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The elephant in the room for any discussion of the official Xbox 360 wireless-n adapter from Microsoft is price. In comparison to USB 802.11n adapters for Windows PCs which tend to ship with MSRPs of 50-80 dollars USD (and often retail for much less due to high margins for retailers), the Microsoft adapter lists for 99.99 USD (and can typically be found for just under 90). This fits in with the already established "Microsoft overcharges" narrative that found its voice with the high price of Xbox 360 hard drives. However, this review isn't around to stoke that fire. What I'll look at is what the adapter does, and whether it's worth the money that Microsoft is charging for the people who should be taking a long hard look at it. You'll know by end if you're part of that target audience. This review focuses less on the 802.11n adapter's differences with its 802.11b/g predecessor, and more on how it stacks up to the default wired solution.
Design
Xbox 360 Wireless-n Adapter.
If nothing else, the Microsoft adapter fits the Xbox 360 well from a visual standpoint. The matte black surface matches the Elite's finish, and the adapter clips on to back of an Xbox 360 painlessly. A short USB cord stretches just far enough to reach the rear USB port of the Xbox 360 next to the Ethernet port. This can be nice, as it's great not to have a lot of slack cable hanging from the back of your system from an aesthetic point of view. However, it does make the life of any HD-DVD add-on owners out there more complicated, since this is typically where the HD-DVD add-on is connected. If this is you, the adapter also has a pair of "feet" that swing out from one side that allow the adapter to sit on a flat surface without issue. If you're clinging to your HD-DVD player add-on (and I'm not judging), you can plug the adapter into the rear of the HD-DVD add-on with little difficulty (albeit making your Xbox 360 accoutrement seem even more disjointed).
Setup
With the wireless adapter plugged in, you're good to go in all likelihood, unless you've never updated your Xbox 360 over Xbox Live (or even certain more recent Xbox 360 titles that had included system updates). If that's the case (and I'm wondering how you found us and this review if it is), then the included installation disc will handle most of the dirty work. Otherwise, you'll then find Wireless settings under the Networking options in the System Settings tab in the NXE. For most users, this will be as simple as selecting the appropriate wireless network (i.e., yours, or a friendly/unassuming neighbor's) and entering any necessary passwords, whether WEP or WPA/2. However, a quick caveat: the Xbox 360 will only allow connections via either wired or wireless, and wireless functions will not be enabled if the Xbox 360 detects a wired connection (so no connecting to two networks for media streaming, in case you were thinking about it). Reception was good throughout a decent sized apartment, with no detectable problems in signal quality. The Xbox 360 adapter also supports Windows Connect Now, which allows you to export wireless settings to a USB drive, which can then be used with the Xbox 360 to make setup even simpler.
This is where the previous wireless solutions for the Xbox 360 suffered. While streaming music is a relatively bandwidth light application, the increasing emphasis on video streaming from Windows PCs made things more complicated. Put simply, loading a standard definition video file over a network wirelessly on the Xbox 360 would take 10-12 seconds, and much longer for HD video files (if they would load at all). Windows Media Center Extender mode also performed poorly with the Wireless G adapter.
Thankfully, this has been fixed; there's little to no delay for standard definition video content streaming from a PC, and HD video offers generally acceptable levels of performance, as long as a file isn't too large (4 GB seemed to be the limit in this case). There were increased buffering times to loading streamed videos in comparison to a wired connection, and if you're streaming very, very high bit-rate content, you may encounter difficulties. However, these difficulties are also present to a lesser degree while wired.
As a side-note, Microsoft, would it kill you to introduce a gigabit LAN into future Xbox 360 configurations? If media streaming is as important a part of the Xbox's strategy, it seems like a no-brainer to include a connection more capable of HD streaming than the standard 10/100 LAN the current crop of Xbox 360's possess. Media Center can still be sluggish, but there are so many factors that this can be attributed to that it's unlikely that this is the fault of the Wireless-N adapter.
Xbox 360 Wireless-n Adapter.
Should you buy it?
If you stream HD media often through your 360 and wires are not a feasible solution, then absolutely. While it retails for 100.00 MSRP, you can find it for less than 90 online. However, if media streaming in a room far away from a router isn't an issue for you, then there's little point in paying the money for slightly less clutter behind your entertainment center. You'll notice no mention was made of online play here, because there was no tangible affect on Xbox Live play whatsoever. There was also little to no affect with the previous generation of wireless adapter either. 802.11n in this case benefits only media streaming. Buy or not with that in mind.
Pros:
* The standard benefits of a wireless solution: no wires
* Well built and attractive finish
* Well thought out and designed (mostly)
* Painless setup/connection process
* Windows Connect now support
* Supports 5 Ghz for decreased interference.
Cons
* Short cord from the device can be problematic
* Still not as fast as a wired network.
* Price
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