Sony PSP Review |
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| Author:
| ravn
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| Submitted: |
05-Dec-2005 20:20:33 |
| Imported From: |
zZine (original author: ravn)
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| In case you've been living under a rock, the Sony PSP is,Sony's attempt at breaking into the hand-held gaming market. This is a pretty risky move, seeing as how Nintendo has pretty much dominated the hand-held gaming arena up until now.
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In case you've been living under a rock, the Sony PSP is,Sony's attempt at breaking into the hand-held gaming market. This is a pretty risky move, seeing as how Nintendo has pretty much dominated the hand-held gaming arena up until now. I got one of these for my birthday recently, so I've had some time now to play around with it and see what's what. So let's get on with it.
As always, I like to start with a basic run-down of the specifications, so here we go:
4.3 inch LCD screen (16:9 aspect ratio, 480x272 resolution - that's wide-screen, folks)
USB 2.0
Memory Stick Duo slot
802.11b WiFi
UMD Drive
IR Port
Stereo Sound
Battery Pack
AC Adapter
That's not saying anything helpful, however. What does all that mean for you?
The screen: It's pretty big (for a portable), it's wide-screen, and it's bright (according to Sony: Maximum luminance 180 / 130 / 80cd/m2 [when using battery pack], Maximum luminance 200 / 180 / 130 / 80cd/m2 [when using AC adaptor]). Is it any good? YES. The PSP has one of the nicest screens I've ever seen. However, it gets dirty and smudged very easily, and you had better hope you don't scratch it. A screen protector will greatly help you out here, as well as help to rectify a serious glare issue.
USB:An absolute necessity these days. The PSP uses a mini-USB connector located on the top of the unit. It works wonderfully, and you can copy stuff to and from it via your PC. My only complaint with it is that you have to put the PSP into USB Mode to do this, which is annoying.
Memory Stick: A 32MB Memory Stick Duo comes with the unit, but it is worthless. You can get them as big as 2 gig, and that is fantastic! The sticks are small, and relatively inexpensive. If you want to use your PSP for watching movies, TV, or whatever, or listening to MP3s, then this is the feature for you. OK, its Memory Stick Duo, which is somewhat annoying (CF and SD are more standard), but it IS a Sony product, so it shouldn't be a surprise.
WiFi: Thank you Sony! This sucker uses ad-hoc 802.11b, so it's great for popping online to browse the web, play online, or update your PSP. Let's face it, there is really no point in a portable without wireless right now, and Sony implemented it nicely. It supposedly drains the battery more quickly, but there is a switch to turn the WiFi off when you don't need it, so that helps.
UMD: This is basically a very, very small DVD in a little caddy so you don't scratch or break it. It holds about 1.8 gig of data, and frankly, it's a really neat idea. Sony used their media division to get a whole bunch of movies put out on UMD, so that's cool, and all the games are on UMD. However, it is not perfect. You CAN still manage to scratch them, and if you do, they're toast. Also, the drive is pretty loud when it's reading, and that can get irritating (I notice this only when I'm using the speakers, not the headphones). It's also proprietary, so you can't run out and grab a UMD burner and make your own (which is why the memory stick drive is so important).
IR Port: Honestly, I forgot it even had one until I noticed it listed on Sony's website. It's there, and I guess you might use it for something, but I have no idea for what - I have no clue why they bothered with it.
Stereo Sound: The PSP has stereo speakers built in. They aren't great or anything, but they're pretty decent. Several companies have made docking stations made just for the PSP with bigger and better speakers, but you won't be upset if you only have the ones on the unit itself.
Power: Power is supplied by either the battery pack or the AC adapter. An AC adapter is pretty much a must-have; if you're not moving around, you get extra brightness for having it plugged in, and of course, you've got to recharge the battery pack. The battery pack is the subject of a great deal of debate and controversy with the PSP - it lasts 6 hours, it lasts 3 hours, it lasts 90 minutes. Basically, the battery life is HEAVILY dependent on what you're doing. Watching a UMD movie or playing a non-WiFi game nets about 3.5-4 hours of battery life. That's ok, but not great, so I suggest purchasing either a spare battery or an external battery-pack.
Ok, so what is it actually like to live with?
I have to be honest, I love this thing, but I don't play games on it that much. My number one use for my portable gaming system is to watch TV shows on the metro ride to work every day, so my thoughts on the matter here may be a bit slanted.
For games: the graphics are really remarkable for a hand-held. The sound is good. The games are fun. The controls can be a bit funky (I never really took to the Sony analogue stick in the first place, and the mini-version on the PSP leaves me less than impressed), but they're certainly not bad. Load times are terrible with the games I've tried (X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse and The Con). You spend about as much time staring at the loading screen as you do playing the game. This seems to be due to there only being a very small amount of RAM in the PSP. If you can live with this, you won't have any problems. I'm also told some games are worse than others.
Movies - UMD: Honestly, they're just like DVDs. You shouldn't have any problem here. Memory stick movies: The PSP can play MPEG-4 video files (properly encoded, of course). There are lots of free tools available on the Web to do this for you. I make extensive use of this feature. Playing videos off the memory stick is effortless, and the playback itself is smooth. I find that you can reasonably fit about an hour and a half of video on a 256 meg stick (at a 384k bitrate). The screen is fantastic for watching movies, and the headphones come with a little video playback remote control. However, I have never, in my life, had such an uncomfortable set of earbud headphones as the ones that come with the PSP. Within 10 minutes of using them, your ears hurt. So, the very first thing I suggest for anyone buying a PSP is to get new headphones for it.
Anyhow, that's enough of my ranting. To sum up: Despite a few faults, the PSP is a fantastic portable media system, and a good (though not great) portable gaming system. I found no QA problems with mine, and I think Sony did a bang-up job.
This article was originally published by CyberArmy.net in the CyberArmy Library.
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