Xbox 360 Ultimate Comparison (2023 Edition)

foreign the Xbox 360's Life as a supported console has been long over surpassed by things like the Xbox One and the Xbox series s and x and on top of that we've had servers for iconic game franchises like Halo and Call of Duty being shut down over the past few years with that we also have more and more consoles succumbing to the red ring of death because it's not if but when on some versions of these consoles meaning there are fewer and fewer to buy off the market but if you're like me and that opening kind of made you a bit nostalgic then you've probably looked at least once for one of these consoles just to have in your collection just to be able to play without a 50 gigabyte Day One update but the question arises there are three versions of this console that were made over the course of its life from 2005 to 2013. which one should I buy well I bought all three iterations and I'm gonna break down the differences between each of them today talk about their benefits and their disadvantages on each version and come down to a conclusion on which one is best to buy in 2023 so without further Ado let's dive in now just to be clear before anybody leaves it in the comments I am aware that these consoles were made all the way out until 2016 but when I say that they had a life from 2005 to 2013 I mean that that time frame was when they were the newest Xbox on the market by 2013 we had the introduction of the Xbox One and the Clock Was ticking on the Xbox's life so from 2005 to 2013 they were it and in that time frame we had three different versions introduced from 2005 to 2010 we had what is in my opinion the most iconic Xbox 360 design which is just the Xbox 360. then from 2010 to 2013 we had the Xbox 360 slim or Xbox 360 s and then by 2013 they introduced the last revision the Xbox 360 e and like I said earlier each of these has benefits and disadvantages starting off with the original Xbox 360 I have a very hard time recommending this to anybody because this is the generation that really struggled with the red ring of death like I mentioned even today fewer and fewer of these consoles are around because they just keep dying from the red ring of death it wasn't an if but a when for certain models which is why I also don't recommend if you're buying this generation getting a console from 2005 to 2006 because these were the ones that were most heavily affected however even getting into 2007 with some improvements to the cooling system it still happened I mean hell this video happened because I started shopping for an Xbox 360 to replace the one that I was using to stream all my old Xbox 360 games because that one was bought in 2007 and somehow still hasn't gotten a red ring but it means too much to me to keep using on a regular basis so I started shopping for a new one I don't recommend this generation across the board but especially models from 2005 to 2006 should be completely avoided and it's not just the red ring of death that is the reason why these consoles just don't quite hold up to the others one of the other key things is the fact that the 2005 to 2006 models didn't even have HDMI in fact the first console of this generation to introduce HDMI was the elite version which came in black with a 120 gig hard drive if you get an earlier version than that you're stuck with component or composite through this giant plug on the back and while they did introduce HD to this generation of consoles you weren't getting it if you used the cable that it came with you do have some USBS on the con so you have three of them one on the back and then two on the front under a door that is inevitably going to break if you use it enough on top of that this also still has memory card slots on the front which is the only time we see this in the Xbox 360 lineup you can opt for 32 megabytes 64 megabytes 128 or 256 megabytes and I bought the biggest 256 megabyte version just to put it in there to complete the aesthetic but I never use it because you can actually plug in standard USB drives even bigger hard drives and load saves move profiles all that kind of stuff that you would expect and what Microsoft expected you to originally use that memory card for well now you can do it with a standard USB drive but I would recommend using those thumb drives on the front USB ports because the back one can be used for the most ridiculous and yet somehow really well designed accessory for this console the Wi-Fi adapter and yes I said it's a well-designed piece because they very clearly intended for something to go there already or it just happened to be super lucky that they were able to design an adapter that fit the Kensington lock and a second hole perfectly yeah this console did not come with Wi-Fi out of the box because it only was 2005 and if you were going to hook up to the Internet it was probably wired then they realized that most people don't sit their TVs next to their routers and modems so Wi-Fi might have been something worth adding oh yeah and actually moving back to the storage for a second if you don't want to save your profiles to the memory card or to an external USB drive you can save it to the hard drive which is this removable module on the top you could get it in 20 gig 60 gig 128 or 256 or or you could buy the 500 gig one that was only available on the Xbox 360 slim and later break it out of its enclosure put it into the old enclosure and have a 500 gig hard drive on an original Xbox don't do that but this was a really cool design you could actually just swap modules and if you were a baller back in the day you could have multiples of these hard drives with games saved directly to them full game installs if you wanted to and of course all of your profiles and you could still move all those files between the drive on the