Xbox 360 Slim Most Energy Efficient Design Yet, Wii Still 5X Better

Game console hardware updates usually mean several things: smaller sexier designs, quieter fans, less weight, more memory and less electricity consumption. This is definitely the case with the new Xbox 360 S and it's great news for anyone interested in saving energy and becoming more efficient. With more and more pipelines being laid for digital content and movie distribution, consumers are already using less plastic and gasoline to get their games (the PSPgo is a great example of this). The real opportunity looking forward is in improved efficiency in the gaming system hardware and consoles themselves.

The new Xbox 360 Slim or "Valhalla" system is on everyone's mind right now because it looks great and is smaller and lighter than its predecessor. Hopefully it will also be less prone to the red ring of death as well... What you might not know is that it also has a smaller energy footprint. Significantly smaller! it uses half the electricity of the original Xbox 360 design that was sold from 2005-2007 and that includes the dashboard, system idle and gaming use. That means high end games such as Red Dead Redemption will draw ~85 Watts of power vs. ~170W. And that also means less heat and overheating problems. If however, you've got a more recent model 360 dating from 2007 forward your system is probably in the neighborhood of 115W for high end games, and let's face it, who has had the same Xbox 360 for the past 3 years?

I bore witness to the launch of the first iteration of the Xbox 360 at an event called Zero Hour in the Mojave Desert and was impressed with the system architecture. In retrospect, the desert may not have been the ideal place to premier such a heat-prone system but that's why they did it at night. It was beautiful and functional, there's no doubt about that, but 360's have always been loud, hot and... unreliable. I remember feeling cheated when I saw the size of that huge power brick hanging out the back, no wonder the system could look so good, half of it was outside the system!

Considering the original Xbox never got a face lift, the Xbox 360 Slim is a welcomed improvement and step forward for Microsoft. The power supply in particular is still external and large but has been slimmed down considerably. Sony, by comparison, launched an improved PS3 Slim in September 2009 that takes 35% less power than the original and is also quieter. So the Xbox 360 Slim is Microsoft keeping up and stepping ahead at 50% less power consumption... sort of. Remember that most people have the newer 360's that aren't nearly as power hungry. Sony for the Win?

One of the most amazing improvements the Xbox 360 S has made with its new design is in reducing vampire power consumption. That is, when the system is completely turned off, the new model only takes 0.6W of power vs. 2.0W-2.8W the older models took. This has to do with the updated power adapter which is only 135W vs. the older 175W and 150W power version. It may only add up to a couple bucks a month for most households in lost power but that adds up real fast when you consider the 40 Million Xbox 360 systems that have been sold worldwide as of April 2010. Yeah, that's $40M bucks down the drain in vampire power loss alone vs. the new system hardware.

Overall, great work Microsoft. All this boils down to a cooler running system that produces less noise (45-50 decibels vs. 50-55 Db previously) and saves energy. Before you rush out and upgrade however, consider how old your current system is. You may already be hovering at ~110W with most games and it's pretty wasteful to toss a whole system for a ~20W gain. For more statistics and tests on the new Xbox 360 Slim and older models visit AnandTech. If you're really concerned about power use and want to optimize your gaming for the environment consider choosing a Wii which, since it was launched in November 2006, has used ten times less electricity for games than the Xbox 360 or PS3. 1UP Nintendo.

In my research for this article I also learned that most stand alone DVD players consumer far less power than the Xbox 360 or PS3 to play movies so a Wii plus a DVD player might be the perfect fit if your TV is connected to a hamster wheel.