Xbox One X vs. Xbox 360 Slim

I purchased my original Xbox back in 2001. I played that game console a lot and made quite a few modifications to it. 10 years later I bought the Xbox 360 Slim. The 360 came out in 2005, but I waited 5 years to buy one to make sure they had all of the bugs worked out of it. The 360 Slim model that I got in 2011 has been a solid performer. I've never had any trouble with it, other than the fact that some game disks wouldn't play once in a while. But, over the past 10 years, I really haven't played it that much. This year (2021) it was time to update to an Xbox One X, which came out in Nov. 2017. I figured with the release of the Xbox Series X in Nov. 2020, there would be some good deals on used One X consoles. I wanted one to test used games that I acquire for resale and for the built in Blu-Ray player. 

Here are some of the differences between the 360 and the One X:

Xbox 360 Slim (2.95 x 10.6 x 10.39 inches)

• Weight - 6.39 pounds
• Processor - 3.2-GHz PowerPC Tri-Core Xenon
• Memory -  512MB GDDR3 RAM
• Hard Drive - 250GB 2.5 inch HDD
• Optical Drive - 12x DVD

Xbox One X (2.4 x 9.4 x 11.8 inches)

• Weight - 8.4 pounds
• Processor - 8 core x86 CPU @ 2.3GHz
• Memory - 12GB GDDR5
• Hard Drive - 1TB Custom NVME SSD
• Optical Drive - 4K UHD Blu-ray

Physically, they are close to the same size, but the One X is 2 pounds heavier. The hard drive has 4x more storage capacity. Memory is faster and 24x larger. And the One X has a Blu-Ray vs a DVD drive in the 360. A DVD can hold 4.7 GB of data, while a 4K Blu-Ray disc can hold 66 GB. This is where the trouble starts. The One X needs to load the data from the disc to the hard drive and download updates from the internet, before you can play a new game. It takes about 15 minutes to load the data from the disc and another hour (in some cases) to download the update. It depends on your Internet connection speed. My best download speed is about 80 Mbps. So far, every game I have tried to load needs an update. Usually about the size of the data on the disc or more. 

Developers have been pumping out games knowing that they can fix problems later with an update. I loaded 4 or 5 games and the hard drive is nearly half full already. With the Xbox 360, I have played dozens of games and the hard drive has never come close to being full. I assume because the 360 doesn't need to load the game to the hard drive. My guess is that the Xbox Series X (2020 version) will be the last console that has an optical drive. The Xbox Series S version doesn't have one. Games are just getting too big. Maybe games will come on a thumb drive in the future and new consoles will all have an SSD instead of a mechanical hard drive. I think everyone just overlooks the long download times because the Xbox One X graphics are so amazing.