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29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
PSP Slim&Lite ---> awesome!!, December 12, 2007
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
So I have owned the Sony PSP Star Wars Battlefront Renegade Squadron Entertainment Pack - Ceramic White for about 3 weeks now. I never owned the original PSP, and mostly got this for "remote play" capabilities with the PS3 (e.g. remote access to your PS3 using the PSP and a wifi connection). Simply put, the PSP is AWESOME. Seriously.
The Good:
1. Aesthetics/Design/Construction.
The white slim looks and feels great. I briefly owned the black slim before returning it and getting the white one. The black looked slick, but it was a real fingerprint magnet. The white looks better, very sleek and clean. Fingerprints do not show up on it much either, which is great. The silver slim was just too cheap looking, like the silver was spray painted on, so I never considered it. Nice how the back is totally flat also, unlike the old psp. The non-spring door battery cover is fine. I was worried after reading reviews of how it is cheap feeling and fragile, but it's just fine. It is easy to open/close, gives a nice "snap" when it opens or closes, won't break if you're not rough with it (care is required), and eliminates worries about the spring door mechanism from malfunctioning. I never had an original PSP 1000, but the slim feels solid and not cheap at all to me.
2. Screen.
Very bright, nice 480x272 resolution. Movies and games just look great on it.
3. Music.
MP3s (and WMA supported also) sound great on the PSP. The visualization has about six different "patterns" that are interesting. The interface looks good, better in fact than the music player interface on the PS3, and features all the important info, and can be toggled on/off also. Recent firmware now allows for music to be played back while viewing photos.
4. Video.
Ability to run full 480x272 video off of files stored on the memory stick was a contentious issue in the first couple years, as Sony had evidently crippled video file on the memory stick to a max resolution of 320x240 in order to "encourage" users to buy overpriced UMDs. Several months ago, Sony saw the error of its ways and relented to user requests and now the PSP is fully able to play back 480x272 (the PSP's native resolution) video off of videos stored on your memory stick. Using the freeware "psp video 9," you can create video files ranging from 700mb (~1.5hrs video) to 1gb (~2hrs) that look and sound as good as a UMD movie.
Functionality is great too, with the newer firmwares you can search through your video file for scenes by varying intervals (1,2, or 5 minute), which is great since your own video files will be a single file. This is really not to be underestimated in its usefulness, plus it is really cool to use!
5. Photos.
The photo viewer is pretty cool as well, but could use a bit more customization. You can view standard file types (jpg, gif, bmp, and tiff I believe) and have a few slideshow and zoom options. The background of photos that are not 480x272 resolution is white, which cannot be changed to another color (like black), which is not a big deal but I hope Sony will allow you to use a black background in the future.
6. Games.
This is of course the main feature of the PSP. I wasn't expecting the games to be too good, but there are quite a few very good games. So far, my favorites are: Silent Hill Origins, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty/Vice City Stories, NBA 08, Outrun 2006, Burnout Legends, FIFA 08, Madden 08, Legend of Heroes, Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron, Daxter, Wipeout Pure, and Siphon Filter: Dark Mirror. You would be amazed at the graphics, gameplay, story, audio (music/voiceovers) this little system is capable of! Some of these are just great games.
7. Remote Play/Location Free Player.
This is the original reason I bought the PSP, to remotely (via wifi) connect to my PS3 and access the music, video, photos, and even games on it. When it works, it is just really really cool. The PS3 interface shows up on the PSP screen (which can be adjusted for quality based on the bandwidth you want to set it to -- there are five different settings), and you can play movies, trailers, photos, audio, even some games (like Lair!) on your PSP. I haven't used Location Free player yet, but basically it is like using a Slingbox on the PSP, so that you can watch TV, access your DVR, etc., on your PSP using a wifi connection. I plan to try it someday for sure.
8. Internet.
You can use the browser to surf the internet on the PSP when you have access to wifi. It works well enough, and the key input system is pretty decent for a non-QWERTY/touchscreen input system.
9. Functionality/Performance.
The much maligned battery life, is really not that bad at all. Using the PSP to listen to mp3s, watch videos, play games, I get about 3-4 hours of usage (depending on how much video/games I watch/play), which gets me through average usage easily. For longer trips, I have the 2200mAh (oem) extended battery which works great and will give me roughly 6-8 hours of usage. Incredible. The battery will stick out the back, but you can go to dealextreme-dot-com and buy a bigger battery cover (black or white) for less than four dollars. Sony will evidently release an official extended battery kit with a bigger battery cover in black and silver (no white though, booo!) for about 45 dollars sometime in the next month or so.
During gameplay, I have never had any slowdown of framerate or crashing EVER. Not once on over 14 games that I now own. Great performance. Videos and music also perform flawlessly. Load times are not that bad, and don't bother me much as it is only in the beginning mostly, and so gameplay during games is very quick.
The XMB (cross media bar) user interface is fantastic and so easy to use and rather stylish as well. Love using it. Video out to your TV is a cool feature that I have not yet used.
