Microsoft Xbox 360 S 250 GB Glossy Black Console (PAL)

The Xbox 360 may be the most popular HD console on the market (and deservedly so given its incredible library of games) but its domination was certainly not down to its hardware design. On the contrary, early purchasers found themselves at the mercy of one of the most widely touted and controversial hardware faults in videogame history.

Launch-era console suffered a widespread fault that would see the hardware unexpectedly die – a fault that the hardware would make you aware of by making three of the four usually green lights surrounding the power button glow red. And so the feared and fabled Red Ring of Death was born.

Admittedly, that issue was mostly resolved in the original models thanks to a series of smaller internal changes over the years, and most significantly with the release of the overhauled Xbox 360 Elite SKU, but its reputation is more spit-and-polished than bleach clean.

Let the arrival of this new hardware wipe that slate completely clean. This is by far the best Xbox ever made and from its new quieter internals to its shiny, aggressive-looking outer case, Microsoft has certainly redeemed itself.

First, I wish I had bought one sooner! I love it and it has brought so much fun to our house. I grew up playing video-games, from Atari to PS2. Kinda lost track of it recently and now I decided to get back in the world of gaming. I like Playstations, had their first and second, but I felt that Xbox 360 had a few more advantages, and was more popular, which enhances your online experience, with more players, although I play mostly single anyways. I just assume that it is more popular than the PS3 because everybody asks me if I have an Xbox and if I am on Xbox Live, never if I have a PS3 and if I'm on the PS3 network. But I would think that both consoles would be very similar in their capabilities and that the PS network would be just as good.

The console is much more than just a video-game console, I can now watch all my shows on my TV without going through the hassle of connecting a laptop with a cable. Media Center is okay, but only until you figure out how to play things directly from an external hard drive, which is a lot faster and simpler. You will have to carefully reformat your external hard drive to FAT32 format and it is best to get some free software for that, to avoid the 16GB imposed limitation. For some reason Microsoft decided to go with this older format, making the majority of modern external hard drives unreadable - but again, all you gotta do is format it and it will work just fine, in full capability. I have a 250GB external hard drive and did not lose one bit of memory with the formatting.

When playing a game on CD, it makes quite a bit of noise, but again you can also solve this mild inconvenience by simply installing your game in the hard drive that comes with it or external, which would have to be customized in the options (and again, reformatted the FAT32).

The Xbox 360 is one of the funnest things in my house right now and I am glad I bought it. I think that compared to the others, it is second to none. The only issue that I really have with it is the Xbox 360 controller d-pad. I have played a lot of consoles in my life, and with it, many controllers and I cannot remember one that is worse than this. It turns playing games such as Mortal Kombat, a nightmare. Microsoft really chose a terrible d-pad design, again, I know nothing worse. Fortunately, they have released a new controller with a transforming d-pad. Or you can do what I did, get a transforming d-pad by itself, and simply modify your controller with a few tools - no big deal. It won't be the best d-pad ever, but it will definitely be a hell of an improvement. Nothing that should put you off buying an Xbox 360, after all, the majority of games have no real use for the d-pad.

Oh, get an HD cable to enjoy the console in full HD with your flat screen - it makes all the difference in the world - playing the new games in high def is just amazing and so much better! Mine didn't come with it, so I bought it on eBay. When I got it and plugged it in, wow, just wow! Amazing!

So, in the end, I give the Xbox 360 5 stars, it is a superb advanced piece of equipment and a hell of a miracle when I look back at the Atari games I played when a kid. I recommend it. I hope my review can be useful to someone, but usually, people have their own opinions on consoles and it's pretty straight forward to choose one.

Xbox 360 not only a great games machine but one of the best media centres I’ve ever had.

Not many people realise that once the Xbox is hooked up to your TV and a connection made to the internet, that suddenly you have got an easy and simple to use media player.

I can see all the media stored on my computer on my TV, It will play most formats of video including Blue Ray plus I can listen to my music collection stored on my computer and stream internet videos using my Netflix account.

Oh and watch You-Tube as well

So don’t just look at the Xbox for games only, look at it as a full entertainment centre.

We purchased an Xbox 360 slim 250 GB for our son at Christmas. Having done our research and being wary of the RROD etc. on older models we thought paying £169.00 for this new 'improved' version would eliminate any problems.. How wrong we were... The console only worked for roughly 1/2 an hour. After only 5 minutes, whilst loading a game the green power light completely disappeared but as we could play we didn't think too much of this. However, shortly after the wireless controller became disconnected and the console was feeling VERY hot. Everything on screen froze. We tried to restart the console and reconnect the wireless controller but the connectivity button didn't work and the round, green power button NEVER came back on. The funny thing was that the games still loaded-you just couldn't connect to play them. A TOTAL WASTE OF MONEY. Apparently, we have since discovered, the new XBOX slim 250 GB can suffer from power button failure-the whole console is just too touch sensitive in our opinion and not worth the £169.00 we paid for it. We have been told this may have been a one-off dud machine and received a full refund but to anyone out there thinking of buying the latest XBOX-think twice, Microsoft still have many problems to sort!

It is an amazing product. The interface is user friendly and is really easy to navigate. The wifi is great, i use it from the other side of the house and with no lag for online gaming and also no buffering for video's. It has a lot of features including Sky player, Zune, Video kinect (skype). It has a great range of games from different genre's and new upcoming games coming soon. The 250gb hard drive is great for ripping music and burning the game and also download loads of game demos which you do not need to worry about how much space you have left. The console is very quiet, so is great if i want to watch sky or play games in the evening without waking everyone.