The big difference between Microsoft's Xbox 360 Elite and the previous incarnation of the Xbox 360, which is still on sale, at a lower price, is the colour - it's gone from pristine white to dark black.

Otherwise the case looks the same, but the insides have changed a bit, too: the Elite comes with a 120GB hard disk, compared with the 20GB model in the original box (the disk stores downloaded games and demos, saved games, music and movies).

It also sports an HDMI port, which allows the console to be directly connected to a high-definition television (if it has the same socket) for the best quality picture.

That said, it's still possible to make the same connection using the component output, which was available on the original, so we're not sure this represents too big a deal.

The workings of the Xbox 360 remain the same - games can be played by popping the disc in the drive, but it can also be used to access online games and demos and even to talk to people using Windows Messenger, from the Dashboard.

The Elite can also be used as a Media Center Extender and play content from a Windows Media Center or Vista PC over your home network. It's easy to set up and a cinch to get to all of those features. We're fans of Media Center, and to have a device that works well for media streaming is a bonus.

As the innards are substantially the same as before, noise remains a problem - the powerful graphics hardware in particular requires a lot of cooling, so the very loud fan from the original Xbox 360 is still here in the Elite. It's not loud enough to distract from games or music, but it's still a background annoyance.

Existing 360 users should stick with their consoles, possibly with an add-on hard disk, but for newcomers the Elite certainly lives up to its name as the best all-round games console available today.