Microsoft Xbox 360 Arcade – Red Ring Safe

The Xbox 360 console had been suffering from its “Red Ring of Death” issue for quite a while. As the competition heated up from Sony with a price drop of their Playstation 3 console, Microsoft had to take steps. With the Xbox 360 Arcade, Microsoft has killed two birds with one stone – they have fixed the Red Ring of death problem by putting in a new “Jasper” chip and also integrated a much demanded HDMI port.

Looks wise, one can hardly differentiate between the Xbox 360 and the Xbox 360 Arcade. It has the same white finish with a large power button, vertical optical drive, two memory card slots and two USB ports with the hard disk bay on top. At the back, you see the difference with the integrated HDMI port placed below the USB port.  Other than that, the power brick is still the same and so is the wireless controller.  

What sets the Xbox 360 Arcade apart is that it uses the 65nm Jasper chip. The new chip gets rid of the “Red Ring of Death” problem that plagued Xbox users. Also the 65nm chip consumer less power and the console runs much cooler than its predecessor.  Instead of the 175W that the original Xbox 360 used, the Arcade uses just 150W power.

In terms of performance, the Arcade only has the advantage in terms of better cooling over its predecessor. Otherwise, within games the difference in performance is nil. It comes with the new NXE dashboard, which now has facebook and twitter integration available via updates.