This was my second Xbox 360 purchase. I bought an Elite three years ago from Amazon.com and had an amazing time playing it. I saw the Microsoft E3 press show, and had to have this new Xbox 360 Elite S. My current Xbox 360 is still running fine, but the improvements had me jumping for joy due to just the amount of time I play the system.
Thus far the system runs perfect. I keep the system horizontal to vent the heat better from the nicely placed side vent. The redesign shows Microsoft put some real thought into the issues that plagued past systems. The heat is now directly vented from the heat sink, instead of using a tube to push it to the back of the system to be vented. This new design uses one big fan, instead of two smaller ones. This single fan is surrounded with foam to help stop vibrations and stopping pretty much all the sound the fan makes, to make for a whisper quiet fan. The newly designed chipset doesn't get as hot or take as much power as past chipsets either. I remember having my older Elite on, and after hours of play the room temperature would literally be 10 degrees hotter. With this new system, the room temperature doesn't change at all now.
The new DVD drive is pretty quiet compared with the older drive. You can still hear the disc spinning when the game isn't installed onto the hard drive, but it's not nearly as loud as it used to be. With the game installed onto the hard drive, the system is nearly silent.
It now has touch sensitive buttons, which are a great cosmetic touch. It has a nice shiny finish that does attractive dust and is a finger print magnet, but still a nice improvement. The new Wi-Fi card is what so many people have been waiting for. It didn't really matter to me, as I have a router like less than two feet away from the system, but this is a BIG selling point for so many people and a nice improvement over having to put out another fee. The wireless card supports pretty much everything up to 802.11n.
The system no longer has memory card slots, but has had two additional USB ports added, for a total of five, which is a better option now that it supports flash drives.
The system is ready for Kenect, but I really could care less about it. It has one port on the back for the kenect camera system. So all you have to do is plug it into that, and you're ready to play. Other people may enjoy that more than me.
On some side notes, the new 360 doesn't support your old 360 hard drive. I transferred everything over with a flash drive. You can buy a transfer cable, but I would just use a flash drive or external hard drive. The system comes with a one year warranty and isn't supported by the three year RRoD warranty Microsoft gave to older systems. You can call Microsoft and extended it, but as long as you take care of it, I wouldn't recommend it, but that's up to you. Just keep it well ventilated and away from other heat sources. Also, DON'T move the system while playing it, as this can lead to the disc being scratched. If the game is installed though, the disc doesn't spin, so this is another reason to install games. I've never perosnally had this ever happen, but from my understanding it can.
Overall, if you don't have an Xbox 360 and are in the market for one, this is the must have SKU. If you do have one, it's really not necessary unless you really have some issue with your current system, or just really want this (like I did). It has a massive 250GB hard drive, built in Wi-Fi, 5 USB ports, Ethernet port, HDMI port, composite/component port, digital optical output, and Kenect ready port, all built into the system. It's here today and really is ready for tomorrow.
A final note about Amazon.com; they dropped the ball on me again, like they did before with skipping over me when I ordered my Elite three years ago. If you want your system faster, either get it another place or pay for shipping. If you don't care, get the free shipping from Amazon. If this is like a year or whatever from the release date, you have nothing to worry about.
Get more detail about Xbox 360 250GB Elite Console.
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