outside any external drives or your memory cards and again aesthetically this console for me while I don't recommend people buy it now is one of the most iconic designs of a console I personally think ever but I know some people will probably disagree what you had such an incredible look to this thing where it could be stood vertical you could lay it down horizontal everything sort of had a place you had a really nice Chrome disk drive or matte white plastic if you went with the arcade and one of the coolest boot up animations on a button ever that was also used to indicate the red ring of death and it was functional in more than just a neat little boot up animation because it would light up the different quadrant to tell you how many different players were on there and you could see on the controller which of the quadrants indicated which player you were we'll save talking about the controller until the end because you got the same controller with every single one of these consoles but when it came to the original Xbox 360 the design was incredible and while it was plagued with the red ring of death there were a lot of function and form designs that just really worked however with that red ring of death plague and the fact that there are fewer and fewer of them on the market I find it very hard to recommend this version in 2023 except for the most extreme collectors or people who are really willing to take care of them and keep them alive so then with that we'll move on to the Xbox 360 slim and the Xbox 360 slim wasn't quite as iconic of a design but it did have quite the iconic introduction ladies and gentlemen this is your new Xbox 360. yeah this dude just straight up pulls an Xbox slim out of an Xbox 360 original that is some great marketing right there to really show that you made the console smaller and the way they did that was both really impressive internally and kind of cool externally as well internally this console is definitely less affected by the red ring of death though it can still happen in fact the one that I have was affected by the red ring of death until I put it in the oven and it seemed to fix the problem true story I had a fever of 101 degrees and needed to do something to keep my mind off it so I threw the motherboard in the oven and it fixed itself wild but either way these are less likely to get the red ring of death so I am more inclined to recommend this console to the average collector or somebody who just really wants to have one of these consoles to play older games with the console also runs significantly quieter because the separated CPU and GPU that we had in the original Xbox 360 is now combined into one singular SOC with one fan and one vent super super nice and much more reasonable if you're the kind of person like me who installs all your games on the hard drive because as soon as the disc spins down the console is practically silent the design is definitely not my favorite though it's pretty unique in its own right and the main reason I feel like they went with this more angular look was to bring its design aesthetic in parody with the newly released connect which moving to the ports is one of the New Ports available on this console yeah you get a dedicated connect port on the back for the people who wanted to play The Connect which people laugh now but the connect was actually a pretty big deal when it came out out because people were all about that motion control phase courtesy of the Wii and the fact that the Xbox introduced an option that let you do something similar without having to hold a controller was pretty big at the time big enough to Warrant its own port also if you did want to play with the connect on the original Xbox you could they made a full power adapter for it which I've bought and I used like twice but it's there if you want it alongside the connect Port around back you also have three USB ports available which kind of seem redundant considering you don't need a Wi-Fi adapter anymore because well Wi-Fi is now built into this console but you have three USB ports so I guess you have some pretty decent expansion with external drives if you want and of course you still have two USB ports up front now moved to a vertical position or horizontal if you lay it down as opposed to the opposite being true with the original Xbox 360. you also still have the massive AV port on the back because well most of these still came with the AV cable instead of an HDMI cable but you still have HDMI which I highly recommend using in 2023 and sticking with the topic of Av for this console we also get an optical audio port for things like surround sound through a receiver kind of cool if you want to get the most audio out of this because previously you had to get it through one of their specific AV connectors that doesn't use HDMI but now it's built right into the console so kind of cool to see and I know I already mentioned that it has Wi-Fi for connecting to Xbox live but if you want to wire in you still have an Ethernet connector but now that we've covered all the i o there are two big things about this console that really stood out to me one of which I hate and one of which I absolutely love and the thing I love so that we can start on a positive note is the new hard drive configuration now don't get me wrong I love the way that Microsoft attached the old hard drive to the original 360. it was so unique and while we had things like the PlayStation just giving us a screwdriver to remove and put in a new hard drive to the PS3 Microsoft made it tool-less made it fast and made it simple so what did they do for the new gen Generation Well they just gave you a door and put the hard drive in there that's not the entire story they actually made them into these little modules sticking with the module theme from the