ve seen online, load times are within 5% of older consoles, which is a tad disappointing.

The pricing comes in where the old Elite models left off, so it’s reasonably good value, but there’s no huge incentive for people to upgrade from older Xbox models unless, like me, they’re running out of hard drive space and have been tossing up buying a network adapter.

Microsoft reckons the 360 platform has another five years left in it, so I suspect this isn’t the last transformation we’ll see for these consoles.