PSP-2000 Slim review

When the PSP unveiled itself in America on March 24, 2005, ten years after the release of the original Playstation and five years after the release of the Playstation 2, it sold a smashing 200,000 units at launch, and totaled about 500,000 units at the end of the first month. It was a breakthrough in handheld gaming devices, and would soon have many hit games to put it to the top. The PSP was great at the time, but the price was quite high at $249. In 2007, the price dropped to $169 for the console, and $199 for the starter pack, making it more affordable then ever.
(Image compliments of Wikipedia)

Hardware:
The recent limited edition Daxter Entertainment goes for only $199 and comes with the PSP Slim, the charger, a 1 GB SD Memory card, Daxter the game, and the Family Guy: Freakin’ sweet collection. I have had three PSP’s over the span from its release up until now and I can tell you the PSP slim is a lot better than the original and to me is a very good deal even to the Star Wars pack, which only comes with the, “Ceramic White” PSP with the Darth Vader logo on back, the charger, and Star Wars Battlefront the game. Now, why get this when you could get the sparkly silver PSP with the 1 GB memory card and a whole DVD at no extra cost? I couldn’t resist.

I do not work at Sony so I don’t know if the silver and white PSP are made in the same production line, but I can tell you that the white one was just put together wrong. When I got mine it had a dent in the back, a patch of pixels that would only show green, and paint that wasn’t painted in a smooth manner. These problems were NOT existing with my silver PSP. It has such a nice paint color and I have had no regrets with my purchase. There is a few cons with the PSP Slim, but the pros outweigh the cons if you are looking to purchase the new PSP model. It does have a cheap feel to it when you hold it and makes you feel like you could easily break it in your hands, but nothing has materialized out of those concerns. The problem there is that the PSP is just so light! Even with the oddly-light body weight, I have full confidence that my PSP will have a very long lifetime. The screen is the only other complaint that I have - you must get a screen protector when you buy the slim because the LCD screen will make weird blotches if you put even the slightest pressure, but when this happened to me it went away within an hour.

Games:
The PSP plays games using the UMD (Universal Media Disk) format media, which can hold up to 1.8 GB of data. This large storage capacity makes it easy for games to be made both long and detailed. An example of this capacity is the recent Grand Theft Auto ports. Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories are both ports to the PSP of the original large format games and they play very well. It is impressive to see how well the tiny UMD holds such a large game. There are hundreds of games out on the PSP so far and plenty more will be coming and from the ones that I have played there is a lot of different games being produced and a lot more creativity coming to this system, so it is worth the buy if you are looking for fun and unique games.

Conclusion:
The slim PSP is a great buy! If you are going to get a PSP its more available now than it has ever been and the deals on content packs are great. The PSP controls do not have two joysticks or even four trigger/bumper buttons forcing companies to come up with new ways of using the controller, which creates new types of games with exciting ways to play. The PSP also has a camera now, and Internet radio in the latest (3.80) firmware. It has been able to play music since its release making it a great MP3 player and it can play good videos on the 4.3’’ 16:9 ratio screen. It has been my favorite console for a while because in my opinion the games being created on the Xbox 360 are getting old and the PSP is getting better online/WiFi support every day.