original 360 but this time it connected straight through a standard SATA port instead of having to pass through an adapter first so now you just slot it in close the door it's Sleek it's hidden you don't have to worry about it and if you really want to get into the weeds they actually shock mounted the rails that the hard drive goes into so if you're moving the console around going to Lan parties remember those if you move it around you're not going to damage the hard drive because it's going to shake a little with the console keeping it from really getting damaged with a hard impact or too much vibration I also have a feeling that they might have done that to keep the disk drive and its close proximity to the hard drive from interfering with the hard drive but either way Nitty Gritty shock mounted kind of cool love the fact that they kept the modularity of the hard drives and like I mentioned earlier this version goes all the way up to 500 gigabytes which meant that you could get an Xbox 360 slim or E because the E uses these same modules with the same amount of storage as a launch version of the Xbox One how messed up is that but now moving on to the negative the buttons on the front of this thing are touch sensitive and that's the negative like I appreciate the fact that Microsoft kept the Ring of lights around the front so you could see how many players were connected and they even kept the animation for the boot up but they made the buttons touch both the eject button for the disk drive and most importantly the power button but because it's touch it doesn't differentiate between things like fingers and pets rubbing against them I had this console fixed and running for a total of two days before experiencing what everybody else who has already owned one of these consoles had probably experienced at least once which is that you're in the middle of a game your cat rubs against the console and it just shuts down entirely and I'm not entirely unfamiliar with this because I had an original Xbox One the VCR style and she had done that with that console before but it had been so long since I've had to deal with that because all of my consoles now have physical buttons that it just took me by surprise and I was brought right back to that level of frustration that I used to have so that is the biggest negative with this console is just physical buttons why but telling of everything I've said about this console so far it is definitely a strong Contender for somebody who just wants a functional Xbox 360 in 2023 you can still get the hard drives at a pretty reasonable price though you need to make sure that you're getting first party ones because third-party ones on Amazon tend to not really work and they won't allow you to play original Xbox games which was a big deal for me but they're less likely to be dying from the red ring of death issues and if you can put it somewhere where A Pet's not going to rub against it it's a pretty solid choice in console with up to 500 gigs of space available to you pretty nice and also with that 500 gigs you can install all your games to the drive and then the console operates in absolute silence and you can connect it wirelessly to Xbox Live for however much longer the games you want to play have a server to play on all of mine are dead now rest in peace Halo 3 servers anyway moving on to the last iteration of the Xbox 360 to ever come out the 2013 Xbox 360 e and this one's kind of an oddball internally the Xbox 360 E is pretty much identical to the Xbox 360 s at least when it comes to things like thermals volume and the chip design there are a few key differences around back though these differences around back include a new power adapter going from the polarized cord from before to a standard Barrel plug like what you'd find on a laptop we also have one less USB port and we have an eighth inch Jack to your standard AV out if you really want to plug this console in to a CRT television for some reason but it's very clear they were prioritizing HDMI in this case oh and actually the optical audio jack as quickly as it arrived on the Xbox 360 s they took it away on the Xbox 360 E I'm not 100 sure why because I know the people I've talked to who really like using that console especially back in the day said that that was one of the best things they added when they wanted to hook it up to the receiver and get surround sound in games like Halo so kind of odd to see it left out but I have my theories on why and my Theory actually ties into why this console looks the way it does because when this came out in 2013 it was introduced alongside the new Xbox One or new at the time Xbox One and you can tell by its design that they really wanted to make the lineup of Xbox products from the 360 to the one look similar and if you remember the Xbox One's introduction was all about TV TV MTV TV TV TV TV yeah so the Xbox one had your optical audio jack but the Xbox 360 was clearly not the priority for Microsoft anymore and they probably wanted to push more people who wanted the best sound from their console over to the new shiny Xbox one so that might have been why they got rid of the optical jack but that's also why this console looks the way it does because that two-tone matte and gloss finish was pretty much the big push in design that Microsoft was going for with the Xbox One and fortunately some of the things that the Xbox one wanted to push never made it to the 360 he like being always online fortunately we have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity it's called Xbox 360. that aged like fine milk so yeah if you couldn't tell this is where the Xbox 360 Story begins to come to a close because this version of the 360 was the last chapter but it's not all bad because this was the most refined version of the Xbox 360 and while