The Not-so-good:
1. Fingerprint magnet (black PSP). White one has no issues with this.
2. Cannot change background color to black when viewing photos.
3. Wifi is 802.11b only, no 802.11g (faster) support... yet.
4. Remote play is hit or miss regarding connectivity. Still not easy to connect to the PS3. Hopefully, Sony will improve upon this with updates. Remote on/off of the PS3 works well enough though.
5. Soon to be released extended battery kit will not include a white cover. No biggie, just go to dealextreme-dot-com to find a white one from Hong Kong (cheap too).
6. Limited audio/video codec support, including no DIVX/XVID support yet for videos or AAC for audio. But using PSP Video 9 (freeware) to convert videos works just fine to convert videos of most types into viewable 480x272 (or less if you want) mp4 video.
7. UMD spinning noise is a bit loud/harsh on the ears, but luckily it spins rarely and usually at the beginning of the game or rarely during gameplay (e.g. loading new levels, etc.).
8. Volume on audio/video playback from memory stick is TOO QUIET! Setting "dynamic normalization" under "audio" settings helps it get louder, but still it's too soft. The volume from the speakers is okay but I always use headphones so I cannot really judge it.
9. Expensive assessories. Getting a couple extended batteries, a battery charger, a nice protective case, a screen protector, some UMD cases, headphones, wrist strap, a few games, a nice memory stick pro duo (I got the 8gb one -- you won't want less than that), and the price quickly jumps up to almost PS3 range (easily over 500 dollars).
10. Cool accessories only available in Japan, including a camera, GPS, and DMB (mobile television). I don't really miss those though.
Bottom Line:
As you can judge from my lengthy review, I love my new white PSP slim. It is so fun, versatile, and cool (remote play will impress your friends and family) that you will not regret plopping down some serious cash to build up your PSP slim system!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
can't get better than this, December 20, 2007
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
I had the original PSP, very sturdy and downright portable gaming to have. Unfortunately mine broke and to spend another 200+ to replace....not!! Now Sony brings out the Star Wars limited edition; any true fan cannot pass this up. At first holding of the item, I thought I got swindled. Felt like someone just took the insides of the machine and left the shell. Same great perfomance of the original but so much lighter. Although it doesnt feel as sturdy as the original but within minutes of playing; you'll forget about the PSP of old. In a nutshell, to replace a broken PSP or acquire for the first time, this is it. Especially with free shipping and no tax....
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Some Things Others May Not Have Mentioned Yet, November 4, 2007
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
Ok, I've read most of the reviews here on the "new" PSP Slim and I just want to chime in with a few observations of my own others may not have mentioned yet and also some of the things I desperately wanted to find out before I made my own purchase. Note: I've owned the original PSP for nearly 2 yrs now so I have a lot of experience with both models now.
First of all, I know a lot of people knock the PSP in geneal, I used to always hear Gamestop employees dissing it compared to the DS all the time, but I'm so glad I didn't listen to them. I simply love my PSP!!! As time goes by I have only learned to appreciate it more and more. I must admit I am a pretty diehard Sony Playstation apologist at this point, I might as well be on their payroll, but what can I say? They had me hooked with the PS1.
By now everyone has pretty much stated the following unanimously about this new model: Yes, it i super lite compared to the original. Yes it does seem more cheaply made and fragile. Yes the new UMD door is more flimsy, Yes the new card slot cover is odd and delicate. And all of these comments I read before making my purchase made me slightly apprehensive, but now that I've owned my new slim one for a while now let me say this: At first the super lightness throws you off, but after a week or so you totally adjust and you can't imagine it being lighter again. If you try to go back to your old PSP later, it feels like your going back to your original Gameboy or some cell phone from the late 90's. The old PSP seems like a brick after you get adjusted to the slim. The new UMD door is kinda flimsy, but if you treat it kindly it is cetainly aduquate. Same goes for the memory stick slot cover, but just be gentle and you should have no problem. That being said, these two fragile parts are the primary reason I would not ever recommend the slim PSP for a child who is too young to take care of precison equipment yet. This is the 1 and only major reason I think the DS has any sort of advantage over the PSP, this and the game selection for the kiddies. But if you're a more serious gamer and somewhat of a gear head, the PSP is totally the portable choice for you (more on this later).
Now, as far as the new upgrades: I haven't played all of my old games yet, but I could swear while playing a game, the UMD has to get accessed a lot less now. Depending on the game I can be playing for several minutes now w/o the disk ever spinning. Although the old PSP had those 2 little speaker holes near the bottom on the front, they were actually faux! The sound actually emanated from the 2 little holes on the bottom on the silver trim. This practically made no sense so now that the speakers are truly positioned in the front, this makes the sound somewhat louder and more direct, however the max volume setting is still somewhat lower than you might like unless you are in an utterly quiet location.
One thing that I was really, really hoping they would remedy when they came out with a new PSP was a second analog stick on the right side. This is sadly the 1 last feature I feel the PSP is still sorely lacking. Too many games, esp. of the 1st or 3rd person shooter type suffer greatly by having to improvise with watered down control schemes which hampers 2 of my favorite PSP games: SOCOM and this new SW:Battleground which came with my Slim (more about Battleground later). Seriously, how hard would it have been to add another stick?
