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Xbox 360 Premium Reviews

Things I didn't know
by A. Brown "btony2"
I bought an XBox 360 for the family. I thought I would post my thoughts since I discovered things about the Xbox 360 Premium that I didn't know before buying it. Everything good that has been said here is true, and none of the negative comments were. So in no particular order for existing comment comparison :-

1. The graphics are in the Xbox 360 Premium absolutely fantastic. Even on a normal Telly, but since we bought a Philips 26F791D HDMI it is truly staggering. Especially on ordinary DVDs, (the 1080i upscaling is very good).

2. We have had no crashes, freezes or any trouble at all.

3. The wireless is very simple to setup, and once sorted is a doddle at connecting after startup.

Stuff I didn't know before buying (and it's not all good) :-

1. It has the noisiest fan of any game station we have ever owned. It is plain LOUD and is frankly annoying when watching a DVD, gameplay is usually loud in our house anyway so you don't notice it.

2. It runs hot so you cannot enclose it completely. But we have to some extent making the noise from (1) less annoying.

3. The external power supply transformer is HUGE, and heavy, so you need a big hole to get the XBox 360, it's transformer and clear air for cooling when you are locating it.

4. The wireless controllers use 2 AA batteries in a simple clip pod underneath, so you do not need a play and charge unit per controller if you already have an AA re-charger and some rechargeable batteries. (This is definitely a cheaper option in the UK.)

5. Some games (TopSpin etc) require PAL-60 to be set, but the XBox comes with PAL-50 by default, and in HDTV mode the PAL menu is not visible so you cannot change it unless you switch back to normal viewing. (I just saved you 2 hours of messing about - you assume it's you, or some menu setting, at least I did, before trying to get help - we used the support line and it was excellent).

By Mr. J. Searle "hippymanjas"
For many people, including myself, saw the Xbox 360 Elite as just another money making spin-off with no added benefit to the people who already own 360s. However, after doing my research on the machine I found out how much better it is.

Noise - The first 360 I owned (Xbox 360 Premium) was just nosey, my parents could hear it from the other side of the house and it ruined my enjoyment. The Xbox 360 Elite is almost silent, especially when not using a games disc (i.e. using it for a DVD player/using downloaded content).

Reliability - This has been a major issue with 360 owners and although my Xbox360 Elite did break down in the first month of purchase I know that these machines are much more reliable than their Core and Xbox 360 Premiumcounterparts. Working for a games retailer, I've only seen one go wrong, that one being my own.

6x Storage space - May just seem a gimmick to start with, but I regularly use the online services available through this machine and download trial versions of Xbox Premium Live Arcade games, HD movie rentals, trailers, demos, music videos and whatever is going free at the time. Believe it or not, already used up more space on my Elite than what the Premium offered me. The size of the hard drive is currently triple the size of the PS3 thats currently available in Europe.

HDMI Port - Not needed to use it yet, but it has a port for HD TVs that the earlier Premiums did not have. Some of the more recent ones do however, but not for sure. You WILL have an HDMI port available on your console if you buy the Elite. They also throw in the HDMI cable that you need.

Colour - It's black instead of white, so it usually fits in better with your current equipment. It's on superficial, but I quite like it.

All in all, I do recommend the ]Xbox 360 Elite console as it is a smart unit and everything is kept together nicely (and when yo get it, you basically buy a new warranty with Microsoft for the console, meaning another year of 360 gaming without worry of break down). If You have a Xbox 360 Premium/Xbox360 Arcade I do recommend going for this one, although you may just want to buy the 120GB HD to add yourself to save money. Moreover, if you do upgrade for a new Elite, you do save money when buying it in a deal with some games you do not already own.

By M. D. Smart
The X-Box 360
The first next-gen console to be released, with worldwide sales now at almost 12 million. The xbox360 is about 18 months old, which means it has a far bigger library of games available than either of the competitors, and a number of those games are excellent, including PGR4, Oblivion, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Viva Pinata, Lost Planet, Forza 2, Dead Rising and of course Gears Of War. There are also an impressive number of forthcoming exclusives to look forward to, with Bioshock, Lost Odyssey, Mass Effect and the mighty Halo 3 all due before Christmas. The ]xbox 360 console has a DVD player, but HD-DVD is not built in - you have to buy a separate unit (this was probably a wise decision on MS's part, because it seems the rival BluRay format is proving more popular, at least in the USA).

It has a terrific online service, Live, which costs about £3 a month and is well worth it. Even if you don't play games online, there is a ton of content to download such as trailers and demos of new games, and you can also buy extra levels / expansion packs for some. There's also XBox Live Arcade, with a wide range of reasonably-priced 'casual' games available to download. The quality of these titles varies greatly, but there are a good few such as Worms and Castlevania which are well worth the money.
The console itself is fairly big but still aesthetically pleasing, and at about £250 for a premium kit (I wouldn't advise getting the cheaper 'core' kit, because you really need the hard drive) it's fairly reasonably priced.

HOWEVER, the xbox360 does have a couple of problems. The initial batch of consoles released at launch and soon after have proved notoriously unreliable, with about 20 - 25% of them overheating and breaking down. Microsoft now include a three-year warranty, which means you can get a free replacement, but although the percentage of breakdowns has markedly decreased, it IS still happening - and while a long warranty is very nice, I'm sure most people would be more impressed with some improvements made to the system to try to prevent these problems. I bought a xbox 360 console at launch and it died about six months later - then I got a replacement which has been fine ever since (touch wood). Apparently, if you keep your 360 in the horizontal rather than the vertical position, it is less likely to develop a fault - but still, it really shouldn't be developing faults at all. MS is working on a cooler model, which should be ready by Christmas and will hopefully see an end to all these hardware problems.

The other issue with the xbox 360 console is that it is horribly noisy when playing a game or watching a DVD. The DVD drive is soon to be replaced - by the end of this year, apparently - with a far quieter, cooler model. If you had an early PS2, you may remember how noisy that was, but after the drive model was changed it became much quieter. If you think the noise could be an issue for you, you may be better off waiting until Christmas when the xbox 360 consoles will have its new components fitted.

My overall rating for the 360 so far: 4.5 stars

Reviews courtesy of Amazon

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Xbox 360 reviews

Xbox 360 Premium | Xbox 360 Arcade | Xbox 360 Elite compare prices

Xbox 360 Premium Reviews

Xbox 360 Premium - availabilty