The PS3 Slim

The console that’s been talked about months before it release is finally here, the PS3 slim. Coming in at £250 seems to be a bargain, and it is.

The PS3 Slim is essentially just like your standard PS3, it comes with a Blu-Ray player, DVD upscaler and everything else you would expect. Sony did however remove the feature of installing another operating system, Linux, and backwards compatibility isn’t there. That aside the Slim is a sexy, quieter, lighter model compared to its predecessors. The hard drive is bigger, twice the size of the first model and it sounds as quiet as Agent 47.

My first impressions of the slim, when it was revealed at Gamescom were not good. I didn’t like the look of it and I missed the glossy piano finish. Looking at it now in my room, makes it look as good as any other console, if not better.

My previous Playstation cost me about £500, with two games when it was first released, and to be honest wasn’t the greatest piece of hardware I’d bought. Now times seem to have changed, Sony has mended the issues I used to dislike (although some still remain), with the release of the Slim, the future looks bright.

The PS3 I bought two years ago was on its way out, the Ethernet port and Wi-Fi adapter weren’t working at %100.  So I traded the console in and got £180 off.

The slim put me on the Net as every console should, the words plug and play actually had a meaning to them. Finally I didn’t have to slave over internet connectivity.

My old PS3 used to heat my room like a radiator, so hot that I bought a tower fan to cool me down. The slim sounds very quiet and the heat produced is at a minimum. I can play for hours without even having to open a window.

The hard drive is big enough for all of your multi-media needs, boosting 120GB’s of storage. Such a high number from such a small machine is very impressive.

Sadly Sony didn’t include backwards compatibility which is a real shame. PS3 games aren’t cheap and PS1/PS2 games can produce just as much enjoyment that Playstation 3 games offer. A feature that could have easily been included in the console and hopefully will be, if possible, in a future Firmware update.

Around the back of the console there is a HDMI port for high definition gaming, like the previous. Sadly Sony still don’t include their own HDMI cable in the box. Instead you’ll have to buy one. Included in the box is the standard AV cable for standard viewing, a HDMI cable wouldn’t go a miss.

All in all the PS3 Slim is a far better gaming experience than the last, for me anyway. It’s Quieter, slimmer, lighter, less heat is produced all of which are qualities my previous model couldn’t match, however the lack of backwards compatibility is something it could and throwing that away wasn’t easy.

Price  9/10

Features  8.7/10

Design  8.5/10

Hard Drive  9/10

Overall 8.6/10

By Dan-Whitesnake