Sony PlayStation 3 Slim (PS3) > Reviews (117)

Hi all, i figured that i enjoy reviewing games a lot, but what about the consoles themselves, i'm going to take a look at one of my personal favorites, The Playstation3, this baby's right up there on my list with the original Nintendo entertainment system.
I'm just going to say now that i'm going to be as non bias as possible here, although i love the PS3 i'm not going to make a single comparison, I love all games consoles equally!

So any way, this is the Playstation 3 slim, straight out of the box, as expected it's noticeably less bulky than it's older brother, and it's got a matt finish as opposed to the dust collecting gloss coating on the original console, so already i'm taken in by it's looks. Because of the amount of hardware in the machine there's not a great reduction in weight, but you won't be carrying it around much once it's been plonked underneath the telly, it's still lovely and curvy too, it's truly a model console and a nice improvement on the original. Instead of those irritating touch sensitive buttons the slim opts for "actual buttons" so you get your points there sony.
It has all your connections, USB HD and the like, the power lead is a lot smaller and has a flying eight connection now which is nice, my advice is that you shouldn't be without an HD cable if your planning on taking advantage of the PS3's full capabilities.

So with all connections plugged in and ready to go it's time to switch on, it's a relatively quiet console running on a nice whirring hum, if your pushing the console to it's limits the fan speed increases and decreases accordingly, rather than just running full speed at all intervals, even at full speed it manages to be fairly quiet. The console does give off a bit of heat but it's not a concerning amount and only really heats up after the console has been left on for a long while, or is running at full power for an extended period, this mostly happens when gaming but DVD's and Bluerays don't seem to heat the console up as much, my advice is to make sure that the console is well ventilated, the vents run all round the console, I tend to very carefully vacuum the vents and connections about once a week, as with any console dust is your worst enemy! Remember blowing dust out of old Nintendo cartridges? This is basically the evolved version of that principle.

The consoles main entertainment hub is great looking and I think it's the most user friendly of all the next gen consoles, unless you really deeply explore the settings menu you won't find anything over complicated, if you want to optimize the settings for your T.V there are plenty of guides on the internet that can help you out, I found them very helpful when trying to optimize y internet connection for the Playstation network (PSN), it was ultimately very simple but there are a number of things you could mess up in the settings so a guide is helpful, after all you want to get the best of the best with your next gen console.

The Blueray/DVD player works flawlessly, it still remains one of the most popular Blueray players on the market, it's a pop in and go affair, console goes on and the disc plays automatically and there's very little load time with discs.

You can use your same trusty old controllers, they didn't really need changing anyway, once the controller is fully charged it lasts a good length of time. The lead for the controller is a fair length but i still like to have one plugged in and on standby, but then again i do a lot of gaming!

The slim is a fair bit faster than it's predecessor, it runs on a new processor and it's worked out well for them, load times for discs are reduced greatly and very rarely encounters any issues. If i had one gripe it would be the download speeds from PSN, perhaps it's because the PSN is busy all the time, but it just seems to take forever to download anything, even with the internet connection optimized, it can be particularly annoying if you want to download the interactive magazines, by the time you've downloaded one the next ones already out! Make sure you come armed with a good internet connection speed! However you wont encounter much trouble playing Multi-player online, which is free of course and that's fabulous.

Overall the Playstation 3 is an excellent console and the slim version is worth the investment if you don't own a PS3, if you do own a PS3 it might be worth waiting for this little gem to go down in price!
It hits all the right buttons (bad gaming pun), it works well and it looks great, it takes pride and place in the dusty cramped gap underneath my telly.

©peckinpigeon