The nature of the X-ray source RX J1914+24 has been the subject of much debate .
It shows a prominent period of 569 sec in X-rays and the optical/infra-red : in most models this has been interpreted as the binary orbital period .
We present our analysis of new XMM-Newton and Chandra data .
We find a longer term trend in the XMM-Newton data and power at 556 and 585 sec in 5 sets of data .
It is not clear if they are produced as a result of a beat between a longer intrinsic period and the 569 sec modulation or if they are due to secular variations .
We obtain a good fit to the XMM-Newton spectrum with a low temperature thermal plasma model with an edge at 0.83keV .
This model implies an unabsorbed bolometric X-ray luminosity of 1 \times 10 ^ { 33 } ergs s ^ { -1 } ( for a distance of 1kpc ) - this is 2 orders of magnitude lower than our previous estimate ( derived using a different model ) .
If the distance is much less , as the absorption derived from the X-ray fits suggest , then it is even lower at \sim 3 \times 10 ^ { 31 } ergs s ^ { -1 } .