PlayStation 3 Slim
Volumetrically, the 120GB PS3 Slim takes up approximately 33 percent less space than its counterpart, and at 7.05 pounds it’s about 36 percent lighter, too. Let’s be honest, a 11 pound console was absolutely ridiculous, and we welcome the console now joining its competitors in a more reasonable weight class — though it’s far from the utterly dramatic size reduction we saw in the PS2 slimline. You can pick up a stand for $24, a bit steep since it should just come bundled, but even without the console sits vertically with what appears to be relatively good stability. Connectivity-wise, we’re looking at the same setup as the most recent PS3 iterations, including just two USB 2.0 ports and 802.11b/g — no Draft-N, which is a shame.
The good news about the BD-ROM drive? It still keeps your discs safe in the event the console gets moved about — and if you’ve ever accidentally tapped your Xbox 360 the wrong way and found that slotted copy of Fallout 3 has now been rendered unusable by scratches, you know exactly how appreciated this feature is. The bad news? It’s still just 2x speed, and none of this changes the fundamental use of PS3, meaning all those hassles of installing games while your Xbox 360-owning friends get to jump right in are still there. The AC cord has lost its ground pin and is actually the exact same, quasi-standardized cable that works with the PS2 and many laptop batteries, and just like the PS2 fat-to-slimline transition, the physical on-off switch on the backside has been made redundant and subsequently ousted.
Just above the disc drive on the front, the PlayStation logo can no longer twist to stay upright when the console stands vertically. We’re sure not everyone bothered to realign it, but how much cost was really saved by cutting out the option? It’s also experienced an inverse “Pleasantville” moment, whereby all its color has been removed in favor of an all-white design. The onetime touch sensitive panels for power and eject have been replaced with physical, matte buttons, ones that actually click when pressed, surrounded by a highly glossy surface. We actually really dig the new buttons and having some physical feedback when we’re wanting to swap discs. Directly under that is a front-facing panel that can be removed to access the hard drive (more on that later).
Go further back in the PS3’s life cycle, however, and you begin to see just how much Sony’s stricken from the hardware since its November 2006 debut. Two additional USB 2.0 ports, flash memory readers, and SACD playback have all met an untimely fate over these last years, but none of them sting quite as much as the loss of PlayStation 2 backwards compatibility. Sony can talk all they want about how people aren’t looking at the past, but legacy support is something we’ve come to expect from our game consoles, and truth be told, the PS2 has one of the most impressive lineups in history of the industry (no offense meant, TurboGrafx-16 fanatics). We get it, Sony, you still haven’t figured out how to emulate the PS2 on Cell and you don’t want to waste the money / effort on throwing more chips inside the chassis when only a small portion of your audience will ever use it (sound familiar?), but why not give us a second, slightly more expensive model that does play (and upscales!) our old favorites instead of pushing those dedicated fans into seeking used systems from GameStop or eBay?
Looking past any potential aversion to matte, anyone picking up a PlayStation 3 Slim is getting a significantlly better product than an early or even mid adopter. Sony really has come through with a smaller, lighter, quieter, and more energy-efficient piece of hardware, and at $300, even if your sole interest is a Blu-ray player, it’s a hard value to beat. More than anything, it’s that price point that’s sure to draw comparisons to the now-$300 120GB Xbox 360 Elite, and someone buying their first current-gen system now has a much more compelling reason to pick Sony than they did less than 30 days ago. [Engadget]
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