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New Sony PlayStation 3 PS3 Slim
The web has been crawling with rumours about a slimmer version of Sony's PlayStation 3 for months, and due to some cunning denial and obfuscation on Sony's part they have remained precisely that: rumours. Until now.
The PS3 Slim has actually been released, and it is exactly what the various unverified spyshots have revealed. A flatter, less-wide, matte-finished PlayStation 3 that costs quite a bit less that the original model. Yes, it's cheaper, and with the release of a cheaper new model, this means you should be seeing the prices of the older models fall.
Is It Better Than The Original Playstation 3?
What the new PS3 does have over the older model is lower power consumption and quieter operation. Not that the original machine was ever particularly loud (especially compared to the herd of braying donkeys that is the XBox 360 spinning up a disc), but the PS3 is definitely less noisy.
Part of the reduction in cost and power consumption is due to Sony using a new 45nm chip instead of the original 65nm chip. This should also assuage fears that the new slim console will be prone to overheating or hardware failure like its Microsoft Xbox 360 rival.
What has been removed is PlayStation 2 backwards-compatibility (although that feature has been missing from PS3 since the first generation) and the ability to install the Yellow Dog Linux operating system. The former feature was dropped ages ago and we'd guess that the latter feature is only a loss for a very tiny percentage of people, so the vast majority of potential PS3 owners are getting a device just as capable as the original.
Did They Leave Any Hardware Out?
Luckily, no. You still get the fully kitted-out PlayStation 3, which comes with a Blu-ray player, hard-drive and Wi-Fi out of the box. The hard drive is a standard 2.5" SATA laptop drive, so it's easy and cheap to replace or upgrade to another drive in the future. Heck, if you're made of money, you could equip your new PS3 with an SSD (Solid State Disk) right now for blazing speed and near total silence except for the PlayStation's whispering cooling fan.
Just in case you were wondering, since the device has shrunk so much, the power supply is still internal. No need for another huge power brick on the floor.
Design Changes
While the internals haven't changed much, the exterior has been revamped considerably. The piano-gloss black shell is gone as well as the swanky touch-sensitive power standby and disc eject switches. You'll have to expend the effort of actually pressing a button to fish your Blu-ray disc out of the machine instead of that lazy swipe earlier PlayStation 3 owners could enjoy. On the plus-side, the new finish isn't nearly as susceptible to fingerprints and dust
Making Connections
At the front, you still have the same two USB 2.0 ports, very handy for plugging USB media and recharging the wireless DualShock 3 controllers.
Round the back, you get the same selection of ports that the plumper earlier model sported. There's the familiar PlayStation A/V Multi Out which allows you to make an analogue audio and video connection to your TV and hi-fi. It arrives bundled with a basic triple RCA stereo audio and composite video cable. If you want high definition for an analogue HDTV, you will need to buy a PlayStation-compatible component cable.
There's also a standard TOSLink optical S/PDIF audio cable that allows you to connect to a digital receiver for 5.1 surround sound. Next to both of these, there's a standard HDMI port, which means you can connect your PlayStation 3 to an HDTV at full 1080p resolution and to an audio receiver capable of decoding the new Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio formats for 7.1 surround—a must for getting the most out of Blu-ray discs. If your receiver can only accept LPCM, the PS3 can handily convert the new formats to a linear bitstream.
The PlayStation 3 does come ready-equipped with handy Wi-Fi capability, but for the fastest, most rock-solid connection, you can use the provided gigabit Ethernet port. This makes it possible to stream media from a household server and use the PlayStation online for multiplayer gaming and web-browsing. You can watch YouTube in full screen on your TV.
The Sony PlayStation 3 is now finally the same price as the Microsoft XBox 360, and it's a far more reliable, quiet and better-equipped device. Online gaming is free (as opposed to the Microsoft subscription model), and you don't need to purchase Wi-Fi adapters, plus you get a Blu-ray player. All in all, we think it's a bit of a bargain.
Enjoy!
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| This article was published on Friday 28 August, 2009. |
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| Current Reviews: 0 |
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