it definitely wasn't very different from the slim it definitely added a few things that were very welcome the chief among which is the fact that they got rid of those stupid touch buttons on the front and gave us back physical buttons however that does come at a cost which is that we got rid of that iconic quadrant-based setup for the button I don't know why they did that but I really wish they hadn't now when a console has a controller connected it just lights up the whole ring and there's also no cool boot up animation which makes me sad but it is the most Sleek looking of the generations you don't have angles like you did on the Xbox 360 s and it's definitely not iconic and curvy like the original Xbox 360. it's just sort of a console and for most people if you're looking for a 360 these are about the same price as the other two assuming you're not going for a collector's edition or an original that's still in its box so if you're just looking for a console a 360 this isn't a bad option and it has the biggest hard drive options available all the way up to 500 gigs as I mentioned and no stupid touch buttons and actually just like the 360s if you install all your games onto the hard drive as soon as the disk spins down this console is also dead silent I would say even potentially a little bit quieter than the 360s so if that's a consideration for you might be worth it for me I think that the Xbox 360 E is probably the best option for somebody just looking for a general Xbox 360 experience they don't really care about the look of the console they don't really care about having the iconic version or their first or their favorite was the angular s they just want a 360 to go back and play 360 games if that's the case the E's probably going to be the one you want to go with because it's the newest version so like a car terminology it has the fewest miles on it even if you're buying one used and it's also the most refined fans are quieter buttons are no longer touch and you actually don't really have priority on an AV connector you have priority on HDMI and when I say priority I mean that there's just not a big golf plug on the back for your AV connector what I said earlier I was going to save the controllers for last and that's just because well you get the same controller with all of them the iconic Xbox 360 controller my personal favorite controller from the Xbox lineup aside from the Duke yeah yeah I'm one of those weirdos who likes the Duke don't judge me but the 360 controller was great because the fact that you didn't have a battery pack taking up the entire back of the console horizontally meant that you had these deeper grips for your fingers and while you don't have Rumble in the trigger like you do on the Xbox One or the haptics like you do on the PS5 you had reasonable haptics good button placement all around my personal preferred placement for the joysticks a not so great d-pad though if you find one of the Xbox 360 controllers that has the rotating d-pad you can fix that and again the awesome quadrant lights so that if you're playing anything other than player one you can see which player you are and depending on the game if the game's made well that quadrant will correspond with where you are on your full screen multiplayer God I love couch Co-op so then to recap the original Xbox 360 is a fantastic looking console in my opinion a stupidly beautiful console for its time really unique I love the look but it also takes a lot of know-how and a lot of patience in 2023 to keep one of these alive because most if not all of them will suffer from the red ring of death at some point but if you're willing to do that then you're going to have a really cool console in your collection that lets you play Old 360 games however if you're just looking for something to sit down in front of and play and you don't want to have to consider if it's going to get a red ring and how to fix it if it does the Xbox 360 slim is definitely less likely to run into those problems however it is still getting up there in age being 13 years old at this point and of course you have the downside of those stupid touch buttons but it also has benefits like integrated Wi-Fi and of course the sleeker hard drive module solution but if you want both of those things and a smaller slightly smaller console a much more refined looking console meaning it just looks basic and no stupid touch buttons on front you can always go with the Xbox 360 E because it's also one of the consoles where even used it's going to have a lot less mileage on it than something like an S and definitely a lot less mileage than something like the original 360. for me I'm going to use the E for the heavier work of streaming on my Xbox 360 but if I want to play on my TV out here I'm going to hook up the S because I don't want to run the risk of having to tear down an Xbox 360 original again because well I've done that enough in my life either way that's been it thank you all so much for sitting through this rather long comparison video I hope you all actually got something out of it let me know in the comments which one of these consoles would you get and don't just say PlayStation 3 because you're just going to be a fanboy at that point but let me know what you all think I really do enjoy making these videos if you enjoy watching these videos definitely make sure to give it a like if you really like it you want to continue to support the channel definitely make sure to subscribe because I do these every Friday aside from that I'll see you on the next video make sure to be there and have a good one [Music] foreign

Channel: Garrett Crespo

Views: 63,777

Keywords: Microsoft, Xbox 360, Xbox, gaming, game console

Id: W60zyjgNM98

Length: 22min 53sec (1373 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2023