In June, 2004, Astro-Med introduced the Dash 8Xe. The Dash 8Xe is the result of several upgrades to the Dash 8X. This includes a 36 Gigabyte data capture drive, GBit Ethernet, and USB 2.0. All these features are standard for the Dash 8Xe.

For customers who own the Dash 8X, the data caputre drive is either 9 or 18 Gigabytes, Ethernet is 10/100BaseT, and USB is 1.1.  The information below petains to both the Dash 8Xe and the Dash 8X.