Now the ability to connect to a TV: This to me was the primary selling-point for me to upgrade my PSP going in. In some ways it's the ability I always wanted for my portable systems going back to my first Gameboy, but again sadly, Sony fell somewhat short of the mark. This was a bittersweet upgrade, let me explain further: Ok, you should know by now that they sell composite (5 plug) cables to hook up your PSP to your TV and more traditional RCA (3 plug) types. This is a mixed back of confusion b/c if you buy the RCA's you can project everything from your PSP to your television (pics, music, video from your memory stick) BUT... (BIG But) You can't play your PSP games or UMD movies on your TV using ONLY the RCA cables. Now, on the other hand, with the composite cables you can view and do all, but alas things are still not quite "perfect". Viewing the cross media bar (XMB) and videos comes out just fine. (Surprisingly the UMD movies blown up actually look about 90 - 95% as good as an annomorphic DVD played with on a progressive scan DVD player on a HD monitor). Also somewhat surprising to me was that you have screen setup options for your tv ratio (4:3 or 16:9) plus progressive or interlaced mode. (BTW, if you set it to 4:3 mode it will display everything in letterbox on your more "square" TV screen.) BUT again all is not well. When you surf the web, which is actually pretty cool on your TV, You get a small black border all the way around your viewing field, which is manageable, I guess, because it doesn't take away too much. But... when you play a game, I still don't quite get the faux pas miscalculation found here. For some odd ridiculous reason, not only does the machine automatically give you a lame black border around the screen area, but, and this nearly unforgivable, it distorts the screen ratio. Everything is sort of stretched and squashed. This applies whether you have your screen settings set to 4:3 or 16:9. This absolutely makes no sense especially if you have a modern 16:9 widescreen television; they should have just left the ratio the same. And even if your TV is like mine and you can alter the stretchiness of your viewing ratio, the PSP displays the screen (while playing games only) in such a way that no matter what your picture will be distorted. Either too wide or too skinny. I mean, I guess many of you out there would care less about this at your home, because it doesn't really hinder playing your games in any way, but these sorts of issues can simply make me lose my mind. This is the primary reason I have to rate the new slim at a 4 vs. a 5. I am praying that one day in the near future they will release a network update that will somehow solve this screen ratio problem. And yes, blown up, the graphics appear nearly, but not quite as good as PS2, but certainly better than the old PS1. And still, I feel sorry for those of you who don't have composite connections on your TV b/c you're S.O.L. if you want to play your games on TV. Also, what if I want to share my pictures with someone at their place and they don't have an extra composite connection or high-def TV? Do I have to go out and purchase and carry around with me a second cable just to have the much more common RCA configuration?
Now the game that comes with this white edition, and BTW, don't forget to get a 1GB (or larger) Memory Stick Duo because your going to need one. Star Wars Battlefront Rogue Squadron is one of the best infrastructure multiplayer online games for the PSP. Only SOCOM can rival it if you're into shooters, but I must confess I haven't played all of the PSP online shooters out there so there could be others. SW: Battlefront II for the PSP plain out sucked because of its lack of online and campaign modes, but this edition is more of the real deal. A couple of nitpicks by me though are: I am used to playing shooters like Warhawk on my PS3 now and these super tiny claustrophobic levels in Battlefront:RS somewhat take away from the fun. Combine this with the very simplistic level design and you start to have a lot less strategy options when battling others. You just basically run around and face people up face-2-face and whoever shoots faster or has a more powerful gun will win. The ability to lock on to targets is fine, but this control scheme is much more finely tuned in a game like SOCOM for the PSP. The lack of the ability to lock on to your enemies in SW:BFII for the PSP made the experience utterly dreadful when trying to shoot your targets. Also, in a game like Warhawk I am spoiled with the fluid spot-on controls of your avatar. In Rouge Squadron this is something to be desired. Moving your character around the playing field is a somewhat jerky affair and the turning around to do a 180 to look behind you seems to take entirely too long and is hardly smooth. But hey, for the PSP I still think it's a more than worthy attempts at multi online play.
1 last thing, let me reiterate for those of you who have never owned a PSP to date. Even though I have a computer for the web, and a PS3, and an iPod, I still use the heck out of my PSP for pics, games, and music on the go. Also as a very convenient podcast catcher/RSS feed handler, if you're into that kind of thing. I never knew I'd be using my PSP so much in this way before I got one. This is one thing my iPod can't do and something I rather not clutter around with on my computer if I don't have to. And although I haven't quite found the ideal way to capitalize on this function yet, you can pair up or marry your PSP with your PS3 and you can actually view everything saved up on your PS3 at home on your PSP anywhere you can get a broadband connection!!! Although you can't play your PS3 games by this method or watch you DVD's or Blu-rays yet, I still think they will make better use of this ability in the future.I really hope all of this info in my review helps you all out there because it's the review I wish I could have read before I made up my mind to buy the new slim PSP.
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